Incumbent state Sen. Marty Flynn and Clarks Summit resident Jeffrey Lake, the newcomer challenging Flynn in the Democratic primary for his 22nd state Senate District seat, will both remain on the primary ballot after challenges seeking to remove them were dismissed or withdrawn.
Commonwealth Court Judge Matthew Wolf dismissed Friday a pair of challenges to nomination petitions filed by Flynn because the challengers, Lake and Lawrence ‘Larry’ Sparano of La Plume Twp., failed to timely serve the secretary of the commonwealth with copies of their challenges as the state Election Code requires. Sparano’s wife, retired pharmacist Sharon Soltis Sparano, is the presumptive Republican nominee for the state Senate seat.
“A petition to set aside a nomination petition must be timely filed with the court, and it must also be timely served on the Secretary,” Wolf wrote in separate opinions accompanying court orders dismissing Lake’s and Sparano’s challenges. “Even if the petition is timely filed, failure to serve the Secretary with the petition within the statutory period requires that the petition be dismissed.”
Democrat Jeffrey Lake of Clarks Summit, a candidate for state senate in the 22nd District. He’s challenging incumbent state Sen. Marty Flynn of Dunmore in the Democratic primary. (Photo Courtesy of Jeffry Lake)
Court hearings on the dismissed challenges originally scheduled for Thursday morning were canceled.
Flynn ally Lawrence ‘Larry’ Wynne also challenged Lake’s petitions, alleging he lacked the 500 valid signatures needed to secure a spot on the primary ballot, but Wynne withdrew that challenge over the weekend. A canceled hearing had been scheduled for Monday morning.
While Wynne initially argued that 318 of the 758 signatures Lake submitted were invalid for various reasons, attorney Kevin Greenberg, the lawyer representing Wynne in the matter, said Monday they ultimately determined Lake submitted between 502 and 510 valid signatures. That’s enough to qualify for the ballot.
“It doesn’t matter if you make it by one line or 1,000, it’s enough and he had enough, and so we were not going to waste the court’s time or Mr. Lake’s time continuing to fight beyond the point where we came to the conclusion that he was going to prevail,” Greenberg said.
Lake announced Monday in a press release that he’d secured a place on the ballot despite the “bullying, Trump-style machine tactics” aimed at knocking him off.
“Marty Flynn and the insiders think they can play by a different set of rules,” Lake said in the release. “That’s exactly why people feel like their voices don’t matter. But we proved that this campaign can’t be pushed aside.”
Dismissed challenges
In their separate and ultimately dismissed challenges, Lake argued Flynn’s submitted candidate affidavit was “incomplete and facially defective” because the line where candidates list their voting precinct was left blank.
Larry Sparano argued Flynn’s petitions failed to contain the “required number of properly ascribed signatures,” challenging 1,075 of Flynn’s 1,384 signature lines for being out of compliance with requirements of the Election Code.
Among other examples, Sparano raised numerous issues with petitions circulated for Flynn by Alpesh “Al” Patel.
Many of the signatures on those petitions, the signers’ addresses and their listed dates of signing appear to be written in the same or very similar handwriting styles. In some cases the “printed name of elector” section of the signature line only includes the purported signer’s initials.
Greenberg, who also represented Flynn in the Lake and Sparano challenges, said Flynn would have prevailed in court had Judge Wolf not dismissed them.
“The reality is they would have been tossed because they were meritless, but we didn’t have to get to that point because both objectors couldn’t follow very basic legal standards,” Greenberg said. “Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Lake’s allegation was technically true, but it’s something the court regularly allows people to amend.”
Regarding the Sparano challenge, Greenberg said Flynn had more than enough valid signatures to secure a spot on the ballot.
“But this was just an excuse for somebody to go online and talk about a few pages that are clearly unfortunate and that Mr. Flynn was not involved with in any way, except some volunteer did it for him and they are what they are,” Greenberg said. “But he had plenty of signatures, valid signatures, and turns out Mr. Lake did too, although it took us time to confirm that.”
Sharon Soltis Sparano, who is unopposed for the Republican nomination for the state Senate seat in the GOP primary, said Monday she and her husband still believe Flynn lacked 500 valid signatures.
“It’s unfortunate that we weren’t able to produce that evidence in court,” she said.
With the challenges either dismissed or withdrawn, Democratic primary election ballots will list both Flynn and Lake as candidates for state Senate in the 22nd District, which includes parts of Lackawanna and Luzerne counties. The winner will likely face Sparano in November.
The primary election is May 19.