State court declines to set new GOP congressional primary

Noah Manskar

A state Appellate Division court declined to schedule a new Republican primary in the 3rd Congressional District in a ruling Thursday.

A panel of three judges affirmed the state Supreme Court’s June 24 ruling that it was “impossible” to get Philip Pidot’s name on the June 28 primary ballot even though he has enough signatures from voters to run against state Sen. Jack Martins of Old Westbury.

Pidot’s lawyer only asked Supreme Court Judge Arthur Diamond to set a new primary date on the last day of hearings in that court, the Appellate Division ruling says. 

Two days earlier, “he was not asking the court to decide ‘whether an election is held or not’ but merely to determine ‘whether there’s valid petitions or not,’” the ruling says.

The court also rejected Martins’ request to declare Pidot’s petition invalid.

The decision ends one of Pidot’s two legal challenges to force a GOP primary in the North Shore congressional district. 

The state Board of Elections ruled in May that he lacked the 1,250 signatures required to make the ballot.

A federal judge in Syracuse is set to hear oral arguments on Aug. 17 in the separate lawsuit Pidot, a Glen Cove financial investigator, filed in Albany asking for a new primary against Martins later this summer.

The Appellate Division ruling “validat(ed)” Pidot’s candidacy, spokesman Jerry McKinstry said in a statement. “But as largely expected, the decision to assign a new primary date will only come from a federal court,” he added.

But E. O’Brien Murray, Martins’ campaign strategist, said no other ruling so far has documented the fact that Pidot did not originally ask for a new primary date in the Supreme Court.

“That is a knife through the heart. Pidot is Pi-done,” Murray said.

Martins, of Old Westbury, won the Republican Party’s endorsement in March for the congressional district stretching from Whitestone, Queens, to Kings Park in Suffolk County. 

But the Board of Elections will not certify him until September for the general election against Democrat Tom Suozzi.

Martins’ and Pidot’s campaigns have blamed each other for dragging out the legal process.

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