Voters can officially fill in the bubble for the self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist candidate looking to unseat Bushwick’s sitting Democratic state senator in the Sept. 13 primary elections, after the state’s highest court threw out the eight-term incumbent’s case to kick her off the ballot on Aug. 29.
The New York Court of Appeals upheld two lower court rulings to reject state Sen. Martin Malavé Dilan’s suit against 27-year-old Julia Salazar, which claimed the Florida native had not lived in the district long enough to be on the ballot.
Dilan — who is seeking his ninth term representing the Senate’s 18th District that includes parts of Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Cypress Hills, East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Brownsville, and recently picked up the support of Mayor DeBlasio — filed the lawsuit because of his fear of giving voters a choice, according to Salazar’s attorney.
“Make no mistake, this frivolous lawsuit was an attempt by a scared incumbent to deny voters their right to decide who should represent them in Albany,” said Renée Paradis. “Now that this baseless smear has been rejected by three courts of law, North Brooklyn will have a chance to vote for Julia’s vision of a Brooklyn that works for everyone, not just the few.”
But the incumbent, a former Councilman whose son represents many of those same neighborhoods in the Assembly, isn’t only claiming that Salazar’s residency should disqualify her from holding office — he recently told the hosts of Brooklyn Paper Radio that his challenger’s roughly eight years as a registered Republican should make voters question just how progressive she really is.
“For you to come and run for state Senate when you have been registered as a Republican from 2009 to July 2017? You go from true red to extreme left. That’s a problem,” Dilan said on air.
