MARIETTA: I NEVER HAD A CHANCE

Election Board Employee

Filed On Walker’s Behalf

By JIM KEVLIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

COOPERSTOWN – Republican Tim Walker never filed for the “I Love Otsego” independent ballot line, according to the Democratic incumbent, Andrew Marietta.

“It was a Republican board of elections employee who brought them in and filed them,” he said in a text following yesterday’s state Supreme Court hearing on the matter.  “The employee had access to the building far before anyone else, so there was never any way I was going to beat them for ‘I Love Otsego’.”

Walker is challenging Marietta in the county board’s District 8, which includes the Town of Otsego and most of the Village of Cooperstown.

Marietta said he hoped that the issue would have surfaced during the hearing in Cooperstown before Supreme Court Judge Eugene D. Faughnan of Binghamton, but the judge focused his questions to the Democratic Party lawyer, Dennis Laughlin, on precedents that would apply to this case.

Asked of this was a routine way of doing business, Lori Lehenbauer, the Republican elections commissioner, said she didn’t know.  Before discussing the matter further, she said, she would seek the advice of “Ellen,” presumably County Attorney Ellen Coccoma, (who has not yet returned a call to her office.)

Lehenbauer then called in her Democratic counterpart, Mike Henrici, to the phone.  He said what happened with the Walker petitions is “not standard practice.”  However, he added, “Everybody here is a registered voter and can turn in petitions.”

The afternoon of Tuesday, Aug. 15 – the first day petitions could be filed for independent lines on the Nov. 7 ballot – Marietta filed his petition for the “I Love Otsego” line that he had used when he first ran in 2015, only to discover Walker had already claimed it, as well as the same symbol.

Walker’s petition was stamped 9:01 a.m.

Marietta had also used “I Love Otsego” to identify his Facebook page and website, so he took legal action to reclaim use of the words.   Judge Faughan said yesterday he expects to have a ruling Monday, but his questioning of Laughlin didn’t reflect much sympathy for the challenge.

At the time, Walker said, “I don’t believe that one person should have sole claim to loving Otsego.”

But Richard Sternberg of Cooperstown, who put together the Democratic county-board slate on behalf of the county committee, said, “It shows immaturity and the willingness to make the election a mockery, some sort of game.”

Today, county Republican Chairman Vince Casale echoed Henrici in saying: the Board of Elections’ employee “submitted the petitions as an individual citizen, as she was allowed to do.”  He said the person went in early that day and “was not on the clock” when she submitted the petitions at 9:01.

“Mr. Marietta is completely wrong that he was at a disadvantage,” Casale continued.  As a county representative, “he has a pass that allows him to enter any building at any time without going through security,” an advantage that Walker did not have.