Two challengers in the Democratic primary contest for Town Court had solid leads late last night, while Town Clerk Judith Beville appeared poised to win her nomination by a sizable margin.
With 79 percent of precincts reporting, Doris Friedman and Sandra Forster, both of whom have served as justices for more than a decade, were losing their bids for the nomination to challengers Delores Brathwaite and Walter Rivera.
As of 11:15 p.m., Brathwaite led the field with 1,737 votes. Rivera had the third-highest total at 1,509. With 1,613 votes, incumbent Arlene Oliver, who was appointed in 2007, appeared to be fending off a third challenger, Bonnie Orden.
None of the challengers have judicial experience, but the Greenburgh Democratic Town Committee backed them all over the incumbents. In a particularly heated campaign, the challengers and party leaders criticized the court for audits that showed sloppy bookkeeping and the discovery earlier this year of 80,000 unresolved traffic tickets stretching back a decade.
The challengers — Rivera is a partner at a Manhattan law firm and Brathwaite is executive director of the Westchester County Human Rights Commission — seized on the problems, saying the court was rife with “mismanagement” and “dysfunctional.”
In the race for Town Clerk, Judith Beville was in the lead late last night with 1,898 votes, ahead of challenger Sherron Fantauzzi’s 1,171 votes. The race for the post, which Beville has held since 2007, grew testy as the candidates debated the scope of the clerk’s responsibilities.
Fantauzzi said the hosting of disaster relief fundraisers and other events distracted Beville from her core responsibilities. Beville retorted that the events were part of her office’s community outreach efforts and are popular with residents.
“I made a commitment to voters to decrease spending, increase revenue, expand community service and upgrade information access capability,” Beville said. “And that’s what I have been focusing on doing.”
The primary winners are almost assured to win the general election because Democrats hold a 2 to 1 voter enrollment edge in the town.
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