: Petitioning For Support: Political Hopefuls Take To The Streets, Collecting Signatures To Get On This Fall’s Ballot

The sun was lazily retreating on a mild Thursday afternoon and dressed in a dark suit with petition in hand, Donovan Richards crisscrossed 144th Avenue in Springfield Gardens.

With this petition, Richards announced his candidacy for the 31st Assembly District.

Richards wasn’t flanked by a legion of foot soldiers.

“I’ll take the right side and you can take the left,” he told his volunteer, Jamal Wilkerson.

Although Wilkerson has only known Richards for a year, he sees potential.

“He is not just a politician,” Wilkerson said. “He is a real person, who knows what the community needs. He shows dedication and commitment.”

Richard’s introduction to his potential voters is simple. “Are you registered to vote?” Regardless of the answer he follows with, “What can I do to make Springfield Gardens better?”

For Oliver Bab, the answer is simple as getting people to park in their driveways.

“The parking is ridiculous,” he said. “You don’t mind people live in your neighborhood, you just want them to care.”

Paul St. Lewis a block away wanted the city to trim the tree branches that is encroaching on his property.

A small block of neighbors wanted the city to clean up the yard of an abandoned property, with overgrown grass and cemented windows.

Richards said he wrestled with the decision to go up against the incumbent Assemblywoman Michele Titus.

“One of the complaints against my opponent is that she isn’t out there,” he said. “For a long time we haven’t had a voice in my district.”

“Michele Titus has done nothing. She is not visible,” Larry Moore, a community activist, said to drive Richard’s point home.

He accused the assemblywoman of being available for “photo ops.”

“She is not there when we are dealing with kids in the community and she is not there when we are dealing with foreclosure.”

A call to Titus was not returned by press time.

Petition Process
The State Assembly seats, many State Senate Seats and dozens of District Leader positions are up for election this year in Queens .

According to the New York State Board of Elections, candidates vying for political position this November may be nominated either by a political party or through the filing of an independent nominating petition.

The petition process began June 3 and will end July 22.

According to Bon Breahm, spokesman for New York State Board of Elections, candidates need to accrue 5 percent of the registered active party voters in the district or 500 for the assembly and 1,000 signatures for the senate.

Breahm said for a person to be eligible to sign a petition they have to live in the district, be enrolled in the party and be of voting age. He added that a person can sign more than one candidate’s petition, but the earliest signature is the only one that will be counted.

When adding his name to a petition a voter must only sign his name – other information does not have to be written by the voter.

According to the boards of elections Web site, “The voter need only sign the appropriate line on the petition sheet. All other information may be filled in by someone else.”

Breahm said fraud in petitions can be as simple as the witness statement being signed by someone who did not observe the voter’s signature, or as heinous as someone signing another person’s name. Anyone who is eligible to sign the petition can be a witness.

“The information required for the witness statement is mandatory,” the Web site states. Omissions, errors, and unexplained alterations or corrections, may invalidate the entire page, it said

The witness statement is an oath and subjects them to perjury if any information preceding their signature is false.

Hitting Jackson Heights
In the hotly contested race for the 13th Senate District seat, both candidates have begun to petition to get their name on the ballot for the Sept., 9 primary.
Sabini’s challenger, current City Councilman Hiram Monserrate, faces the incumbent in a second attempt to unseat him.

Since Monserrate and Sabini are both democrats, they will face off in the primary two months before the general election in November.

This time around, Sabini won’t have the the Queens County Democratic Club to help him collect signatures the party endorsed his opponent for a run to Albany.

Brian Krapf, spokesperson for Sen. Sabini, is not worried though.

“We would like to have the endorsement, but at the end of the day the people will decide,” Krapf said by telephone.

He expects to collect over a thousand signatures from residents as campaign volunteers go door to door and solicit support outside subway stations, libraries and other public places.

“That’s what we’re out doing, we expect to do well more than that,” Krapf said.

After the county democrats decided to back Monserrate, he lined up endorsements from powerful elected officials and unions, adding to Sabini’s challenge.

The Working Families Party, SEIU 1199 has already endorsed him, and just recently UNITE HERE and The New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council, AFL-CIO, a 27,000-member union, decided to support his run.

Meanwhile In Flushing
Petitioning in the 28th District is well-underway with Democrats Grace Meng and incumbent Ellen Young going after the assembly seat.

As of press time, both campaigns felt confident their candidate would be on the ballot.

“We’ll come in with many many more [signatures] than we’ll need,” spokesman for Meng’s campaign Michael Tobman said.

Joe Reubens, spokesman for Young’s campaign, said his office is far from lacking volunteers.

“Ellens for her entire life has been a real community activist,” Reubens said. “Along the way she has picked up friends and supporters from all walks of life.”

Meng, another community activist, picked up her own branch of supporters.

“At the risk of sounding hokey, people genuinely like Grace,” Tobman said. “They come in for a variety of reasons – change in politics in Queens and in Flushing. They want to take part in something. It’s a very political year. And then they meet her and for whatever reason they came in for they stay here. They wind up staying and participating because of how impressed they are by her.”

Petitioners may be very visible this summer as they target subway stations, super markets and shopping centers. But Meng, who ran against Young in 2006, will primarily cling to the sidelines.

“I do not like to have the candidate witness signatures,” Tobman said. “She’ll go door to door with someone, but it is not good politics or policy to have candidate witness their own signatures…They have a job and that’s to campaign and educate as many voters as possible on their pedigree, accomplishments and qualifications and that’s it.”

Reubens has a different perspective.

“Petitioning is a good time for an elected official to reconnect with voters in the district and keep them abreast of what she’s been doing,” Reubens said. “A lot of them know though because she’s such a hard worker.”

(Juliet Werner and Noah Zuss contributed to the reporting of this article)