As expected, the city Democratic Committee endorsed a candidate to run for City Court Judge at their meeting yesterday. James Montagnino, who lost the close vote, quickly said that he would run in a primary against Jeff Wait.

Going back one year, we had city Democrats endorse Gordon Boyd despite Val Keehn's incumbency. Then we had Keehn beat Boyd in a primary, only to loose the general election to Republican Scott Johnson. At least Keehn had the minor satisfaction of beating Boyd, running as an independent candidate, again in November.

So here we are again, with a politically connected former city attorney, Wait, endorsed by a slim margin by the Democratic committee. He will face Montagnino, a relatively recent transplant, but a jurist with some experience, in a primary election in September. All of this is to determine who will contest the general election against Matt Dorsey, a politically connected Republican.

Jim Doern, the current part-time City Court Judge, who wanted to run for the post, but lost his party's endorsement vote, bowed out of the race just over a week ago, saying that "Campaigning without the support of the Saratoga Springs Republican committee is not something I want to do, which is why I worked so hard to try to earn the endorsement." Keep in mind that Doern was termed a "formidable candidate," by one of the Democratic candidates, the other of whom said he would not have wanted to run against him.

The Democrats seem to have no problem running against each other, a move that I conjecture will wind up costly for the candidates, both in terms of money and energy. Whichever of them comes out on top after the September vote -- assuming they haven't lost too much favor during the primary process -- will then have the significant challenge of running a race against a GOP candidate who will likely have little to do this summer, aside from sit back and watch the fireworks while the Dems duke it out. So much for uniting the party to take back the long-held Republican post.