Racketeering Lawsuit Against Republicans and Astorino

The Independence Party filed an anti-racketeering lawsuit in Federal Court on Thursday. In addition to Astorino and the Westchester Republican party, the lawsuit names a number of individual Republicans, including John Testa who is running for county legislator. The complaint accuses Rob Astorino and the Republicans of trying to rig the primary elections by getting Republicans to switch their party affiliation “in order to take over the Independence Party so as to make it a clone of the Republican Party in Westchester County.” According to a Journal News report, the lawsuit claims that many Republicans changed their party affiliation just before the deadline to be eligible to vote in this year’s Independence Party primary and that some of the papers were back-dated by Republican officials at the Board of Elections. One of the plaintiffs stated that “This is an attempted raid to rig the primary election process and violate tens of thousands of Westchester County residents in the process. It took six law firms to review thousands of documents. We have tape-recorded conversations and fraudulent petitions.” During an earlier case, a tape recording of an 8-minute phone conversation with Astorino revealed him defending his efforts to fill the Independence Party rolls with Republicans.