Richard Thomas fails to qualify for primary ballot in race for Mount Vernon mayor

Richard Thomas won't be on the ballot in the Democratic primary for Mount Vernon mayor, but he is pushing a write-in campaign to get his old job back.

On Tuesday he withdrew his court bid to challenge the Board of Elections' invalidation of his nominating petitions, leaving only the incumbent, Shawyn Patterson-Howard, and Andre Wallace on the ballot in the June primary. The mayor's campaign is considering an appeal of a court ruling affirming Wallace's candidacy, her campaign spokesman said.

Wallace was a one-term city councilman who served as mayor for six months in 2019 after Thomas was forced from office when he pleaded guilty to misusing campaign funds. The city's dysfunction was highlighted for more than five weeks that summer when each man insisted he was the mayor before a judge ruled it was Wallace.

Patterson-Howard had already won the Democratic primary that spring and easily won election in the fall as the party has an overwhelming majority among registered voters in the city. She is hoping to become the first incumbent to win re-election since 2003.

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Thomas insists he remains a victim of the political establishment that does not want him to return to office. He and his lawyer Adam Rodriguez said they did not receive notification of a board hearing last week at which he might have been able to resurrect enough signatures. And once the case was in court, he said they did not have enough time to gather witnesses and obtain affidavits attesting to legitimate nominating signatures that had been invalidated.

"They knew they could outspend me in court and create this distraction," Thomas said Wednesday. "I'm counting on Mount Vernon voters to respond and reject this systemic manipulation."

He is adamant that his decision had nothing to do with fraud allegations that cited the signatures of four dead city residents on his petitions, as alleged by Max Di Fabio, a lawyer for a supporter of Wallace's who objected to Thomas' nominating petitions.

"We are confident that had we proceeded regarding our allegations of fraud we would have ended up with the same result, Richard Thomas would not have made it on to the ballot," Di Fabio said Wednesday.

Rodriguez said the fraud allegations did not rise to the level needed to sustain such a challenge. He said there was no proof that the witnesses to the signatures knew that those people were dead; no allegation that Thomas himself was responsible for the signatures; and just four questionable signatures among 2,500 collected was a far cry from a petition "permeated" with fraud as required.

Thomas said the process amounted to a disenfranchisement of Mount Vernon voters and expressed confidence that the "opponents of progress only energized the silent majority in my base." He faced a similar situation in 2021 when he tried to run for city comptroller and was not allowed to present witnesses to convince a judge that they had in fact signed his nominating petitions, albeit by printing their names rather than signing them.

"Especially considering his history — and his past guilty plea for failing to follow campaign finance law — if he can't do this simple task, how can he be expected to run the city?" Barry Caro, Patterson-Howard's campaign spokesman, said in a statement. "This is not about voter suppression or fear. This is about his inability to follow clear and simple rules that are well established."

There were two challenges to Thomas' candidacy, one by supporters of Patterson-Howard's and the other by a supporter of Wallace's. The board's determination based on the Wallace objector was that Thomas had enough signatures to qualify. But he fell short when the other objections were reviewed. Rodriguez said it was an inconsistent result since the board's researchers came to different conclusions on many of the same signatures.

In the race for two seats on the Mount Vernon City Council there will be four candidates on the Democratic primary ballot: incumbent Derrick Thompson, former deputy comptroller Jaevon Boxhill, former deputy city clerk Lauren Carter and community activist Axel Ebermann.

The mayor's supporters challenged the petitions of all the candidates running against Patterson-Howard, Thompson and Boxhill, but have succeeded only against Thomas and council hopeful Nicole Lucio.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Ex-Mount Vernon Mayor Richard Thomas to wage write-in campaign