Law quirk requires a costly primary

A legal quirk in the way Boston conducts its elections will probably require a citywide preliminary vote in September, forcing the city to spend at least $500,000 to narrow a field of at-large City Council hopefuls by one, from nine candidates to eight.

Political observers point to four long-shot candidates, saying one of them should drop out to save the city the expense. But those candidates, who submitted the 500 signatures necessary to appear on the ballot, say they are exercising their democratic right to run for office and have no intention of dropping out by tomorrow's 5 p.m. deadline.

"I've been trying for 10 years to get on the ballot," said David James Wyatt, a 53-year-old Roxbury resident who since 1997 has tried to run for mayor and City Council but until this year had never cleared the signature threshold. "I'm not going to pull out now."

Matthew Geary, a 22-year-old undergraduate at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, who has one cent in his campaign account, said he would bring a unique perspective to a council crowded with longtime incumbents. He maintains that his candidacy is serious, and said he is planning to cut back on his course load next semester to make time for raising more money, knocking on doors, and dropping leaflets.

Election officials say the candidates have every right to appear on the ballot, although Secretary of State William F. Galvin questioned the wisdom of holding a primary vote to reduce a field of nine to eight.

"I'm normally on the side of any price for democracy," Galvin said. "But this seems rather wasteful."

City law requires a preliminary election if the contestants total more than two times the number of open seats.

Conducting a citywide election costs $500,000 to $750,000, according to election officials. About 340,000 ballots would have to be printed, at about 20 cents each, and detail police officers and poll workers would have to staff all 254 precincts.

"The law requires us to do it," said Geraldine Cuddyer, Boston's election commissioner. "So we'll just have to do it."

The city could file a petition asking the Legislature to allow it to put all nine candidates on the November ballot, but Cuddyer said that was unlikely because of the time the process would take. The Election Department has certified that each candidate collected the required 500 signatures, but Martin J. Hogan and Wyatt cleared that threshold by fewer than 10 signatures ( the other candidates gathered at least 600 certified signatures). Other candidates have until tomorrow to challenge those signatures or drop out .

In the past, candidates running for an at-large seat on the council had to gather 1,500 signatures, but the council lowered the threshold to 500 in the early 1990s, in part to accommodate Albert "Dapper" O'Neil, who notoriously struggled to get his signatures for each election. The council approved a rule last year that would increase the number, from 500 to 1,000 signatures, but the measure has not been approved by the Legislature.

"Look, there are folks who have a legitimate chance of winning a seat, and the incumbents are in a strong position," Michael McCormack, a former city councilor and longtime observer of local politics. "Everybody has a right to run if they so choose, but there should be a threshold of signatures that make it more than a whimsical effort in the summer."

The Boston City Council is made up of four at-large councilors, who are elected by the entire city, and a single councilor elected by each of the nine districts of Boston.

Aside from Geary and Wyatt, other long-shot at-large candidates include Hogan, a 28-year-old Dorchester resident with an empty war chest; and William P. Estrada, a 40-year-old meat packer who moved to East Boston in September and is running as a candidate in the Socialist Workers Party.

Also in the race is John R. Connolly, a West Roxbury resident who fell short of a council seat by 3,925 votes in the last election and has amassed a $13,240 campaign account.

The five candidates are trying to unseat the incumbents, who are all running for reelection: Michael F. Flaherty, Sam Yoon, Felix D. Arroyo, and Stephen J. Murphy.

"I believe that it's very important to have new faces and new thoughts," said Hogan, who ran in the 2005 preliminary and finished 13th out of 15 candidates with 1,031 votes. "The four incumbents get a feeling that they're entitled to that position because they've been in it for so long. We need an average Joe to go out there and unify the people."

Geary, who is majoring in American history, said he hopes his campaign brings more awareness to a group backing him, the Boston Socialist Alternative.

"I'm not an individual running for office. I'm part of an activist group," he said. "We're active in the anti war movement and pushing for immigrant rights."

If elected, he said he would donate to social justice causes and to like-minded candidates $52,500 of the $87,500 salary that councilors earn, and keep $35,000, about what the average Bostonian earns.

"I've heard of $1, but one penny, that's a new low," Galvin said. "That doesn't strike me as a likely success story. Presumably someone is going to need more than one penny to get a message across. Assuming that person even has a message to get across."

Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com