County GOP wins bid to knock off rival Republican party – kind of
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City Council candidate and Queens County Republican Party chair Joann Ariola (left) won her bid against rival party the Republican Patriots and Daniel Maio (right) in the Appellate Division, Second Department Thursday. Photo via Republican Patriots/Courtesy of campaign
By Jacob Kaye
Their names may appear on the ballot during the upcoming primary elections, but for 11 Republican candidates in Queens not a single vote cast in their favor will count, a judge ruled last week.
In the latest example of Republican infighting in the borough, Queens Supreme Court Justice Robert Caloras ruled in favor of the Queens County Republican Party and its chair Joann Ariola, who said that a slate of Republican candidates belonging to a group called the Queens County Republican Patriots had fraudulently submitted petitions to get the names on the ballot.
Because the June 10 ruling came only days before the start of early voting for the June 22 primaries, the candidates’ names will remain on the ballot, but none of the votes for them will count.
The candidates include Queens Borough President candidate Daniel Maio, Queens Civil Court Judge candidate Kathy Wu Parrino, and District Leader candidates Philip McManus, Margaret Wagner, Daniel Noble, David Abraham, Yangling Wagner, Stephen Weiner and Betty Hogan.
Two other candidates running for a district leader seat, Phil Orenstein and Anita Uppal, were found to have submitted faulty paperwork with the Board of Elections. Their names will also appear on the ballot but won’t have votes counted.
The fraud revolves around the candidates’ petitions to get on the ballot. Four candidates backed by the Queens GOP appeared at the top of the Patriots’ petitions, alongside candidates running with the Republican Patriots. Caloras ruled that none of the four candidates gave Maio, who prepared and was the point person for the petitions, expressed consent to use their names.
The decision was upheld in the Appellate Court, Second Division on Thursday, June 17, following a challenge from the Republican Patriots.
But the troubles for the slate of Republican Patriots didn’t end there. In all, the group ran 31 candidates for various offices across the borough and city this year – only 7 will appear on the ballot and have votes cast for them counted following a series of successful legal challenges from the Queens GOP.
“The establishment does not like us, the insurgent group,” Maio told the Eagle.
The Republican Patriots was founded by Joseph Concannon, a former NYPD captain and advisor to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, after Ariola was tapped to lead the borough’s Republican Party in 2018.
Ideologically, the Patriots skew more to the right than their Queens GOP counterparts, according to Maio. But the biggest reason for the conception of the new group was to create a more open and transparent electoral process, Maio said.
“As far as the operation goes, we're dramatically different,” he said. “[Ariola] just basically wants to be in control of the people that listen to her. We allow anyone who disagrees with us and allow anyone who wants to challenge us to let them challenge us.”
Despite her efforts to knock the Republican Patriots’ candidates off the ballot, Ariola said that her party welcomes competition.
“I think that if [the Republican Patriots] were interested in a true primary election, they would have run their own candidates for City Council, instead of running the County organization’s, candidates,” Ariola told the Eagle. “They have no intention of growing the party.”
Term-limited City Councilmember Eric Ulrich – whose district Ariola is running in – is the only Republican elected official in Queens. The party’s electoral power has withered up over the past several decades. In 2012, City Councilmember Peter Koo, originally a Republican, switched parties citing infighting in the GOP, according to reporting at the time.
Maio blames Ariola’s leadership for the party’s lack of standing in Queens electoral politics.
“One of the reasons people have been telling me that they switch to Democrat is that there's no action in the Republican primary,” he said. “We republicans are shooting ourselves in the foot.”
“If we don't give candidates, good candidates, the opportunity to have a primary – we could be out there, so people recognize us,” Maio added. “How can [a Republican candidate] have time, by the time the general election comes, to be introduced to the public. They’ve lost three to four months of campaigning, compared to the Democrats.”
Though the party has had little success getting candidates elected to local positions, the party has grown.
This year, the party has over 150,000 registered voters in Queens – 10 percent larger than it was a decade ago, according to the Board of Elections. However, the Demcratic Party in Queens has grown by 23 percent in the same time frame and currently outnumber Republican voters in the borough eight to one.
“We've taken tremendous efforts into registering people to the Republican Party,” Ariola said. “We have a unified, well structured, well funded party, with people who participate for the right reasons.”
But Maio insisted the Republican Patriots’ efforts to unite the party are genuine and that the fraudulent petitions were actually an attempt to do just that.
“We included [the County candidates] on our petition because our objective is just to improve or help them collect more signatures and grow the Republican Party,” he said. “And the establishment says that is fraud – and the court agreed with it.”
