Bloomberg Opponents: He Won’t Appear on Independence Ballot
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Citing questions about the authenticity of some of the signatures collected for Mayor Bloomberg’s petition for the Independence Party line on the ballot, some of the mayor’s opponents yesterday said Mr. Bloomberg had not obtained enough valid signatures to survive a challenge.
To appear on the ballot in November’s election as the candidate of the Independence Party, Mr. Bloomberg must collect petitions from no fewer than 5% of the party’s registered voters in New York City. Mr. Bloomberg’s opponent for the Republican nomination, Thomas Ognibene, said yesterday that since the state and city boards of elections show around 97,000 registered Independence Party voters in the five boroughs of New York, Mr. Bloomberg would have needed 4,850 signatures to appear on the ballot. According to the chairwoman of the New York County Independence Party, Cathy Stewart, the party filed 4,839 signatures for the mayor.
Mr. Ognibene alleged that the mayor – with whom the former City Council minority leader is engaged in an intense battle over ballot petitions for the Republican primary – has challenged Mr. Ognibene’s signatures with ferocity because he fears both being knocked off the Independence Party line as a result of insufficient signatures and losing the Republican nomination to Mr. Ognibene if a primary contest does take place. Those hypothetical twin defeats would deny him a spot on the ballot.
Ms. Stewart and a spokesman for the city board of elections, however, said Mr. Ognibene was mistaken and the 5% threshold is based on the number of active voters in a party, of whom there are 79,376. Mr. Bloomberg, Ms. Stewart said, therefore has a cushion of around 900 signatures.
