Rep. Mike Lawler is waging a court fight to disqualify one of the Democrats seeking to run against him, arguing her ballot petition had forged signatures and other flaws that render it invalid.
His case against Effie Phillips-Staley is playing out in state Supreme Court in Rockland County, where attorneys for the two campaigns argued before acting Justice David Fried and questioned witnesses on Wednesday, April 22.
Phillips-Staley, a Tarrytown village trustee and former nonprofit leader, is one of five Democrats running in a June 23 primary to take on the Republican incumbent in New York’s 17th Congressional District. Lawler is seeking a third term in what is seen as a highly competitive race that will help decide control of the closely divided House.
In its court papers, Lawler’s campaign filed sworn statements from 30 voters whose signatures were on Phillips-Staley’s petition but deny signing it. The lawsuit identifies six campaign workers who each collected one or more of those names, and is seeking to invalidate all of the hundreds of signatures they gathered as potentially fraudulent.
Phillips-Staley’s campaign denies the fraud claims and the idea that they could disqualify the petition if they were true. It said her petition would still have more than enough names to meet the 1,250-signature minimum, even if every page collected by the six workers accused of fraud were discarded.
Lawler alleges Phillip-Staley acknowledged potential signature issue
Lawler went after Phillip-Staley on social media for that argument, saying her campaign was effectively “acknowledging that your petitions contain hundreds of fraudulent signatures.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself for defrauding the voters in the Democrat primary and across NY17,” Lawler wrote on X on Wednesday, April 22.
His initial court filing posed a broader set of objections beyond the fraud claims, saying they together would cut the petition’s roughly 2,900 signatures to 616 valid ones — too few to qualify for the ballot.
“Lawler is desperate to stop Effie’s momentum, but all he’s doing is disenfranchising Democratic voters and subverting Democracy,” John Tomlin, Phillip-Staley’s campaign manager said in response to the case. “This phony challenge is an effort to distract voters from how much he licks Trump’s boots. He’s pathetic.”
Phillips-Staley has staked out a progressive lane in the crowded field of prospective Lawler challengers. As rivals Cait Conley and Beth Davidson have raised far more and won support from local Democratic leaders, Phillips-Staley has claimed endorsements from the left and taken the most critical stance toward Israel among the candidates.
She has been endorsed by the progressive Working Families Party and petitioned to run on its ballot line, in addition to her Democratic petition. Lawler’s campaign has challenged her Working Families petition as well with a similar volley of objections.
The cast of Democrats running in the 17th District totaled eight at its peak but has shrunk to five. If Phillips-Staley’s petition withstands the court challenge, she will compete for the nomination on June 23 with Davidson, Conley, Mike Sacks and John Cappello.
The winner will vie this fall against Lawler, a second-term Republican from Rockland County. The 17th District takes in all of Rockland and Putnam counties, half of Westchester and a slice of Dutchess County.
Chris McKenna covers government and politics for The Journal News and USA TODAY Network. Reach him at CMcKenna@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Rep. Lawler claims one rival’s campaign petition features forged names
Reporting by Chris McKenna, New York State Team / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
