Quoted Text

SCHENECTADY
Democratic council contender pulled off ballot
BY MICHAEL GOOT Gazette Reporter
Reach Gazette reporter Michael Goot at 395-3105 or mgoot@dailygazette.net.

    Democratic City Council candidate Robert Sanders won’t be on the primary ballot unless he is successful in a court appeal.
    The Schenectady County Board of Elections ruled Tuesday that Sanders did not have a sufficient number of signatures on his nominating petitions to earn a spot on the ballot against Councilwoman Marion Porterfield. He needed 696 valid signatures and had only 628 after nearly 300 were thrown out for various reasons such as the voter not being a registered Democrat, the signature or address being illegible or the voter putting down the wrong year or already signing the petition.
    Sanders initially had only 577 valid signatures. After an hour and a half of review by Board of Election commissioners Arthur Brassard and Brian Quail and Sanders’ attorney Jim Walsh, however, Sanders had picked up 51 valid signatures. However, that wasn’t enough.
    Sanders has three days to appeal in state Supreme Court, and he plans to do so. He said he was unhappy with the process, particularly since Quail is the Schenectady County Democratic Committee chairman.
    “You guys don’t want me on the ballot, I get it,” he said.
    About 200 of the 905 he had collected were thrown out because of an error by one of the people gathering the petitions. Anyone who is qualified to sign a petition may serve as a witness to the collection of other people’s signatures. However, if there are any mistakes on the witness statement, the entire page of signatures can be invalidated, according to election law.
    Quail said information on the bottom of the petition regarding the county and city or town has to match up with where the person collecting the petition lives. In this case, Jim McMahon lives at 224 Euclid Ave. in Albany but the petition form listed the county and city of Schenectady.
    “What normally occurs is someone crosses off the incorrect information and places the correct information,” he said.
    There is a fair amount of case law where courts have forgiven this error, according to Quail. However, that has to happen in court and not at the Board of Elections level.
    “We don’t have the ability to take testimony. It’s not within our power to get into the necessary proof,” he said.
    Walsh said as long as it can be determined where the witness lives, it should be valid.
    McMahon said he was using a preprinted petition form provided by the Board of Elections. He called this a bullying tactic.
    “Never once was I asked that I lived in Schenectady and never once did I intimate that I lived in Schenectady when collecting signatures,” he said.
    Sanders said Porterfield was provided a different petition by the Board of Elections that doesn’t say “Schenectady” on the bottom. He said Porterfield had the county preprinted on the form but not the town or city.
    Brassard, a Republican, said he sympathized, but has to follow election law. “It appears this is a matter that should be handled in court,” he said.
    The Porterfield campaign also made allegations of fraud.
    However, the commissioners declined to rule on those charges because they can’t be substantiated.
    “Our review itself is based primarily on the documents we have before us,” Quail said.
    The Board of Elections checked voter records and addresses to make sure information matched. ......................>>>>.....................>>>>................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01201&AppName=1

Wow, the dems really screwed him

Quoted Text

Council seat will go to primary
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter


There will be a Democratic primary after all for the most hotly contested City Council seat in years. On Sept. 13, Robert Sanders will face off against Marion Porterfield, who holds the seat but has had to fight off a wave of opponents from within her own party. Porterfield said she’s been surprised by the opposition, but not dismayed. “Life is what it is, and you just take it as it comes,” she said. She started campaigning door-to-door as soon as Sanders filed primary petitions, even though she hoped to prove his petitions were invalid. “Once he got the petitions filed, there was a primary, in my mind,” she said. “I don’t discount anybody.” Sanders had begun campaigning when his petitions were thrown out on a technicality last week. He took his case to state Supreme Court, however, and Judge Vincent Reilly officially forgave a minor pre-printed error on Tuesday. Sanders was exultant when Reilly announced that there would be a primary. “I’m back!” he said. Although he acknowledged that Porterfi eld has raised much more money than he has — and that he spent much of his funds on his court case — he said he could make it up in doorto-door campaigning.
    “I can walk forever, longer, harder and faster than any of them,” he said. “It’s not about Marion Porterfield. It’s about the political machine trying to keep people off the ballot so they can maneuver what they want. It’s a disgrace. I have to hire a really great attorney to make sure I have the right [to run].”
    Sanders is a ward leader in the Democratic City Committee, but he has criticized party bosses publicly in the past. Now, he said, he’s fed up.
    “The party bosses have done things and made decisions for the city of Schenectady for a long time,” he said, adding his belief that committee Chairman Richard Naylor isn’t leading the party in the right direction.
    “He’s really not taking into consideration the feelings of Schenectadians,” Sanders said.
    Sanders isn’t the only Democrat who is not hewing to the party line. In a show of division this spring, the Democratic City Committee struggled to decide whether Porterfield should be appointed to the seat after it was vacated by Mayor Gary McCarthy on Jan. 1.
    The committee eventually decided to support Porterfield, but some council members — who are also committee members — supported candidate John Mootooveren, who came just 39 votes shy of winning a seat last November.
    As both sides gathered support, the public furor between a Guyanese-American and an African-American grew so heated that the party said it would not choose between the two candidates. The two would have to face each other in a primary.
    Unexpectedly, Mootooveren withdrew to give Porterfi eld the seat. The council appointed her, but then Sanders stepped forward to contest her.
    Sanders gathered more than 700 valid signatures to force a primary. Party leaders questioned the signatures, and almost 200 were thrown out on technical grounds. They found an error in the pre-printed petition pages provided by the county Board of Elections.
    Some signatures on those pages were witnessed by a man who lives in Albany County, but he mistakenly did not cross out “Schenectady County” at the bottom of each page. However, he witnessed the petitions properly, and Reilly ruled that the signatures were given in good faith. ......................>>>>..................>>>>....................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00902&AppName=1

Quoted from GrahamBonnet

Wow, the dems really screwed him

There are no more bones to pick over. Now even a long time DEM committeeman is railing against the corrupt DEM machine. Let's see how popular McCheese's hand picked stooge Marion Poterfield is within the party. Things Done Changed. Even blue dog DEMS have had enough of McCheese's borrowing and give to friends policy.