Earlier this summer, four local Republicans announced their candidacy for the 4th Congressional District (C.D.). Now, with the deadline for signed petitions come and gone, Republican Daniel Frisa of Salisbury is challenging the nominating petitions submitted by opponents Alan Skorski of West Hempstead and Marilyn O'Grady and Steve Irace of Garden City.

As a result, Skorski has withdrawn from the race while O'Grady and Irace may be eliminated from the ballot set to go before voters at a Sept. 10 primary. However, O'Grady and Irace are challenging Frisa's tactics in court to keep their names on the ballot. If the courts side with Frisa, what would have been a four-way primary for the GOP this September will turn it into an uncontested one. At the same time, Frisa has also bumped Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola), the current congresswoman for the 4th C.D., from the Liberal Party line. (See story on page 1.)

In order for one's name to appear on a congressional primary ballot, a candidate must secure at least 1,250 signatures of registered Republicans within the district's boundaries. "Moreover, these petitions must have been circulated by registered Republicans who reside in the 4th C.D., unless the petition gatherer was a notary public," Mike Barry wrote in his Aug. 22 column for Anton Community Newspapers.

In the case of the 4th C.D., Frisa secured some 1,600 plus signatures while O'Grady, Irace and Skorski also exceeded the signature requirement mark of 1,250 names.

Once filed with the Board of Elections (BOE), the petitions become public document. A closer look at the petitions by Frisa's attorney, Steven Leventhal, however, found that although Skorski, O'Grady and Irace secured more than the required number of signatures, not all of them were valid because some signers were not registered Republicans within the 4th C.D.

"Recognizing that his opponents left themselves little margin for error and in keeping with a dubious New York political tradition, Frisa retained an election law attorney to identify irregularities in his opponents' petitions," wrote Barry.

In order to sign a petition for a party candidate, one must be a registered voter of the party and district the candidate is seeking to represent. In this particular case, the signature of a non-Republican registered voter who lives within the 4th C.D. or the signature of a Republican voter who does not live within the 4th C.D. would not count toward the required number of signatures on a Republican petition. As a result, one invalid signature on a page caused the entire page to be rejected. In addition, alterations to one item on a page or failure to comply with BOE guidelines also made an entire page null and void.

As Irace, a former Nassau County Assistant District Attorney, and his family reviewed the signatures on his petition, 16 names appeared per page and on some sheets there were signatures from people who lived outside of the 4th C.D. Citing an example, Irace said an Island Park resident signed the petition and therefore had to be eliminated.

"I [originally] had 1,907 signatures and I only needed 1,250," he said. "The BOE reviewed my signatures and placed my name on the ballot. Frisa then sues, goes to court where a judge assigns the case to a non-judge referee who knows absolutely nothing about election law."

Irace added, "I thought removing signatures I knew were bad was the right thing to do and in doing so, change the number on the witness line. As a result, we clearly overwrote the number 16 with the number 15 on the witness line. Well, there are rules that if you make an alteration on the witness line, the whole page of signatures is bad. It's hard to believe that the law would state that such honest work could be construed and treated that way, but in fact it was. [After] a line-by-line court review of every signature I had, numerous whole pages were lost. My signatures went down below 1,250."

Irace said that after meeting with the referee and an array of lawyers, some of whom came from Albany and claim to be election experts, they began pulling rules out of a hat. This review went on from 10 in the morning until 9:30 at night. In an effort to move the situation along, Irace agreed to discontinue the line-by-line challenge of his petitions and will instead join O'Grady in what he believes to be a very strong issue based on a defect in the way Frisa brought about his legal proceeding.

"Frisa challenged everybody, including McCarthy, in an attempt to win in court what he apparently felt he couldn't win legitimately in the voting booth," he said. "All of the other candidates disregarded these tactics or chose not to use them, particularly in light of the Bush-Gore election. We really felt the public didn't want to see election contests resolved this way so none of us looked at each other's petitions."

Ballot fighting is not limited to local races. "During the last New York GOP presidential primary, the Bush campaign sought to keep McCain delegates off the ballot statewide, sending process servers to some of our doors to make their point," Barry also wrote. "Like the would-be congressional candidates, the McCain delegates became defendants in a legal proceeding on the grounds that we had filed allegedly fraudulent petitions ... [In the end] a federal judge placed the Arizona senator's name - and those of his delegates - on the ballot statewide ..."

O'Grady, an ophthalmologist currently serving on the medical staff at Winthrop-University Hospital, the Long Island Surgicenter and the Nassau County Medical Center, has vowed to continue her race for the congressional seat despite Frisa's attempts to remove her name from the Republican and Conservative primary tickets. To prove her determination, O'Grady opened her headquarters at 66 New Hyde Park Road in Garden City on Aug. 21.

