Mount Pleasant pays GOP powerhouse attorney $1,375/hour in voting rights case defense

As the first case filed under the New York Voting Rights Law, a legal challenge to Mount Pleasant’s at-large voting system carries with it great hopes for the town’s growing Hispanic community.

It also brings with it the possibility of huge liabilities for Mount Pleasant taxpayers, following the Town Board’s decision to hire a former Republican National Committee chief counsel at $1,375 an hour to defend the status quo in one of the GOP’s remaining bastions in Westchester County.

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The rate charged by attorney Mark Braden is at least four times what private attorneys on retainer typically charge Hudson Valley municipalities. Braden’s associate at BakerHostetler will receive $875 an hour, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Law.

The town hired Braden, a Republican legal superstar with the chops to go the distance, in a proceeding that raises federal constitutional issues and could reach the U.S. Supreme Court. In his response to the complaint, Braden argued that the New York Voting Rights Law violated New York's Constitution, the equal protection of U.S. citizens under the 14th Amendment as well as the 15th Amendment’s bar to discrimination based on race.

“In a case like this, you have to hire somebody who is an expert,” said Mount Pleasant Supervisor Carl Fulgenzi. "The entire Town Board was in favor of it, and the town will be watching the cost of this very closely. We aren’t giving them carte blanche.”

The town’s decision to hire Braden comes as residents in the central Westchester town say it’s unfair for Sleepy Hollow Hispanics to bring the legal action before they’ve yet to run a candidate for the Town Board, which Republicans now control by a 5-0 margin.

Six weeks after the case was filed, it has yet to be assigned to a judge, said Robert Spolzino, attorney for Hispanic plaintiffs.

Voting rights cases are notoriously expensive, especially those that drag on for years as they wend their way up through the court system. Most recently, the voting rights case involving the East Ramapo School District cost $12 million in legal fees, with the district paying the costs for both the plaintiffs and the school district.

The Mount Pleasant case, which was brought by six Hispanic voters in Sleepy Hollow, alleges that the town needs to adopt a district-based or ranked-voting system so that the town’s Hispanic voters have an opportunity to elect one of their favored candidates.

Mount Pleasant, a town of about 45,000 residents, includes the hamlets of Thornwood, Hawthorne, Valhalla, Pocantico Hills, the villages of Sleepy Hollow and Pleasantville, as well as a portion of the village of Briarcliff Manor. Hispanics comprise about 19% of the town’s population.

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If the Sleepy Hollow plaintiffs prevail, the town will pay the legal fees of Braden's legal team as well as the costs incurred their attorneys from Abrams Fensterman in White Plains: Spolzino and Westchester County Legislator David Imamura, D-Irvington.

“The town is wasting our money,” said Sergio Serratta, one of plaintiffs and an executive committee member of the Hispanic Democrats of Westchester. “Most likely they are going to lose, and us taxpayers will end up paying both sides.”

The town, meanwhile, plans to file a claim with its insurance carrier to cover some of its legal costs.

The lawsuit was filed in early January, seven weeks after the Mount Pleasant Town Board held a public hearing on the issue, with most of those speaking in favor of keeping the at-large system.

Valhalla resident George Calvi said it was wrong for the Hispanics activist to file suit against the town before an Hispanic candidate even tried to win election to the board.

“If no effort has ever been made by the plaintiffs to be in a town-wide campaign, one cannot possibly be lodging complaints of disenfranchisement,” said Calvi, the former village manager of Ardsley. “There is no doubt in my mind that a person of Hispanic heritage, or any ethnic group for that matter, can get elected in an at-large system. But first he or she must try.”

Hispanics tend to lean Democratic in the U.S., and Democrats hold an edge in enrollments in Mount Pleasant. The five-person Town Board has three men and two women. All are white. All ran on the Republican and Conservative lines in a town where enrolled Democrats outnumber Republicans and Conservatives by 40% to 28%, with 27% of voters enrolled in no party, and 5% in minor parties.

The complaint states that Hispanics have been unable to break into the close-knit GOP establishment. No candidate of color for a town-wide seat has run since 2003.

Serratta, however, said the current at-large system favors the GOP establishment, with deep roots in what’s called the “unincorporated area,” outside of the villages of Pleasantville and Sleepy Hollow.

The white town's majority of white voters have denied Hispanics the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choosing, despite representing one-fifth of the town's population, the lawsuit states.

“There’s no motivation to run,” said Serratto, a landlord and stock trader who lives in Pleasantville. “If you think about running, you would be investing time and money for something that you know is impossible. Legally it’s possible, but reality tells you something different.”

The plaintiffs' claim rests on the concept of racially polarized voting, which occurs when there is a difference between the choice of candidates preferred by voters in a protected class, such as Hispanics, and the choice of candidates preferred by voters in the rest of the electorate.

“The white vote overwhelms the Hispanic vote,” said Spolzino. “That’s the problem: the political process is controlled by the white Republicans of Mount Pleasant, and when it’s obvious you can’t elect somebody, it’s very hard to run. The whole point is to make sure that everybody’s vote counts, equally.”

But Fulgenzi, who has served on the Town Board since the early 2000s, said he’s still waiting for a Hispanic candidate to run for town office. He said there is no reason to change the system.

“It’s worked for 200 years,” said Fulgenzi. “There’s tremendous support from residents in the town for what we have. They don’t want it changed.”

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David McKay Wilson writes about tax issues and government accountability. Follow him on Twitter @davidmckay415 or email him at dwilson3@lohud.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Mount Pleasant NY taps national GOP lawyer to defend voting system