The decision of Judge Orazio R. Bellantoni of the NY Sup. Crt of the Westchester Co., in the matter of Archibald Mussington (Objector) and Paul Feiner and Judith Beville ("Aggrieved Candidates") v. the West. Co. Board of Elections, Robert Bernstein and Sherron Fantauzzi (Index No. 2891/13) is informative on several levels. First, this makes it almost certain that Feiner was actively involved (and without any doubt approved) the accusations of fraud against Bernstein and Fantauzzi. I don't know Archibald Mussington but, unless I hear otherwise, I'm going to assume that he didn't plan this maneuver and retain attorney Alan Goldston completely on his own and pay the attorney's fee out of his own pocket.
What's particularly interesting is that because of bad planning or lawyering on the part of Feiner's team, the judge's decision doesn't actually get to the substance of Mussington/Feiner's accusations of ballot fraud. Essentially, the judge's opinion states, if the accusations of fraud were valid, the petition challenges would also have invalidated the petitions of Francis Sheehan, Diana Juettner and Arne Povella. The complaint failed to name the latter three candidates and, consequently, the judge threw out the complaint.
I'm not sure what to make of this: the Feiner team's decision to challenge only the signatures of Bernstein and Fantauzzi, and not the other candidates for whom signatures were collected at the same time, implies that the complaint was not founded on any serious believe that Bernstein and Fantauzzi collected signatures fraudulently. It can be reasonably concluded that Feiner's team meant only to harass these candidates by causing them to divert time and money from the campaign by spending days preparing their case and appearing in court. Alternatively, if Feiner's team was serious about the fraud allegations, then the judge's decision implies that their case filing was incompetently prepared. If the latter were indeed the situation, will Feiner amend and refile the ballot challenges? If he sincerely believes that fraud was indeed committed, he should certainly do so. Otherwise, we'll conclude that the Feiner team was bluffing all along. (On the other hand, do Bernstein/Fantauzzi have a potential claim against Feiner for frivolous litigation?)
One other correction to my earlier post: this case did not cost the Bernstein campaign actual money since (as the Bernstein campaign corrected me) attorney Suzanne Berger, who ably represented Bernstein and Fantauzzi, volunteered her services.
So, what exactly was the point of all this? I would greatly appreciate hearing from the Feiner campaign with an explanation of their thinking.
The petition challenge was not frivolous. We felt that Mr.Bernstein did not file the minimum number of signatures required to get on the ballot.
ReplyDeleteThe Westchester County Board of Elections agreed with our teams arguments that over 20% of the signatures collected by the Bernstein camp were invalid. They knocked out 337 signatures out of just over 1500 signatures submitted. Some of the signatures were from voters who live outside of Greenburgh. Others from non Democrats. Candidates need 1,000 signatures of Democrats who live in Greenburgh to get on the ballot.
Before my campaign filed the objections we noticed that Mr. Bernstein signed his own petition twice. Nominating petitions can only be signed once by voters. In addition some signatures on the nominating petitions looked like they were signed by the same person-in the same handwriting.
I do not believe that Bernstein's campaign filed 1,000 valid signatures of registered Greenburgh democrats. There were many irregularities in the petition sheets that were submitted -the court should have reviewed each of the specific objections. We lost the challenge on a technicality. I think that if the court had reviewed each of the specific objections we raised that they would have concluded that Mr.Bernstein filed fewer than 1,000 valid signatures.
If my campaign team had challenged all the Democrats on the petition we might have won the case. But, we did not want to knock off the ballot the candidacies of Francis Sheehan, Diana Juettner, Town Board members and Anne Povella, Receiver of Taxes, town officials who currently serve in office. We lost the case on a technicality and will move forward.
The court made the decision. I'm looking forward to the upcoming campaign. I like competition and am pleased voters will be able to contrast my approach to governing against my challengers.
PAUL FEINER
Hi Dan:
ReplyDeletecampaign update...
did not give my campaign as much attention in the last few weeks as I normally would. Did no fundraising, very little street campaigning. My father was in the hospital for 21 days - with a low white blood cell count, and then a blood clout. I spent much of the 21 days in the hospital,trying to keep my fathers spirits up and trying to address hospital related issues. I was able to respond to e mails from constituents, returned calls from residents during that time. My father is now home and starting to get his energy back. This weekend I resumed my street campaigning (am still spending time with him so haven't campaigned as hard as I normally do).. And, am playing catch up --preparing the literature for the campaign.
Last year, fyi, my father (Phil Feiner) was profiled on WCBS radio and in the Business Journal. He volunteers at Town Hall each week, checking vouchers trying to help make sure that we're not overspending on our purchases.
I have agreed to a debate on September 3rd in Hastings -sponsored by the local Democratic party.
PAUL FEINER