Wanna hear a dirty joke?

Valerie Keehn and her husband are out politicking. Jokes don't get much dirtier than that.

After successfully fissuring the Spa City’s Democratic Party, Kommandant Keehn is still on the war path, looking to crack up any coalition of voters she can ferret out. This time, she has her sights on the Independence Party, which shunned her for an endorsement last month.

Party chairman Lee Kolesnikoff announced in June a slate of endorsements that included every incumbent running for office with exception to Keehn. Instead, the endorsement for mayor was given to challenger Gordon Boyd, who the party “just thought he would be better,” Kolesnikoff told The Saratogian after announcing the slate. But obviously this wasn’t enough for Keehn, who recently filed a lawsuit in County Court in a vain attempt to spur primary next month among the party of roughly 780 members, The Saratogian reported Tuesday.

Keehn’s minions collected signatures from roughly 6 percent of party members to spur the abrupt primary, in which voters would write in their candidate for mayor, rather than be presented with a pair of choices. The only problem is that Keehn collected signatures from some who had already signed Boyd’s petition and others who weren’t sure if they resided in a city or a county. Boyd challenged the move and was upheld by the elections board. Keehn cried to her lawyer hubby, who then sued the board.

The whole affair smacks of dirty politics from Kamp Keehn. The mayor is trying in vain to brush as many “Gordon Boyd” lines off as she can in a desperate attempt to play the odds. Chances are pretty good there will be at least one befuddled voter who staggers into the booth and pulls the first lever that comes to their fingers. Not to mention, most Independence Party voters don’t even think there’s a primary in September –with exception to the ones the Keehniacs have personally contacted.

If she can boot Boyd off the Independence line and then take the Democratic primary, she’s successfully whittled him down to the Conservative line. This would also play to the mantra of the Keehniacs, who are increasingly trying to paint Boyd as a closet Republican, who would gain office and immediately start taking trips to the presidential ranch in Crawford.

The asinine thing about this move is that the Independence Party has never supported Keehn. During the 2005 election, the party supported every candidate on the Democratic slate, but decided against jumping into the fray for mayor, which was then a hotly contest ticket between Keehn and Hank Kuczynski. Needless to say, she didn’t bother scampering around the city then to spur a primary, even though Lenz was the clear and obvious favorite in the race.

With the primaries approaching, Keehn is doing her utmost to make this race ugly. From publically calling her fellow Democrats “cowards” to littering the cityscape with her campaign signs more than four months in advance of the general election. And that’s after she squandered the best chance city progressives had in city government to prove their critics wrong. Keehn is nothing more than a dirty politician who needs to be swept away like the rubbish left behind after this week’s Dave Matthews Concert.