"If Dan Frisa thinks he can take away the right of Republican and Conservative voters to pick their candidate, he is sadly mistaken," she said. "I vow to continue my race with a write-in campaign and if Mr. Frisa doesn't want to win the September primary fairly I will give him a primary on November 6. I intend to fight for every single Republican and Conservative vote on November 6."

O'Grady, who ended up being only five signatures short on the Republican ticket and seven signatures short on the Conservative ticket, also had 24 signatures that also appeared on Irace's petition. "That's fatal so we had to get rid of those and I understand that," she said. "Everything else was technical. There was no evidence of fraud, no shenanigans, no making up names, no bogus witnesses, no nothing. It's really an outrage because it's all just honest, silly errors."

O'Grady also said, "Dan Frisa has thumbed his nose at the Republican and Conservative voters as well as the parties who publicly called for a primary to allow the voters to pick their candidates. I respected both parties' wishes and did not challenge Mr. Frisa but he challenged me. Mr. Frisa is obviously afraid to let the voters decide, but I am not. He knows his reputation is in tatters from his AWOL (Absent Without Leave)

campaign in 1996, so his only chance at winning was to eliminate the primary on September 10. Well, guess what Dan? It's not going to work."

Both Irace and O'Grady were slated to present oral arguments against Frisa's tactics during a hearing in the Appellate Court on Aug. 27. The Garden City Life went to print prior to the hearing and did not have knowledge of the decision at press time.

Skorski, the owner of a snack food wholesale distribution business who was seeking the Republican, Conservative, Right to Life and Independence party lines and was even going to try the Green line, has withdrawn from the race.

"I didn't get the sense that my lawyer wanted me to go through with this so I took his advice and said I'll go out like a gentleman, protect my friends and do it next time with much more knowledge," said Skorski. "What hurts so much is that I've given so much to this. I've been doing this for almost a year and a half, I made tremendous sacrifices - personal, family, financial - and I made so many new friends and so many new supporters I felt like I am letting so many people down."

Skorski, who had collected 1,333 signatures, said that if he had known Frisa was going to challenge the petitions he would have collected close to 1,500 or 1,600 signatures. "I pulled people off my Republican line to get more Conservative signatures in the knowledge that we weren't going to get challenged," he said. "We collected enough signatures, these were all primarily technicalities that we as novices just didn't catch. You could call these amateur mistakes and anyone who wants to call me a name for being naive, I'll accept that. We learned a very valuable lesson and as a few leaders told me, 'Welcome to politics.'"

Skorski added that in challenging his, O'Grady's and Irace's petitions, Frisa lied to each of them. "There had been two agreements made," he said. "One of them was a gentleman's agreement between the four of us that there would be no petition challenges. That was the first time he stabbed us in the back. The worst part was that he called my election law lawyer and said he wasn't going to challenge my petitions and that he expected me to not challenge his. My lawyer accepted that deal on my behalf, which of course I was never going to do anyhow. So this is like a double stab in the back ... It hurts to be so betrayed because we were all looking forward to this primary. It was very underhanded and typical Dan Frisa."

Of Skorski's decision, Irace said, "I was sad to see Alan [Skorski] go. I wanted to beat him in the polls, not beat him this way."

In response to O'Grady's and Irace's appeal, Frisa said, "It doesn't appear that their claims have much validity, but that is their right ..."

Frisa, a former state Assemblyman and member of the House who lost his seat to McCarthy in 1996, added that anyone who goes back and looks over his petitions would not find any problems. "There are absolutely none," he said. "The proof is that no one challenged me. The board [of elections] approved them."

Frisa said the rules for a valid petition are simple. "Everyone has to get a certain number of signatures, the person signing has to live in the district, they have to be a registered Republican and they have to sign their name and date," he said. "It is that straight-forward. It takes a lot of hard work to make sure that those simple requirements are fulfilled."

He added, "All of the other candidates should be credited for participating in the system and for being willing to take part in public service. I wish more people would."

Irace, who's been working on this case and the response to the case for more than a week, admits it's problematic but is confident a favorable decision will result. "This is just a shame really," he said. "It's difficult when an election, which should have been resolved in the polling place, is being presented in the back halls of the courthouse. This is problematic, but we're going to win."

Skorski added, "It's a pity because I think this is the first time in Nassau County history that we would've had a choice of fresh faces and some brand new people and it takes the fun away from it. Leaving Dan the candidacy is not what I think the voters are looking for. If he had won fairly and squarely in a debate I would have stood by him and helped him but the way things are now, unless the party leadership insists that I help him, I really don't know if I can give him the Skorski stamp of approval."