Candidate will remain booted from third party ballot line in closely-watched Queens Senate race
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An appellate court last month upheld a ruling from a lower court that prevents Yiatin Chu (right) from running on the Common Sense party line in her State Senate race against Toby Ann Stavisky (left). Photos via Office of Governor Kathy Hochul/ Chu Campaign
By Ryan Schwach
A Queens judge last month upheld a ruling from a lower court that may have an impact in a potentially tight race for an Eastern Queens State Senate seat.
An appellate court upheld Second Department Appellate Judge Joseph Esposito’s decision on Sept. 20, shooting down an appeal from District 11 candidate Yiatin Chu, a Republican challenging incumbent Toby Ann Stavisky. Chu had claimed that the lower courts had improperly invalidated petition signatures she submitted to run on the “Common Sense” party’s third-party line.
Earlier this year, Stavisky’s campaign had filed a lawsuit alleging around 600 of the signatures Chu and her campaign had collected in an effort to run on the third-party line were invalid. The Queens court tossed 173 of those challenged signatures, leaving Chu 31 signatures short of the required 3,000 names to run on the party line.
Chu’s attorney challenged 52 of those invalidated petitions, and requested permission to cure certain signatures, a request that was denied by the Supreme Court.
“I am disappointed with the court’s decision to deny the admissions of affidavits I collected to cure the signatures required for the Common Sense line,” Chu said in a statement to the Eagle. “Senator Stavisky went to extraordinary lengths to remove me from this independent ballot line by taking me to court.
Joe Reubens, a spokesperson for Stavisky, called Chu’s invalid signatures an “attempt to circumvent state election laws.”
“Chu wasted taxpayer dollars, the court’s time and Board of Elections’ resources, by filing a petition that failed to comply with the law,” Reubens said. “Then, when her petition was exposed as a sham in court, she filed a frivolous appeal that has now also been rejected.”
Chu remains on both the Conservative and Republican lines in the November election.
Stavisky has represented Queens in the State Senate since 1999. The 85-year-old fought off a challenge from Republican Stefano Forte in 2022, winning around 56 percent of the vote.
Chu got her start in politics around a half a decade ago, when she co-founded PLACE NYC, a controversial parent group originally formed to preserve and expand selective admissions policies in the city’s public schools.
