A Republican candidate for Common Council gets knocked off the ballot in Kingston for failure to include the proper year on one of her nominating petitions, while a dead woman signs a nominating petition in Rochester. And you thought politics didn’t start until after Labor Day?
The Kingston incident is fairly routine: the opposition sneaking up on a candidate who should have known better.
Republican Deb Brown, in her second campaign for alderman in Ward 9 — she was soundly beaten by Democrat Hayes Clement in 2009 — neglected to include the year (2011) on one of her Republican nominating petitions and was booted off the ballot.
Ruling along party lines, election commissioners sent the issue to State Supreme Court Justice James Gilpatric, who ruled against Brown, leaving her out in the cold.
Brown will continue on the Conservative line and is circulating petitions on the New Beginnings Party created by GOP mayoral candidate Andi Turco-Levin last spring. In a ward with a three-to-one Democratic enrollment, Brown’s chances were in any case slim. But the scavengers who peruse these nominating petitions weren’t taking any chances with the electorate. Pity. The voters in that ward should not have been deprived of a choice based on an egregious technicality.
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