UES Incumbent Kicked Off Ballot Will Run As Independent: Report

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — An incumbent lawmaker who has represented the Upper East Side in the State Assembly since 2015 is planning to run for reelection as an independent after being removed from the Democratic and Working Families party lines by a state court, according to reports.

Rebecca Seawright is launching an effort to obtain ballots and run for her seat in New York's 76th State Assembly District — which spans Roosevelt Island and east of Third Avenue on the Upper East Side — in adherence with a recently-enacted executive order from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the New York Post first reported.

Cuomo initially passed an executive order barring independent candidates from running in this year's elections in an effort to discourage petitioning amid the spread of the novel coronavirus. The revamped petitioning rules included moving up deadlines for candidates to file signatures and gain access to party lines, which proved near-fatal for Seawright's campaign.

Seawright missed the new deadlines and was removed from the Democratic and Working Families party lines by a state court justice. The ruling was initially overturned by an appeals court but later upheld by New York's highest court in May.

The New York Court of Appeals ruled that Seawright's bout with "COVID symptoms" did not excuse her campaign from missing deadlines for documents such as a cover sheet and certificate of acceptance to get on the Democratic and Working Families party lines.

Independent balloting was reinstated in a June 30 executive order. Candidates must submit nominating petitions between July 27 and 30. Petition signatures collected before July 1 will not be allowed, which means Seawright will have to collect new signatures instead of re-submitting the ones she filed past deadline.

"We commend the issuance of the executive order that will permit the petition gathering process to proceed. As a lifetime Democrat, I have maintained all along that I intend to be on the ballot in November as the Democrat running on an independent line," Seawright told the New York Post.

Republican Louis Puliafito is also running to represent New York's 76th District. Puliafito lost to Seawright in a landslide 2018 election when he earned just 3.5 percent of the vote while running on the Reform Party line.

Seawright will not have to worry about splitting votes with a Democratic nominee in the general election. Nobody ran for the Democratic nomination in the state's June 23 primary.

Read the full New York Post article here.