Pidot throws wrench in Martins’ Congressional campaign

Noah Manskar

For months, state Sen. Jack Martins has been considered the chosen Republican candidate in the race to succeed Rep. Steve Israel, but a challenger, Philip Pidot, continues to put bumps in his path.

Federal District Judge Joseph Bianco on Wednesday allowed Pidot’s request to set a new date for a Republican primary in the Third Congressional District to move forward, scheduling oral arguments in the case for July 11, court records show.

While Martins is currently the Republican candidate under Nassau County Supreme Court Judge Arthur Diamond’s June 24 ruling, the state Board of Elections will not certify him for the Nov. 8 general election against the Democratic nominee, Tom Suozzi, until the issue is settled in court, said a Pidot spokesman, Bill O’Reilly.

“To us it seems like a very clear case of the right of voters to choose their candidate in their primary,” O’Reilly said.

The federal case extends a two-month court battle and continues Pidot’s effort to challenge Martins, a well-known and popular lawmaker whose congressional campaign is endorsed by the Republican, Conservative and Reform parties.

Pidot made his request Monday after Diamond’s ruling that it would be “impossible” to put his name on the ballot by Tuesday, primary day.

Martins’ campaign strategist E. O’Brien Murray said the Board of Elections would not certify Martins or Suozzi for the general election until September even if the case was not pending.

Pidot has called Martins, Mineola’s former mayor, a “machine” Republican whose campaign is trying to disenfranchise GOP voters by avoiding a primary for the congressional seat.

“It’s the arrogance of incumbency where you think the rules don’t apply to you,” O’Reilly said. “They don’t want a primary so they’ve been working to disappear it, disappear a primary, and they think they can get away with it because the political machine on Long Island always gets away with things.”

Murray said Pidot “sat on his hands” and admitted in court that he mistakenly delayed court proceedings to force a primary. He called Pidot a “perennial candidate” who is misleading voters.

“Jack Martins had to work for the nomination. This is sour grapes from someone who has been overwhelmingly rejected by the voters in his home and interviewed for the nomination,” Murray said in a statement Monday.

Pidot, a financial investigator and one-time Glen Cove City Council candidate, was once one of five Republicans seeking the party’s Third District nomination.

Three others dropped out after the Nassau, Suffolk and Queens GOP committees endorsed Martins in March, about two months after he launched his congressional campaign.

The state Board of Elections ruled May 4 that Pidot did not have the required 1,250 signatures to get on the primary ballot for the North Shore district stretching from Whitestone, Queens, to Kings Park in Suffolk County.

State Appellate Division judges ruled June 17 that Pidot has 1,261 valid signatures, meaning both he and Martins have valid petitions.

But after three days of hearings, Diamond agreed with the Board of Elections that there was not enough time to create new primary ballots before Tuesday.

The federal Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, or MOVE Act, also plays into the case. It requires states to send absentee ballots to members of the military stationed overseas at least 45 days before a federal election.

New Republican primary ballots would have to be mailed by mid-July for a vote by mid-September, Pidot’s court filing says.

Martins’ lawyers have argued neither state nor federal law would allow a second primary, and there is no precedent for holding one except in cases of fraud, which has not occurred here.

Murray said Pidot also did not defend his petition signatures before the Board of Elections in May despite having two extra days to do so.

O’Reilly said Martins’ lawyers dragged out the proceedings by delaying hearings.

Pidot challenged the Board of Elections’ rejection of his petition in Nassau County Supreme Court on May 6, but Judge Thomas Adams dismissed it May 11 because of procedural issues, court records show. Pidot asked Adams to reconsider May 19, records show, but the judge rejected the request.

Pidot appealed to the state Appellate Division June 13, which he could have done after Adams dismissed his challenge the first time.

But O’Reilly said he went back to Adams because the judge ruled the opposite way in a similar case when he was on the Appellate Division bench.

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