ATTENTION READERS: BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE ALL-IMPORTANT CALL TO ACTION INCLUDED AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS ARTICLE.
The post CALL TO ACTION: MAGA Senate Candidate and RINO Hunter Cara Castronuova Files Explosive Lawsuit Against New York Republican Committee! RINOS Accused Of UNCONSTITUTIONALLY Blocking Pro-Trump Candidates appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
ATTENTION READERS: BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE ALL-IMPORTANT CALL TO ACTION INCLUDED AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS ARTICLE.
On Monday, Cara Castronuova, an investigative journalist for Newsmax and writer for The Gateway Pundit who is currently running as a Republican for the Senate in New York, filed a lawsuit in New York State Federal Court that seeks to change New York’s notoriously draconian and anti-democratic ballot eligibility laws. Under current law, candidates running for public office who are not chosen by the Ed Cox-led state party apparatus, like Cara Castronuova, who hopes to secure the Republican Party nomination for Senate, must collect 15,000 pen ink original signatures over 37 calendar days in order to qualify.
As recounted at length previously here, State Party Chairman, Ed Cox, has operated as effective gatekeeper for a trenchant New York State Republican Party that refuses to change with the times, particularly with regard to selecting candidates who are stridently and unapologetically pro-Trump and pro-America First, much like Cara Castronuova. As evidence: the State Party’s last two candidates for major electoral offices – Mike Sapraicone, whom the Party handpicked in a closed door convention in February for Senate, is a well-known Trump hater who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrats over the years. As recently as 2022, Sapraicone made contributions to Trump-hating District Attorney Letitia James, who is spearheading the ongoing political prosecution against President Trump in New York State, including overseeing his criminal trial set to begin in Manhattan, later this month.
Their previous, hand-selected candidate, Mazi Pilip, who the Party chose to run for former Congressman George Santos’ vacated seat in New York’s 3rd Congressional District also was Ed Cox’s ideal candidate. She was still, reportedly, a registered Democrat at the time she ran in the special election against Democrat Tom Suozzi, who easily defeated her and reclaimed his seat, reducing the Republican House Majority to a precariously thin 218 to 213 margin. The Santos expulsion effort was led by Ed Cox-lackeys, as part of the RINO State Delegation: Nick Lalota (who held out on endorsing President Trump until Jan. 20 of this year) Mike Lawler (who still has not endorsed Trump), Andrew Garbarino (who also still has not endorsed Trump) and Anthony D’Esposito (who waited until Feb. 26 of this year to finally endorse the presidential frontrunner), all of whom – at best –only recently issued eleventh hour endorsements of Donald Trump, according to 538’s endorsement tracker, showcasing their true loyalties to Ed Cox and his Uniparty agenda. (For reference, Trump loyalist Elise Stefanik (NY-21) endorsed President Trump way back in November of 2022). As the saying goes, with friends like these, who needs enemies?
This anti-Trump coalition ousted George Santos, as part of a deliberate sabotage masterminded by Ed Cox and his Uniparty cronies to not only expel the most conservative and Trump-supporting Congressperson from the Republican delegation, but, even worse, reduce the Republican Majority’s already razor thin majority in the House further still – potentially setting the stage for Democrats to retake control outright before November’s presidential election. This would put Democrats in a position to ram-through eleventh hour legislation to remove President Trump from the presidential ballot on groundless Insurrection charges, under sections 3 and 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Thus, if the House of Representatives should fall to Democratic hands before November’s election – Republicans in New York State, all of whom answer to Ed Cox, are directly to blame.
This is why Castronuova’s lawsuit, which comes during the most important election year in this country’s history, is absolutely pivotal towards moving the needle of the State Party in the MAGA direction.
Castronuova is not filing a frivolous lawsuit, either. She abided by all the rules as someone who did not make the ballot as the Party’s handpicked candidate at the Convention, and amassed over 15,000 petitions — exceeding the onerous requirement per New York’s rules. At the time of this article’s release, she – and her co-plaintiff listed in the lawsuit, John Tabacco, an aggrieved Staten Island Republican voter, who is being deprived of his right, like millions of other New Yorkers, from casting their vote for their chosen candidate — are on their way up now to Albany to deliver their signatures to the Board of Elections.
There is a third candidate in the race as well: Josh Eisen – who is backed by the New York Young Republican Club, and finished in third place (with over 6% of the Convention vote) behind Castronuova (over 8% of the vote) and Sapraicone at the closed-door convention in Binghamton back in February. Eisen, much like Castronuova, also faces an uphill battle in collecting petitions based on New York State’s anti-democratic and notoriously draconian ballot access laws.
