{"id":208292,"date":"2026-04-24T12:48:41","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/208292\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T12:48:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:48:41","slug":"queens-judge-postpones-hearing-on-challenge-to-incumbent-assembly-members-spot-on-primary-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/208292\/","title":{"rendered":"Queens judge postpones hearing on challenge to incumbent Assembly member\u2019s spot on primary ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"Queens\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Queens Assembly Member Jenifer Rajkumar (l.) and her challenger in the Democratic primary, David Orkin (r.). <\/p>\n

Photos courtesy of Rajkumar and Orkin campaigns<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t <\/p>\n

A Queens<\/a> Supreme Court judge adjourned a ballot fight for next week to give the city Board of Elections (BOE)<\/a> commissioners a chance to weigh in on the allegations that incumbent Assembly Member Jenifer Rajkumar used forged signatures to secure her place on the June Democratic primary ballot.<\/p>\n

Rajkumar\u2019s challenger, David Orkin<\/a>, a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-endorsed candidate, filed the case to compel the court to invalidate her designating petition and block her name from appearing on the Democratic primary ballot. Rajkumar\u2019s campaign has repeatedly called the accusations false and politically motivated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A BOE review of Rajkumar\u2019s petition earlier this week found that she had enough to qualify for the June 23 ballot, but it opted out of making a ruling on 1,168 forgery objections that the BOE clerk concluded were \u201cnot ruled upon for lack of jurisdiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

This left the central fraud claims unresolved as the dispute made its way before a judge on April 23. Not long after receiving the case, Supreme Court Justice Denise Johnson opted to wait until after the commissioner\u2019s meeting scheduled for April 28 to revisit the fraud charges in court.<\/p>\n

Before the Thursday morning hearing, Orkin\u2019s election lawyer Renee Paradis made an additional court filing that accused Rajkumar\u2019s campaign staff and consultants of pressuring a group of young campaign workers from ages 19 to 23 to falsely sign witness statements for forged petition filings.<\/p>\n

In the filing, Paradis wrote that she had received secondhand information that \u201ccampaign staff and\/or consultants falsely reassured these young people with statements like \u2018everybody does it\u2019 and \u2018you won\u2019t get in trouble.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rajkumar campaign denied allegations of impropriety in a statement to amNewYork Thursday.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cAssemblywoman Rajkumar is immensely proud of her extraordinary team of petitioners \u2014 hardworking young people from immigrant backgrounds who carried out their responsibilities with passion, precision, and excellence,\u201d the campaign said. \u201cNo amount of false, frivolous, or spurious claims from the DSA\u2019s desperate campaign will stop our resounding victory in this case and again at the ballot box in June, on behalf of the emerging immigrant communities across our Assembly District.\u201d<\/p>\n

With reporting by Adam Daly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Queens Assembly Member Jenifer Rajkumar (l.) and her challenger in the Democratic primary, David Orkin (r.). Photos courtesy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[82611,82612,6369,82613,82614,80693,4866,82615,12884,16021,9,24,13304,63,1260,82616,122,124,123,6440,82617],"class_list":["post-208292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-alleged-forgery","tag-ballot-access-dispute","tag-board-of-elections","tag-campaign-misconduct-allegations","tag-court-adjournment","tag-david-orkin","tag-democratic-primary","tag-dsa-politics","tag-election-law","tag-jenifer-rajkumar","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-elections","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-politics","tag-petition-signatures","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-queens-supreme-court","tag-witness-statements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208292","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=208292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}