Gruber Will Not Appear on Independence Party Line
There will be no Independence Party candidate for a seat on the East Hampton Town Board in the Nov. 6 election, following a State Supreme Court judge's ruling on Friday that voided the party's nominating petitions for David Gruber.
Judge Carol MacKenzie agreed with the East Hampton Town Republican Committee, which had challenged the petitions, when she ruled on Friday that "many of the signatures were not personally signed by the persons whose names appear upon the said petitions, but their names were signed without their authority and without their knowledge." The nominating petitions, which had been gathered by Pat Mansir, the Independence Party's vice chairwoman, were "replete with fraudulent dates and forged signatures and/or initials of signatories and/or subscribing witnesses," the judge wrote.
After Judge MacKenzie invalidated multiple signatures, Mr. Gruber, who will face Councilman David Lys in a Democratic Party primary on Sept. 13, was left short of the required number to appear on the ballot. "I'm disappointed," he said on Monday. "Had it been handled properly, I'm sure that I would be on the ballot. I'm sorry that it wasn't something I was in a position to organize myself. . . . I certainly didn't have any reason to think matters would go awry, but that's what happened. An opportunity is missed."
Judge MacKenzie compared voters' signatures on the nominating petitions to those on file at the Suffolk County Board of Elections, said Amos Goodman, the Republican Committee's chairman. One after another was invalidated, he said, until the total was below the minimum required to certify Mr. Gruber's nomination. "The judge granted our motion to invalidate the petitions," he said on Monday. "We didn't push for a formal finding of fraud. . . . It's time to move on.
Elaine Jones, chairwoman of the East Hampton Independence Party, is not ready to move on, however. She acknowledged defeat on Friday, but reiterated her assertion that in fact the Republican Party's nominating petitions for its candidate, Manny Vilar, are riddled with fraudulent signatures. She has repeatedly accused Mr. Goodman of submitting forged signatures, and although the deadline to file a complaint with the Board of Elections has passed, the issue is not over, she said. "All I know is that Amos Goodman has forged signatures, and I'm going to the [district attorney]," she said. "I'm going to get affidavits from the people who said they didn't sign Manny's petitions, and go to the D.A."
The Republicans' challenge cane after their unsuccessful effort to force a primary election giving Mr. Vilar an opportunity to appear on the Independence Party line. The quarrel between the parties precedes that skirmish: Last year, Mr. Vilar, then a candidate for supervisor, and his running mates, Gerard Larsen and Paul Giardina, sought but did not receive the Independence Party's nomination for supervisor and councilmen. Later, a state appellate court overturned an earlier decision, disallowing Mr. Larsen's plan to run in an Independence Party primary over a minor flaw in the wording of his petitions.
Mr. Goodman, who took over the committee's chairmanship from Reg Cornelia following Republicans' poor showing in elections last year, had vowed a more aggressive stance. "I believe that we have to do things differently as a Republican Party if we're going to have different results," he told The Star last month. "Part of that is applying strict scrutiny the way it applies to us. So when you see Jerry Larsen bounced off" the 2017 Independence Party primary bid, "you're damn right I'm going to look at the petitions."
He adopted a more conciliatory tone on Monday. "We just wanted the lines cleared and the integrity of the process upheld," he said. "We can put this behind us. There's some relationship mopping up I will have to do with members of the Independence Party. But this is not something we wanted to do." Members of the Independence Party "should have had a democratic choice in terms of who their candidate would be," he said.