ALBANY, N.Y. (WWNY/WCAX) – The Democrat challenging Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik for one of the North Country’s seats in Congress has apparently survived a challenge from Stefanik’s supporters, our sister station WWNY reported on Tuesday.
Paula Collins says officials with the state Board of Elections reviewed her nominating petitions and concluded she has 1,483 valid signatures, more than enough to qualify for November’s election. For candidates to get on the ballot, they must collect a certain number of signatures and submit the petitions to the Board of Elections. How many signatures varies from party to party and depends on what office is being sought.
“I’m pleased to say we prevailed,” Collins told our sister station, 7 News, on Tuesday.
Collins said the Board of Elections is expected to formally certify the petitions as valid on Wednesday.
Petition challenges are a routine part of political campaigns. Two supporters of Stefanik, a five-term incumbent, filed various objections to Collins’s nominating petitions. The objections were, as is typical with petition challenges, somewhat technical, for instance, questioning whether the address listed by a Democrat who witnessed the signing of a petition matched his actual, real address.
Collins “submitted hundreds of unlawful signatures in her desperate attempt to barely qualify for the ballot,” Alex DeGrasse, a senior advisor to Stefanik said in an emailed statement. “Election integrity of NY21 voters is of the utmost importance and that includes lawful signatures.”
Collins, in turn, has filed a complaint with the state Board of Elections, alleging the people who challenged her petitions “knowingly, intentionally, recklessly, and negligently, filed Specific Objections.”
“They are required to at least attempt an investigation… I don’t know how far-reaching that investigation will be,” Collins said.
“The aggressive maneuvers to invalidate signatures or sworn affidavits by well-known area Democrats can only be understood as a last-ditch effort by Stefanik supporters to deprive the voters of NY-21 of real choice,” Collins said in a statement.
Collins is the only challenger to Stefanik, so far, to file petitions. Assuming she officially qualifies, DeGrasse said, “Congresswoman Stefanik looks forward to defeating her resoundingly by an even larger margin than her previous opponents.”
The Watertown Times described Collins as “a cannabis attorney from New York City who has property in Rensselaer County and rents an apartment in Canton, St. Lawrence County,”
NY-21 is a sprawling congressional district stretching across Northern New York that includes almost all of the communities in the North Country, including those in our region in Clinton, Essex and Franklin counties.
Collins said she also has enough valid signatures to secure the “Working Families Party” line on November’s ballot.