Castronuova raises several very important points in her Complaint, which was filed with the District Court for the Eastern District, that are worth highlighting.
First, as the law currently stands, the signature requirement is a flagrant Equal Protection violation, and the court should grant injunctive relief on that basis alone. The onerous, arbitrary, and downright arcane ballot requirement rules are bad enough. But the fact that both Republicans and Democrats alike are held to the same 15,000 signature requirement standard – in a State where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1 — is an egregious affront to the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment (to say nothing of myriad other due process, privileges and immunities, and constitutional breaches the current law exploits).
Castronuova bases her Complaint in well-founded precedent. In 2000, when John McCain was running in his first bid for President in the Republican Primary, he too challenged New York State on the basis of its arbitrary and unduly burdensome signature requirement laws. A judge at the time found McCain, a major presidential candidate with national name recognition and enormous resources behind him, to have a valid constitutional claim against New York State’s onerous so-called “petition gathering scheme.” Steve Forbes too, another billionaire candidate with significant financial resources to expend on paid “volunteer walkers,” was also found by New York courts to have a valid legal claim because of the undue burden imposed by New York’s onerous election rules – Forbes and McCain’s cases (on the books as Molinari v. Powers) were cited as controlling authorities by Castronuova in her lawsuit.
If courts found that New York’s ballot scheme imposed undue burdens on national candidates of McCain and Forbes’ caliber, then a faithful court should easily find a significant undue burden in Castronuova’s case. Unlike McCain and Forbes, Castruonova’s campaign is being waged on a shoestring budget. Not only does she not have the financial backing of Republican State leaders, she has been totally foreclosed of the opportunity to use State Party resources – which should be made available to all prospective candidates, regardless of whether or not they are the preferred candidate of the State Party – such as names of registered Republicans and lists of volunteers, which the Party apparatus has access to. All these factors only increase the undue burden on Castronuova, thus enhancing her constitutional claim.
The undue burden extends not just to the arbitrary and onerous 15,000 signature requirement – a bad enough figure in and of itself. However, in actual practice, the figure is actually much closer to 30,000 signatures, double the stated requirement, in order to qualify a candidate for the ballot. This is because the State Party apparatus actively works to strike “invalid” signatures, by applying the law to an unduly exacting standard, all for the sole purpose of disqualifying would-be challengers to the chosen Party nominee — even those rare few, like Steve Forbes, wealthy enough to amass 30,000 signatures on their own.
One particularly egregious part of the signature requirement, which is written into New York State law, is the notorious town/city “trap for the unwary” stipulation, a necessary requirement for every signature to be valid. In New York, many towns are actually divided into discrete villages – that residents more familiarly identify with and conflate as being their township. So, for instance, a Montauk resident might designate his Town as Montauk – but that signature would be stricken, under current New York rules, because, technically speaking, the proper town would really be East Hampton, which includes the village of Montauk, which is technically not a “town” for the purposes of New York State election law. Sound confusing?
The town/city trap is one such example of why the signature requirement is unduly burdensome: particularly given that signers are already required to list their address in full – and so the purpose of listing one’s township is a mere redundancy, serving no purpose whatsoever other than to disqualify otherwise valid signatures!
The lawsuit outlines myriad other problems with current election rules that only further support Castronuova’s arguments about the fundamental unfairness of the current process.
In her affidavit, submitted with the lawsuit, Castronuova detailed how it was physically impossible to collect the necessary signatures within the stated 37-day timeframe, which, in reality, due to religious holidays and record-breaking inclement weather, was more like 30 days, or less.
But perhaps Castronuova’s most valid point of all, as stated in both her lawsuit and affidavit, was that all these arbitrary and onerous rules – which State Party leaders admitted, behind closed doors, were in place to prevent a competitive, fair, and open Primary from taking place, which would culminate on June 25, 2024 – had absolutely no bearing on “a candidate’s viability and ability to serve effectively in office.”
Nor should the amount of donations a candidate receives – and particularly wasted funds used to recruit volunteers to amass arbitrarily high signature thresholds, which make no sense other than to exclude otherwise viable candidates – like Castronuova and Eisen – from the ballot.
What should qualify a candidate are the sacrifices and principles they uphold, especially during periods of great adversity. Castronuova, as viscerally recounted in her affidavit, has gone through untold hardship just for challenging New York State law. She has been vilified by the Republican State Party apparatus. She has lost friends and onetime supporters, who are afraid to join Castronuova in fear of being ostracized by Party leaders from jobs and other opportunities. As a devout Catholic, Castronuova spent Holy Week, the most important week in the liturgical calendar for most Christians, writing a 16-page affidavit, rather than attending religious services and spending time with family – because she believes this cause is worth “dying on a hill for.”
