Staten Island GOP chairman John Friscia said that he expects challenges of Democratic Judge Judy McMahon’s nomination in this year’s state Supreme Court race to be withdrawn shortly.

“We will have this open-seat race on Staten Island,” Friscia said. “We’ll let the voters of Staten Island decide.”

Objections had been filed with the city Board of Elections (BOE), seeking to nullify Ms. McMahon’s Democratic, Conservative and Working Families parties nominations for the race.

Objectors said that Democratic delegates who served at the party’s recent nominating convention were invalid because they ran in the now-defunct 2nd Judicial District, and not in the new, Island-only, 13th Judicial District.

But Democrats and others believe that a judge’s decision that the court race would be held in the 13th J.D. effectively made that question moot. Others, though, said that the Democrats should have safeguarded themselves the way Republicans did by filing delegates slates in the 13th and 2nd districts.

The objectors also pointed out that Island Democrats held their judicial-nominating convention in Brooklyn, but a BOE source said the objectors did not cite any election law to indicate that there was anything improper about that.

Any registered voter who lives in the district can file objections to nominations, but objections are usually engineered by the opposing major party.

Republicans, meanwhile, have also petitioned the BOE to put this year’s race for Congress higher on the Nov. 4 ballot, which would move the state Supreme Court slot to a lower position.

State Supreme Court elections were traditionally placed above the congressional seat on the borough ballot when Island shared the 2nd J.D. with Brooklyn.

But because the 13th J.D. now contains fewer voters than the Island/Brooklyn 13th Congressional District, Republicans think the congressional race should be higher on the ballot.

That would benefit Republicans, observers said, in that it would place their congressional candidate, Robert Straniere, directly under the presidential and vice presidential nominees on the ballot. Republicans covet that spot because GOP presidential candidate John McCain is expected to do very well on the Island.

Friscia said that he wasn’t involved in the ballot-change question, and said that as far as he knew, established practice would be followed, i.e., that the judicial race will appear above the congressional battle on the ballot.

“We looked into it,” he said. “But it’s always been done this way.”

BOE commissioners and others are set to have a conference call about the arrangement of the ballot on Tuesday.

If the McMahon nomination challenges are not withdrawn, commissioners will hold a hearing on that question at BOE headquarters in Lower Manhattan on Friday.

Source: SiLive