The most crowded Democratic primary for state comptroller in decades may become a one-on-one contest if Drew Warshaw has anything to say about it. The former nonprofit housing executive filed specific challenges to tens of thousands of petition signatures gathered by his fellow insurgents Raj Goyle and Adem Bunkeddeko.<\/p>\n
Goyle submitted over 31,000 signatures, more than double the 15,000 required to secure a spot on the ballot. Warshaw\u2019s campaign is challenging nearly 25,000 of those signatures, arguing they aren\u2019t legally valid for various reasons Bunkeddeko submitted a more modest 22,000, with the Warshaw campaign now challenging nearly 15,000 of them. If the state Board of Elections rules all of those signatures invalid, neither Goyle nor Bunkeddeko would have enough to remain on the ballot.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ballot should be open to anyone who follows the rules; no one expects perfection,\u201d Warshaw Campaign Manager Sara Trenor said in a statement. \u201cBut candidates \u2026 should be expected to file petitions that comply with the basic standards of the well-worn law. Based on standard due diligence, our analysis shows that the petitions filed by Bunkeddeko and Goyle\u2019s campaign fail that test by a wide margin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warshaw campaign attorneys said they found numerous errors and inconsistencies within both Goyle\u2019s and Bunkeddeko\u2019s petitions. Warshaw\u2019s campaign pointed out instances from both the other candidates where signatories appear to have the same handwriting, indicating the collector may have signed for the voter. That is not allowed. The Warshaw campaign also offered examples of instances where the voter did not provide a full street address and the witness did not sign a petition page.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have identified an exceptionally comprehensive set of problems with the candidates\u2019 petitions,\u201d said Leo Glickman, an election attorney for Warshaw. \u201cSo we are confident that we are going to prevail in our challenges; of course the final decisions will be made by the State Board of Elections and the courts.\u201d<\/p>\n
The campaigns for both Goyle and Bunkeddeko expressed confidence their petitions will hold up to scrutiny. While a spokesperson for Bunkeddeko did not offer further comment on the objections, a surrogate for Goyle offered a scathing rebuke of Warshaw\u2019s \u201cfrivolous\u201d attempt to take both candidates out of the race.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRaj has outraised Warshaw 2\u20131 in matching funds, and we\u2019re gaining momentum,\u201d said election attorney Ali Najmi. \u201cIn an effort to stop the bleeding, Warshaw is trying to suppress ballot access for the only South Asian and African American candidates in the race. It\u2019s pathetic and desperate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The most crowded Democratic primary for state comptroller in decades may become a one-on-one contest if Drew Warshaw…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[24032,9,11,10,49,51,50,79255,10232],"class_list":{"0":"post-199183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-comptroller-race","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-news","12":"tag-new-york-state","13":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-state-news","15":"tag-petition-drives","16":"tag-tom-dinapoli"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}