Party That Runs Local Candidates Sues To Stay On New York Ballot

The SAM Party of New York, which supported more than 100 candidates in November all running for local and regional offices, has sued New York's political power brokers. That's because a new state election rule kicks them off the ballot.

It's a new law requiring all of New York State’s political parties to run a presidential candidate this year and receive 2 percent of the total vote or 130,000 votes, whichever is greater, in order to maintain their state-wide ballot line.

Under the old rules, to qualify for automatic ballot access in New York State, a party must have received at least 50,000 votes in the prior gubernatorial election.

SAM-NY did just that. In the 2018 gubernatorial election, SAM earned a ballot line for four years by getting more than 50,000 votes for governor. In 2019, SAM ran more than 100 candidates, and 51 of those candidates won their elections to offices in 21 counties across New York State.

That success in earning ballot access and winning elections demonstrates SAM's appeal to New York voters as an alternative choice to the Democratic and Republican parties, its leaders say — and that's the reason they're being squelched.

"Everything about this effort to suppress political competition, including how it was enacted, represent show the current two-party system wields its power to rig the system in its favor," Michael Volpe of Pelham, the SAM Party of New York’s Chairman, and SAM’s candidate for Lieutenant Governor in 2018, said in a press release.

The new presidential-vote requirement was imposed without review or a vote in the legislature, he said. It denies SAM its previously-earned ability to build a new political party from the ground up focused solely on New York and not beholden to partisan power brokers.

Short for the Serve America Movement, SAM seeks candidates and elected officials to serve the needs of their constituents and not be controlled by inflexible left/right political positions that are increasingly partisan, he said. SAM-NY is the newest political party in New York State.

In the suit, filed Tuesday in federal court in the Southern District of New York, SAM sued Gov. Andrew Cuomo, leaders of the New York Legislature, and the leaders of the New York State Board of Elections.

"Requiring the SAM Party of New York to nominate a candidate for President or lose ‘party’ status imposes a severe burden" on SAM and its members, the complaint alleges. "In imposing that requirement, the Commission’s recommendations, now law, violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments."

SAM’s lawsuit seeks to bar enforcement of that requirement against SAM and to ensure that SAM is not removed from the ballot or stripped of its “party” status if it does not run a 2020 presidential candidate.

"We’ll fight this effort by Governor Cuomo and his handpicked Commission with everything we have," said Volpe, who as a former Pelham mayor knows local candidacy. "It threatens the very existence of challenges to the status quo and efforts to better represent the interests of all New Yorkers. It’s undemocratic, unconstitutional, unfair and has been cooked up solely to serve the interests of those who control our broken political system."