Former federal prosecutor and independent mayoral candidate Jim Walden last week announced he was dropping out of New York City\u2019s mayoral race. There\u2019s just one problem: His name will still appear on voters\u2019 ballots in November\u2019s general election.<\/p>\n
That reality is at the center of a likely showdown Tuesday between Walden and the New York City Board of Elections commissioners. Walden is fighting to get his name off the ballot in an effort to fulfill his principled pledge to get out of the race if he couldn\u2019t establish himself as the best candidate to challenge Democratic nominee and frontrunner Zohran Mamdani.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf my name remains on the ballot, voters will be confused and lured to vote for me, despite my timely withdrawal. This is unfair to voters and the remaining candidates,\u201d Walden, who has never polled above 3%, said in a statement. \u201cNothing in the law prevents the Board from removing my name before the ballot is certified. I hope that avoiding voter confusion remains the Board\u2019s top priority.\u201d<\/p>\n
His feud with the Board of Elections highlights a harsh reality for political operatives who seek to turn the general election into a one-on-one contest between Mamdani and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who\u2019s running as an independent<\/a> in November after losing<\/a> the Democratic primary in June. At this point in the election cycle, there\u2019s almost no way to remove a candidate’s name from the ballot.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aI respect Mr. Walden’s desire to not run, but the election law doesn’t just work that way,\u201d said Vincent Ignizio, the deputy executive director of the New York City Board of Elections.<\/p>\n Under New York state election law, candidates like Walden, Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams who filed independent nominating petitions to appear on the general election ballot without winning a primary, needed to decline their ballot line by May 30. Ignizio said there are only three ways for a candidate to be removed from the ballot at this point: Death, running for a judgeship or moving out of state.<\/p>\n Walden plans to appeal to the Board of Elections’ 10 commissioners at their weekly meeting on Tuesday, and said he\u2019s prepared to go to court if they refuse to remove his name. But there is little time for such litigation to play out. The Board plans to finalize ballots on Thursday, Sept. 11 and to begin mailing ballots to permanent absentee voters on Sept. 19.<\/p>\n Seasoned campaign consultants said Walden\u2019s predicament also affects Adams, who on Friday held a press conference<\/a> in an attempt to quash reports he was preparing to drop out of the race<\/a> and accept a job with the Trump administration.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t get off the ballot,\u201d said George Artz, who has worked on New York City campaigns since the Koch administration. \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone is willing to die for this. People just don\u2019t know the law.\u201d<\/p>\n Talk of a one-on-one race picked up steam last week when President Trump floated his preference for a narrower field of candidates trying to block Mamdani.<\/p>\n But despite Trump\u2019s own New York roots, Artz noted, \u201cHe doesn\u2019t know the law either.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former federal prosecutor and independent mayoral candidate Jim Walden last week announced he was dropping out of New…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":212225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-212224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115173128079669104","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}