Even though elections are less than three months away, Michael Bloomberg is still not done, officially, with legal challenges to his presence on the ballot.
Inwood resident Jose Adames filed a lawsuit last Monday against the city’s Board of Elections and Mr. Bloomberg, accusing the mayor of not filing “valid signatures” on his petitions.
“Mr. Bloomberg filed a bunch of scratches without names,” Mr. Adames writes. “And no space was provided for the signer to include their names.”
Mr. Adames, who has not hired a lawyer to represent him, also accuses Mr. Bloomberg of not running legitimately for the 2005 mayoral election.
According to Mr. Adames, “Mr. Bloomberg’s people” have also plotted to sink him personally—stealing his car, cutting him off from the outside world and ensuring that the Bank of America would close his credit account.
Crazy, says the Board of Elections. “He’s been claiming that he’s the elected mayor of New York City for the past eight years,” said Steven Richman, the board’s longtime general counsel.
Mr. Richman declined to comment on this particular lawsuit, since he said he has not seen it yet. But he did comment on another recent lawsuit, wherein Mr. Adames sued the Board of Elections to appeal its decision to not allow him onto the 2009 Democratic primary ballot.
Mr. Adames appeared at a special referee hearing at the New York State Supreme Court last week, where “he made all kinds of unsubstantiated allegations,” Mr. Richman said. Then the court scheduled its next hearing for two days later, but Mr. Adames did not show up, so the court denied his petition.
Mr. Adames also sued the Board of Elections in 1994, 1996 and 1997, and the City of New York in 2003.
He appears convinced that the Board of Elections, Mr. Bloomberg and special referee Howard Leventhal have banded together to work against him.
“Mr. Richman have forced me, to travel like 10 times to the Board of Elections, during the last week,” Mr. Adames writes. “They lied so openly in court, that only because Mr. Howard G. Leventhal, the special referee; is Jewish like them, could this happened.”
Mr. Adames then calls for Mr. Leventhal and Mr. Richman to “at least be held in contempt,” and Mr. Richman “removed from the board of elections.” Why? “Mr. Richman is acting like a wild cow-boy, or Daddy boy; no like a General Counsel, an authority, that is supposed to obey the law; and tell the true; he is acting like he is above the law.”
The Bloomberg campaign did not return a call for comment.
