Elections board tosses problem signatures
A Cortlandt Manor woman who hoped to force a primary vote against Assembly Member Dana Levenberg, a Democrat whose district includes Philipstown, fell short this week after the state Board of Elections threw out many of the signatures on her nominating petition.
Sandy Galef, who held the seat in the Assembly for 30 years before retiring in 2022, and former Westchester County lawmaker Catherine Borgia filed a challenge with the state Board of Elections on April 5 to petitions submitted by Amanda Victoria Mintz, who had hoped to challenge the incumbent on June 25 for the Democratic ballot line. Levenberg is seeking a second, 2-year term.
Galef and Borgia objected to 515 of the 655 signatures submitted by Victoria Mintz, who needed 500 to force a primary.
Last week, joined by Levenberg, they filed a lawsuit in Westchester County Supreme Court, saying they wanted to preserve the right to challenge the petitions if the Board of Elections ruled in Victoria Mintz’s favor.
Attorney Robert Spolzino told Judge Charles Wood that the Board of Elections had scuttled the petitions by invalidating 150 signatories because they are not registered to vote or not enrolled as Democrats, and 23 because they live outside the 95th District.
The board found another 49 signatures invalid because of changes that had not been initialed by the signatories and one case in which a voter witnessed their own signature, Spolzino told Wood in a letter on Tuesday (April 23).
Spolzino said that statements this week by Victoria Mintz’s attorney indicated she will not “oppose the relief requested in this proceeding.” By Thursday (April 25), Victoria Mintz’s campaign website identified her as a “former official Democratic Party candidate.” On Monday, in letter to the court, Victoria Mintz said the BOE “recommended” at a hearing on Friday (April 26) that the petitions be invalidated at meeting this week, and that she was “conceding in advance.”
“I had assured my signees that their voices would be represented when they nobly signed to put me forth as their chosen representative and am embarrassed to report to them that they were invalidated because of this,” Victoria Mintz wrote.
On her website, Victoria Mintz says she is a “social entrepreneur” who co-founded a canned-beverage company called Siponey Spritz. She filed to run on March 27.
A 2003 Carmel High School graduate, Victoria Mintz said she is “Latina, I have a Jewish family, and am disabled (bilaterally hearing-impaired), which is largely my motivation to represent the diverse voices and needs of our growing local population.”
She does not detail why she challenged Levenberg but, in an April 18 news release called the lawsuit a “disgraceful use of taxpayer dollars, donations and endorsements. We deserve a fair race.”
Levenberg is a former chief of staff for Galef. In 2022, she defeated Republican Stacy Halper in the general election with 59 percent of the vote.
In the lawsuit, Levenberg, Galef and Borgia raised the same issues identified by the Board of Elections, as well as claiming some dates and signatures appeared to be altered, some people signed the petitions more than once and some addresses were “missing, incomplete or erroneous.”
Victoria Mintz, through an attorney, claimed that the state’s requirement that petition signers include their town along with their municipality was unconstitutional under a federal ruling concerning the presidential campaign in 2000.
The validity of signatures on nominating petitions can be serious business. A member of the Peekskill Common Council was accused this month of falsifying documents after the Westchester County Board of Elections threw out 217 of the 531 signatures he submitted on his nominating petition for a county Legislature seat.
District Attorney Miriam Rocah told the Peekskill Herald that Rob Scott was charged with a felony count for allegedly filing petitions with forged signatures for the June 2023 Democratic primary. He will be arraigned on Tuesday (April 30).
Other than Victoria Mintz, one other candidate filed to run against Levenberg for her 95th District seat in the state Assembly: Michael Capalbo, a Republican from Yorktown Heights who registered on Feb. 26 and filed a “no activity” campaign finance report on March 13.
An online search did not return any results for a campaign website or information about Capalbo’s background or positions, but in 2022 The Journal News reported that, before Capalbo ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Yorktown school board, he told the superintendent that he considered diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to be “Marxist indoctrination.”
This article above that you’ve run seemingly as a favor to my opponent omits the largest issue of why my petitions are currently being considered for invalidation: Hundreds of signees wrote Croton-on-Hudson, Montrose, Verplank, Cortlandt Manor or Cold Spring Town instead of Town of Cortlandt. This highlights an unconstitutional issue of town versus village designations, and an archaic process that doesn’t honor our evolving language or the will of the people and disenfranchises voters in our communities.
You’ve somehow completely missed that factual evidence from the court proceedings and have painted a biased story to your readers to benefit my opponent. This feels shameful for the credibility of your paper I respected very much. Are you in the business of tearing down people like me in the community? This reads like it.
Lastly, this proceeding has no determination or outcome yet, as it is still in the Board of Election’s hands, as well as the state Supreme Court’s, to rule on. You have preemptively stated a ruling which will now likely cause some trouble for your friends Sandra and Catherine.
This all falls short of journalism and reads more like propaganda. You also do not have permission to use my photograph, but if you could update this article to be more fairly reported, I would be happy to let you use it. I grew up 5 miles from your headquarters, I really expected better unbiased reporting from my local paper.
Readers, take note. This is deep-state propaganda.
The Current? Favors candidates? Can’t be. Or could it?
The casual use of the phrase “deep-state propaganda” should be enough to disqualify anyone from running in a Democratic Party primary.