CityAndStateNY.com
Out of options? Democrats may be stuck with former Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin on the June primary ballot. By Rebecca C. Lewis
April 18, 2022
G
OV. KATHY HOCHUL recently reaffirmed her commitment to Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin as her running mate in the wake of campaign finance scandals emerging around him, even saying she had “the utmost confidence” in her No. 2. Now, Benjamin has been arrested, and she’s likely stuck with him on the ballot. In the primary, gubernatorial candidates and lieutenant governor candidates run separately. In the general election, the winners of those two primaries join together on the same ticket. Thanks to New York’s rather archaic election laws, it’s difficult to get off the ballot once you have made it on – even if you don’t want to run anymore. Now that federal prosecutors have indicted Benjamin on bribery and corruption charges, Hochul and the state Democratic Party may want to get him off the ballot for the upcoming June Democratic primary. Their options, however, are extremely limited under the law. Assembly Member Amy Paulin plans to sponsor legislation that would allow a candidate accused of a crime before an election to be removed from the ballot and replaced, but it would have to be passed very quickly. In other cases, a new criminal conviction did not always mean that your name would come off the ballot, even if you wound up in prison. Election lawyer
Sarah Steiner used former Rep. Mario Biaggi as an example. “He was convicted of bribery by a jury, and they tried to get him off the ballot,” Steiner said of Biaggi’s 1988 conviction. “And the Board of Elections said ‘Nope sorry, he has to stay on the ballot, there’s no rule to remove him at this point.’” The best option then was to hope for a loss. In Benjamin’s case, a felony conviction related to his oath of office before June would remove him from the ballot thanks to slightly different rules for state legislators, though the likelihood of such a speedy trial is low. Generally speaking, the only way to get off the ballot is if someone dies, they move out of state or they get nominated for another position. MOVING OUT OF NEW YORK Moving out of state may seem like an easy enough solution, which has been floated by Democratic Party sources. And in a different situation, a candidate probably could swing a temporary change in residency. However, the likelihood of that happening now is incredibly low given Benjamin’s new indictment. “What makes you think that the court and the judge are going to say, ‘Sure you person we just indicted, we’ll let you move out of state?’” Steiner questioned. So that may not be an option for Hochul and the state Democratic Party to remove Benjamin from the primary.
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