(Lots of info in this post. This smells pretty bad. - promoted by phillip anderson)
Dan Janison at the Newsday Spin Cycle posted this:
Ruling that Sen. Craig Johnson's campaign violated proper petitioning practices, State Supreme Court Justice Karen V. Murphy has thrown the Nassau Democrat off the Working Families Party's November ballot line. If the ruling stands, it will be the second time this election season that Johnson lost a minor-party endorsement that he'd appeared to have secured. The first occurred when the GOP-aligned state Independence Party recently changed its bylaws as a prelude to overruling its county committee to nominate the Republican challenger, Barbara Donno.
Now all this seems like normal petition stuff, until you realize who the judge is in this case. Karen V. Murphy was before ascending to the bench, the Republican County Clerk in Nassau. More to the point, the current County Clerk, Maureen O'Connell, was Judge Murphy's close political ally and her hand picked successor to the Clerk's office. If the name Maureen O'Connell rings a bell, she is the same Maureen O'Connell who lost the special election to Craig Johnson in SD 7.
Much more on the flip... |
But the Newsday post has more intrigue:
This time, there seems to be a richer and more personal back story. At the outset of the court action that led to this ruling, the Democrat's attorney, Steven R. Schlesinger (in photo), asked Judge Murphy, a Republican who was the elected county clerk until 2005, to recuse herself.
Schlesinger cited past "antipathy" between herself and Johnson when he was a county legislator, including "vituperative attacks" over her having removed certain files from that office. Schlesinger also said on the record that Murphy's law secretary was someone who had been "unceremoniously let go" from D.A. Katherine Rice's office -- with Rice having come from his firm, Jaspan Schlesinger, when she became D.A.
But Justice Murphy denied the motion from Schlesinger - who not only is law chairman of the county Democratic committee but heads the firm to which Johnson, as a private practitioner, is of counsel. Murphy noted those matters came up "many years ago" and she harbored no doubt she could be "fair and impartial in hearing this case."
Objections to the Johnson petitions -- he handed in 35 when the minimum requirement was 17 -- involved proper authorization of the documents under oath. Also, some of the signatures were from WFP members who'd already signed for a rival candidate believed to have been encouraged to run by the county Republicans. Therefore, the signatures for Johnson don't count.
Now, while every Judge in the state attained office from varied levels of partisan party activity, Judge Murphy had a very long and highly partisan career in Nassau County (Joe Mondello) politics. When the Suozzi administration first took office amidst all kinds of fiscal woes, Suozzi and his new County Comptroller, Howard Weitzman, went on a complete countywide cost cutting effort through every department in county government save one. The County Clerk was the only department that refused to cooperate and allow fiscal oversight into their office setting up roadblocks to the Executive and Comptroller at every turn. That County Clerk, none other than Judge Karen V. Murphy. So unpopular was Murphy's obstruction to fiscal discipline that Mondello arranged for her to move to the bench out of fear that she would not survive a County Clerk re-election campaign. And now for Judge Murphy's unbiased ruling:
The conclusion of Murphy's 16-page decision, dated Friday, is sharply worded: "'Disenfranchising' voters is not just a new buzzword or catchall phrase to cover up sloppy petition-gathering practices. The (election law) requirements are to prevent fraud, deception, confusion and threats to the integrity of the system....To turn a blind eye toward the blatant disregard of the process and statutory requirements would divest the voters of the confidence they have in the law..."
"Lacking the necessary number of signatures...the petition is invalidated and the Board of Elections is enjoined, restrained and prohibited from putting the name of the Respondent-Candidate, Craig Johnson on the official ballots to be used at the Sept. 9, 2008 Working Families Party primary election..."
SURPRISE! SURPRISE!
As for the status of the ruling and the appeals, Newsdays blog reports:
If the ruling is upheld, there would be no WFP candidate on the ballot.
Reached at his law office, Schlesinger said he felt that "We're absolutely going to win" on appeal.
Joe Conway, spokesman for the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, said: "It's crystal clear that there was a blatant disregard of the election law, and this is just a devastating blow to a faltering campaign. First he didn't get the Independence Party line, now he's lost the Working Families line, and next he's going to lose this election."
Johnson spokesman Richard Azzopardi responded: "We're disappointed with the decision. We intend to appeal, and we anticipate that we will be successful in that appeal."
In the special election contest last year between Johnson and Maureen O'Connell, Murphy's GOP successor as county clerk, Johnson won 1,529 of his 27,632 votes on WFP. O'Connell won 1,800 of her 23,995 votes on the Independence line, and another 2,368 on the Conservative line.
I do not know much about the appeals process in these cases but there was one interesting comment at the end of the Newsday Blog from an obvious Republican partisan that gives me hope for this decision to be overruled:
If this case follows the pattern set by previous cases, the local decision will be overturned by the appellate division because they are totally in the thrall of WF top brass. |
