Filing oversight leaves Colucci off ballot

LYNN – Ward 4 City Councilor Richard Colucci will have to launch a sticker campaign if he plans to hold onto the seat he has held for more than 20 years.”This is my fault,” Colucci said Wednesday. “The buck stops here.”Colucci, Lynn’s longest seated councilor, said he simply forgot to file a notarized statement of candidacy prior to submitting the signatures required to get his name on the ballot. He said he received a call from the Election Office on Wednesday informing him of the situation.The deadline for filing nomination papers was Monday, July 1. He cannot legally re-submit his papers, leaving him two options: drop out of the race or run a sticker campaign.”We’ll have to get a sticker campaign going,” Colucci said.The Election Office was not the only one to notice the discrepancy.Ariana Murrell-Rosario, who is challenging Colucci for his seat, filed an objection to his nomination papers also on Wednesday. According to her complaint Colucci had 135 certified signatures, 35 more than the required, but no statement of candidacy.”Wherefore Richard Colucci’s statement of candidacy lacks the necessary jurat required by law to place his name on the city of Lynn’s primary ballot and as such must be stricken from the city of Lynn’s primary ballot on September 17, 2013,” reads the statement.”It’s a bump in the road,” Colucci said. “I believe we could run a successful sticker campaign.”The last Lynn politician to orchestrate a successful sticker campaign was Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy. The untimely passing of candidate and former Lynn mayor Patrick J. McManus in July 2009 set the stage for Kennedy, then a longtime city councilor at large, to launch a sticker campaign for the preliminary election and went on to defeat Mayor Edward “Chip” Clancy Jr.According to that states election rules and regulations,posted on Secretary of State William Galvin’s website, a “sticker campaign” candidate provides voters with stickers with the candidate’s name to affix on the ballot in the area for write-ins. A voter can also write in the name. The challenge, however, is to get voters to take that extra step and write in the name or place the sticker in the right area.Colucci was clearly flustered by the turn of events Wednesday but said he’s nevertheless confident he can win.”My campaign workers are pumped,” he said.”We will run an aggressive sticker campaign. I absolutely think we can do this.”