The petition submitted by Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar (D-Woodhaven) to secure a spot on the June primary ballot includes a signature purporting to be from Queens Chronicle Editor Kristen Guglielmo, who did not sign the document.<\/p>\n
Guglielmo, who lives in Assembly District 38, emailed democratic socialist David Orkin\u2019s campaign last week, after she saw a post on his social media offering voters the opportunity to check whether their names were on Rajkumar\u2019s petitions. Orkin on April 16 filed a lawsuit in Queens State Supreme Court to invalidate his opponent\u2019s petition and keep her off the ballot, alleging that her campaign had forged some signatures.<\/p>\n
Orkin\u2019s campaign responded to Guglielmo on Tuesday, sharing a scan of a petition that contained her name and address.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did not sign that, and that is not my signature,\u201d she said. Her name also is misspelled, as \u201cKristhen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guglielmo did not sign any petitions for AD 38. On Wednesday, she signed a sworn legal declaration affirming that she did not sign Rajkumar\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Orkin\u2019s lawsuit states that multiple district residents had their signatures forged on Rajkumar\u2019s petition \u2014 it names nine allegedly fraudulent signatures that were found \u201cin the short time period to review petitions.\u201d It says also that the petition \u201clikely contains additional forgeries purportedly witnessed by additional subscribing witnesses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rajkumar needed 500 signatures to get on the ballot and submitted more than 2,500, but the suit questions the credibility of seven people who claimed to witness more than 70 percent of the purported signatures. An Orkin spokesperson on Tuesday cast doubt on nine petitioners and said they held a combined 85 percent of her signatures.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we have alleged from the beginning, we believe we have strong evidence that the Rajkumar campaign participated in widespread petitioning fraud,\u201d Orkin said in an emailed statement. \u201cThe fact that they would go so far as to forge the signature of a known reporter in the community just shows that they never anticipated getting caught.\u201d<\/p>\n
On April 22, amNewYork reported that 1,064 of Rajkumar\u2019s submitted signatures were invalidated on ordinary election-law grounds after review by a Board of Elections clerk, leaving her with just under 1,500.<\/p>\n
Arvind Sooknanan, Rajkumar\u2019s campaign spokesperson, said in a statement via text Wednesday that the campaign cannot comment on the specifics of an active legal proceeding.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are confident in our campaign\u2019s position and look forward to addressing the facts in court tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In her own court filing April 16, Rajkumar said her petition is \u201cvalid and in due and proper form.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rajkumar also ascribed the fraud allegations to the Democratic Socialists of America, calling the accusations \u201cdisgraceful, dishonest and intentionally misleading\u201d in a statement on social media April 20.<\/p>\n
\u201cSouth Queens deserves better than a socialist machine willing to corrupt the democratic process in order to cling to power,\u201d she said. In a separate post, she accused the DSA of \u201cwaging a campaign of hate\u201d against her that is \u201crooted in sexism, religious bigotry, and outright lies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLove will always triumph over hate,\u201d she wrote. \u201cTruth will always defeat lies.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next court appearance is set for today, April 30, and a ruling is expected this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur case against the Rajkumar campaign is about ensuring the trust of our community isn\u2019t taken for granted in this election,\u201d Orkin said. \u201cWe look forward to our day in court to ensure all the facts come to light and no one is able to benefit from defrauding our democratic systems.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The petition submitted by Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar (D-Woodhaven) to secure a spot on the June primary ballot includes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[80693,416,396,609,16021,9,24,63,87,122,124,123,29388],"class_list":["post-215819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-david-orkin","tag-elections","tag-fraud","tag-government","tag-jenifer-rajkumar","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-woodhaven"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215819","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=215819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}