{"id":364304,"date":"2026-10-04T19:20:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T19:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/364304\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T19:20:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T19:20:23","slug":"ny-dem-mayor-tied-to-accused-attempted-slay-deputy-also-violated-campaign-law-feds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/364304\/","title":{"rendered":"NY Dem mayor tied to accused attempted-slay deputy also violated campaign law: feds"},"content":{"rendered":"

The embattled mayor of Mount Vernon<\/a> whose handpicked deputy police commissioner was recently charged with attempted murder<\/a> also broke federal election law,\u00a0according to the US Office of Special Counsel.<\/p>\n

Democratic Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard violated the Hatch Act<\/a> when she sent campaign mailers stamped as an \u201cimportant message\u201d from the city in her push to boost a slate of her hand-picked candidates in the June 2025 Democratic primaries, federal investigators determined.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Hatch Act is a federal law first established in 1939 that bars state and local officials whose jobs are bankrolled in part by federal dollars from using the power of their office to try to sway an election.<\/p>\n

Mount Vernson Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard, a Democrat, violated the Hatch Act, federal investigators said. Facebook\/Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard<\/p>\n

\u201cThe language of these campaign mailers reasonably would lead residents to believe they contained official business from their mayor, compelling them to open the envelopes when they might not otherwise do so,\u201d wrote Erica Hamrick, deputy chief of the OSC\u2019s Hatch Act Unit, in the department\u2019s ruling, which was obtained by The Post.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Patterson-Howard endorsed five candidates for comptroller, city council and city judge in the mailer and even included a sample ballot for residents in the Westchester County enclave to \u201ccut and take with you to vote,\u201d according to Samuel Rivers, the Mount Vernon activist who filed the complaint against her with the feds.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at the letter \u2014 the federal government has now confirmed what residents suspected when they opened that envelope: The mayor used the power of her office to try to choose their representatives for them,\u201d Rivers said \u2014 calling for the mayor\u2019s resignation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the feds only hit Patterson-Howard with a slap on the wrist and issued her a simple warning letter and \u201cadvised that if in the future she engages in prohibited political activity, OSC would consider such activity to be a willful and knowing violation of the law.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Federal investigators said the mayor sent campaign mailers stamped as an \u201cimportant message\u201d from the city in her push to boost a slate of her hand-picked candidates.<\/p>\n

Inside the mailers, Patterson-Howard endorsed five candidates for comptroller, city council and city judge. <\/p>\n

Still, the federal rebuke is the latest black eye for Patterson-Howard, who recently came under fire when her hand-picked deputy police commissioner, Jennifer Lackard, was charged with attempted murder for allegedly chaperoning her gang-banging son to a botched drive-by shooting<\/a> outside a Bronx courthouse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

James Lackard<\/a>, 47, the deputy commissioner\u2019s drug-peddling, ex-con husband who was also allegedly in the car during the drive-by, was on the run from police before turning himself in a few days after the shooting, according to police.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Patterson-Howard \u2014 who made history in 2019 as the first woman elected mayor in Mount Vernon \u2014 had hired Lackard in 2020 to lead the police department\u2019s Wellness Unit, a $125,000-a-year job reportedly created for her, despite her having no real law-enforcement experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mayor has defended the hire, insisting Lackard passed a \u201crigorous background check.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patterson-Howard did not respond to The Post\u2019s request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Mark Lungariello<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The embattled mayor of Mount Vernon whose handpicked deputy police commissioner was recently charged with attempted murder also…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7022,2132,57,6336,9,11,10,58,1628],"class_list":["post-364304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-corruption","tag-democrats","tag-metro","tag-mount-vernon","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-us-news","tag-westchester-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364304","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=364304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}