By ROBIN FINN
A DEFINITE contender for the title of Most Precocious Republican in New York City, Marcus Cederqvist, at 37 the baby-faced new executive director of the Board of Elections, is gearing up for his debut as the city’s chief vote counter for Tuesday’s New York presidential primary.
James Estrin/photo- New York Times
Super Duper Tuesday, as it has been called, could be a challenge, particularly if the Giants win the Super Bowl on Sunday and Lower Broadway, where the board, with its inventory of backup voting machines, has its headquarters, is taken over by a victory parade on Primary Day.
Mr. Cederqvist apologizes for the Duper thing’s being over the top. Can’t help himself: This is a big deal with big national stakes, and he is, in a sense, running the show. Keeping tabs on it, anyway. He is, he promises, highly conversant with spreadsheets. And with contingency plans should the local football team prevail. “I want the Giants to win, but...”
Mr. Cederqvist is responsible for monitoring the city’s 1,363 polling stations on Tuesday and supplying them with some 6,300 voting machines — yes, the clunky but dependable Shoup lever machines that must all be replaced by modern, voter-friendly machines in time for the 2009 mayoral election.
He is so new in his role (his predecessor and mentor, John A. Ravitz, resigned in October, but Mr. Cederqvist was not appointed until Jan. 15) that his name isn’t yet etched on the office door.
But public service is old hat. He got his start while a student at the University of Rochester by volunteering for Charles Millard’s 1991 campaign for the New York City Council. He then had a summer internship with State Senator Roy M. Goodman in 1992, after which he coordinated the successful City Council campaign of Andrew S. Eristoff in 1993. By age 25, he was elected Republican leader of the 65th District on the East Side, and he went on to serve as Mr. Eristoff’s chief of staff until 1999.
“Granted, this is a partisan agency,” he says about the board of 10 commissioners: a Democrat and a Republican from each borough, a recipe that he is convinced ensures checks and balances. He is a true-blue Republican — “Better make that true red,” he corrects, with a rare giggle — whose fascination with the party began as a Manhattan teenager improbably attuned to the oratory of Ronald Reagan. But the board’s deputy director and its administrative manager are both Democrats. Hurrah for partisan parity.
“What everyone here is interested in, and what everyone truly wants, is a fair election,” he insists, waving a yellow pencil like a baton. “There isn’t really a Republican or a Democratic way to run an election; there’s just a right way. No, really! Here in this role, my job is very specifically to count votes, not influence them. That’s the only game I’m involved in now. The Board of Elections is kind of like the boiler in your house: It’s something you don’t think about much, but as long as it chugs along and keeps you warm, it’s doing its job.” He frets that the analogy sounds dumb.
But forgive Mr. Cederqvist — who will also celebrate his 38th birthday and first wedding anniversary in this pivotal primary month — for his giddiness. He’s young to the point of idealistic, or at the very least earnestness, even if he happens to be wearing, somewhat baggily, a nondescript old man’s suit in an unbecoming shade of charcoal and a green tie from his father’s wardrobe castoffs. His father, a retired obstetrician and gynecologist, accumulated ties from four generations of happy parents of offspring he delivered.
Mr. Cederqvist is, by his own admission, a diligent former Republican operative, not a clotheshorse, which explains why he says he forgot to wear his most photogenic, and partisan, tie: the blue one decorated with itsy-bitsy elephants, a Christmas present from his father. He does wear a shiny black pair of penny loafers, a post-preppy nod to his alma mater, the Browning School on the Upper East Side, and he vows to purchase some snappier suits. After the primary.
“Being that this is a presidential primary and a contested presidential primary at that, we’re anticipating a high voter turnout, something approaching what you would expect for a general election,” he says, flicking the elephant-themed light switch in his otherwise impersonal office (he has had no time to unpack his family photos or posters).
“I’VE been unbelievably busy,” he reiterates. He has even, because protocol demanded it, already voted (he won’t say for whom, but his palpable disappointment, and fleeting pout, at the news of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s withdrawal is a telltale sign). Mr. Cederqvist, before being named to this post, spent six years as executive director of the New York Republican County Committee. Making it a computer-savvy and candidate-rich organization was his mission.
Being a young Republican activist in New York City, where Democrats prevail nearly six to one and where even his wife is registered with the enemy, has often been alienating. Take, for instance, the collection of petition signatures. “If you’re a Democrat, getting signatures on the Upper West Side is like shooting fish in a barrel,” he says. “For a Republican, it is a horrible, horrible experience. I’ve been called a fascist repeatedly. People are just vitriolic in general.” Then there was the time that, at First Avenue and 79th Street, an older woman spit at him when he asked if she was a Republican.
“Thank God she had bad aim and missed.”
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