Despite paying major personal, professional, and indeed, even physical, costs for going against New York State’s obstinate establishment, Castronuova remains unwavering in her conviction to see this cause all the way to the end.
She is not merely a disgruntled candidate, needlessly complaining about a process because she was unwilling to do the essential legwork to get on the ballot. That she has done, and in spades — even with all the factors going against her. She put her career on hold, as both a reporter and investigative journalist, and went into the trenches, summoning volunteers, who devoted precious time, in most cases free of charge, to help Castronuova in her efforts.
Castronuova amassed the 15,000 signatures and is on her way to Albany right now to drop them off to the Board of Elections.
The purpose of her lawsuit is to right a serious wrong, an injustice that deprives not only Republican candidates, but candidates of all political stripes, their constitutional right to bring their message to New York voters, who are denied in turn – by these same rules – the fundamental right to choose better quality candidates through a truly free, fair, and democratic process.
Castronuova, unquestionably, is the America First candidate in this race. She has supported President Trump, unlike Sapraicone, since the day he made that fateful escalator ride at Trump Tower in 2015.
She has stood by him every step of the way – even when fair-weather supporters jumped ship when it became politically expedient to do so. When New York State was under the draconian Cuomo lockdowns at the height of covid, she advocated boldly and publicly for medical freedom. She has raised millions of dollars for January 6th demonstrators, and – while Sapraicone and Cox were remaining silent – entered the firestorm and covered the egregious political persecutions, in her capacity as an investigative journalist against the political hostages of the Biden Regime, consoling the families of J6 victims, who have faced unfathomable hardships for merely exercising their God-given natural rights.
Castronuova is pro-life, pro-gun, pro-borders, and pro-God. She deserves to bring her message to New Yorkers, who are absolutely suffering — and leaving the state by the thousands every month — by the neglectful and incompetent political leadership of both Republicans and Democrats. This State Uniparty has nearly run the once great Empire State to ruin — a ruin that will be inevitable so long as the Republican Party remains a “controlled opposition,” presided over by leaders like Ed Cox and do-nothing, feckless lapdog candidates like Mike Sapraicone.
***ALL IMPORTANT CALL TO ACTION***
READERS: If you are OUTRAGED by what Ed Cox and the New York State Uniparty is doing by denying quality candidates, like Cara Castronuova and Josh Eisen, from their constitutional right to ballot access – while stripping regular New Yorkers of their rights in turn, CALL Ed Cox’s office and TELL him to allow an OPEN PRIMARY by PUTTING CASTRONUOVA and EISEN on the BALLOT.
PHONE: (518) 462-2601. FAX: (518) 449-7443.
ALSO, PLEASE COPY & PASTE THE FOLLOWING EMAIL, AND SEND IT TO ED COX AND THE NY STATE GOP APPARATUS, DEMANDING THAT THEY ALLOW OTHER CANDIDATES, LIKE CASTRONUOVA AND EISEN, TO BE INCLUDED IN THE PRIMARY IN A HEAD-TO-HEAD MATCHUP AGAINST THEIR HANDPICKED, ANTI-TRUMP RINO CANDIDATE IN MIKE SAPRAICONE:
EMAIL: FRONTDESK@NYGOP.ORG
SUBJECT: ALLOW CASTRONUOVA AND EISEN BALLOT ACCESS
HELLO,
I AM AN OUTRAGED, AMERICAN PATRIOT, TRUMP SUPPORTER, AND NEW YORK VOTER WHO DEMANDS THAT YOU INCLUDE CARA CASTRONUOVA AND JOSH EISEN ON THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARY BALLOT – AND NOT CONTINUE TO DENY NEW YORKERS THEIR FUNDAMENTAL CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO CHOOSE THEIR DESIRED CANDIDATE.
IN ADDITION, PLEASE GET RID OF THE COMPLETELY ARBITRARY AND ONEROUS “PETITION GATHERING SCHEME,” WHICH UNCONSTITUTIONALLY EXCLUDES OTHERWISE BETTER QUALITY AND ELIGIBLE CANDIDATES FROM BALLOT ACCESS BASED ON THE ARCANE RULES SET BY PARTY LEADERS THAT STRIP THE RIGHT TO VOTE FOR TRUE AMERICA FIRST CANDIDATES FROM WE THE PEOPLE!
SINCERELY,
OUTRAGED NEW YORK RESIDENT/AMERICAN CITIZEN
The post CALL TO ACTION: MAGA Senate Candidate and RINO Hunter Cara Castronuova Files Explosive Lawsuit Against New York Republican Committee! RINOS Accused Of UNCONSTITUTIONALLY Blocking Pro-Trump Candidates appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
