Court ruling expected in council beef

NEWBURYPORT – A Superior Court judge said he would rule today on election law violation claims made by City Council candidate Ariana Murrell-Rosario and her request to remove six candidates from the Sept. 17 preliminary ballot.”Time is of the essence,” Judge Richard Welch said Thursday afternoon.A Boston attorney representing Murrell-Rosario and a city lawyer spent about 35 minutes presenting their case to Welch in a Newburyport courtroom with attorney Daniel Sonneborn arguing that state election law requirements for filling out candidate nomination papers were not met by the six candidates.Repeating a claim Murrell-Rosario has made since July, Sonneborn said councilors William Trahant Jr., Darren Cyr, Brendan Crighton and Richard Colucci, as well as School Committee member Richard Starbard and council candidate Paul Crowley backdated required notarizations on their nomination papers to comply with a July 1 deadline for turning in nomination papers.”We’re alleging there are improprieties. These papers were not notarized; if they were, they were backdated. We are asking for these candidates to be removed from the ballot,” Sonneborn said.City Assistant Solicitor James Lamanna said city preparations are under way for the preliminary election and said 400 absentee ballots are in the mail en route to voters who will not be in Lynn on election day. He said 175 absentee voters have already cast votes using ballots that include the names of the six candidates challenged by Murrell-Rosario.”Ms. Murrell was aware on August 6 that the Election Commission had denied her petition but she waited until Aug. 23 to file her (court) complaint,” Lamanna said.Murrell-Rosario is a Lewis Street tax preparation company owner making her first run for city office. She is running for the Ward 4 council seat held by Colucci and, although voters go to the polls in three weeks, they won’t decide the ward contest until the Nov. 5 final election.She initially challenged Colucci’s compliance with state election law requirements in July before expanding her complaints to the other five candidates. All six men have said they complied with city nomination paper requirements.”I strongly oppose the position that she takes. The voters who signed nomination papers for me and for other candidates is what is important here, not a possible technical flaw in the process,” said Crowley.Four city election commissioners voted on Aug. 6 to uphold an opinion drafted by Lamanna and stating that state election law requirements for nomination paper notarizations do not apply to Lynn because the city never adopted the specific section of state law regarding notarizations.Sonneborn on Thursday called the commission hearing “very cursory” and said Trahant, Cyr and Colucci also failed to note on the petition section of their nomination papers which ward they are running in.”The judge seemed attentive to our arguments,” he said following the court hearing.