By William Lewis
This year will go down as the year of petition challenges, as there are such in two state Senate races in northeast Queens: one involving state Sens. Frank Padavan (R-Bellerose) and Toby Stavisky (D-Whitestone) and another in the Fifth Congressional District.
A political campaign can be divided into two parts: the petition drive and campaign. The drive is the most important part because if a candidate does not survive petition challenges, he or she will not have a campaign. That is true this year in the Fifth Congressional District, where the official Republican candidate, Elizabeth Berney, is challenging the petitions of her Republican opponent, Gonzalo “Jun” Policarpio, and Democratic opponent, incumbent U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Bayside).
State Elections Board hearings have been held in Albany and court action is expected to follow the hearings. Presently, Berney is challenging Policarpio's Republican Party and Conservative Party petitions. She has stated in her challenge that names have appeared on Policarpio's petitions of people who no longer live in the district or are deceased. Berney has also submitted opportunity to ballot petitions, which will give her a chance to run as a write-in candidate to obtain the Conservative Party designation.
Regarding Ackerman, she has dropped her challenge to his Democratic Party petitions and is moving ahead with challenging Ackerman's Independence Party and Working Families Party petitions. In the Independence Party's case, she is charging that Ackerman's petitions contain names of unregistered people and questionable addresses. She is calling for state and federal investigations of her opponent's actions pertaining to the petition drive.
In recent years, there have been few petition challenges in northeast Queens, although Ackerman was successful several years ago in having his Republican opponent removed from the ballot. One major petition challenge occurred in 1991 when Queens District Attorney Richard Brown had his opponent's petitions invalidated by the courts.
His opponent was former state Assemblyman Vincent Nicolosi, who had submitted approximately 23,000 signatures in his attempt to unseat Richard Brown in a Democratic Party primary. The effort failed and Brown, since then, has had no serious opponent for the office of Queens district attorney.
The petition aspect of a political campaign can be difficult and trying. It has been called a “trial by ordeal” for the political candidate. This process separates the serious from the non-serious candidate in terms of support and resources. It also tests the ability of prospective candidates to succeed in a most difficult process before getting to the election campaign itself.
Berney is determined to pursue her petition challenges to their ultimate outcome.
In the challenge of Padavan's Independence Party petitions by his former staff member, Peter Boudouvas, the city Elections Board has invalidated the Boudouvas specifications on technicalities, including that the specifications were not properly bound together and certified mail contained the petition volume number instead of the specification number.
The city board can and does periodically change the clerical and administrative requirements of filing petitions, as in this case, as well as in the case of other petition challenges filed this year. There has been a court hearing scheduled for the week of Aug. 4 regarding Boudouvas' challenges.
If Berney's petition challenges are successful, Ackerman will be running on just one line instead of three and Policarpio may be eliminated from the ballot.
It promises to be an interesting political season as we move toward the primary and general elections.
