Lawsuit threatens to upend this CT city’s primary contest as Democrats fight for party leadership
A lawsuit filed in Hartford Superior Court threatens to upend a primary contest in a city where Democrats are vying for party leadership.
Hartford’s Democratic 7th Assembly District, which encompasses the city’s Blue Hills neighborhood, is being contested with 26 candidates including 12 petitioning candidates on the ballot.
Voters will choose up to 14 candidates to be elected in the district and join Hartford’s Democratic Town Committee. The primary is scheduled for March 5.
But a lawsuit is challenging whether the primary can even take place after allegations of an invalid signature.
According to the complaint, among three petition sheets circulated by Ashley Thomas, one of the petitioning candidates, was a signature that was allegedly improperly obtained. Clement Nurse, a Hartford resident whose signature appears on the sheet, denied signing the document in an affidavit submitted to the court on Feb. 5.
The affidavit signed by Nurse alleges he did not sign the petition and did not recognize his signature as valid. Further, the affidavit alleges that Nurse had no previous contact or conversation with the signed circulator of the petition. According to Connecticut general statute 9-410, each person whose name appears on a petitioning sheet must sign as the same person in the presence of the circulator.
In order to appear on the ballot, petitioning candidates need 375 signatures. The petitioning slate received 382 signatures in order to qualify, according to Hartford Registrar of Voters Giselle “Gigi” Feliciano. Each sheet Thomas submitted contained 20 signatures.
But if the signature is deemed invalid, the 19 other signatures on the sheet will also be disqualified, according to John Kennelly, the attorney representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
“That page was certified to have 20 valid signatures,” Kennelly said. “You have one person, Ashley Thomas, who certified that she collected all the signatures on the front page and that all of those signatures were collected in her presence. But you have an individual saying on the record ‘I never signed this.’ According to general statute, if one signature is tossed out, the entire sheet is as well.”
The plaintiffs listed in the case include DTC members Phyllis Airey, Ayesha Clarke, Amir Rasheed Johnson, DyShawn Thames, Ewan Sheriff, Michelle Whatley, Donna Thompson-Daniel, Andrew Rodney, Yvette Mosely, Raymond Dolphin, Cambar Edwards, Francisca Nugent, Charmaine Anderson, and John Davis.
The defendants, listed as Hartford Registrar of Voters Feliciano and Hartford City Clerk Noel McGregor, both declined to comment on the case. Hartford attorney John Kardaras has been called in to represent Feliciano and McGregor along with the city’s corporation counsel.
In a similar case brought in Hartford’s 6th District in 2018, Arciniega v. Feliciano, the state’s superior court ruled that all signatures on petition sheets had to be rejected finding that “six petition pages were circulated in violation of the provisions of General Statute 9-410, each should be rejected.”
The Courant was unable to reach Ashley Thomas for comment.
Stephen Underwood can be reached at sunderwood@courant.com
