A Superior Court Judge today tossed a slate of candidates for 33 seats on the Perth Amboy Republican County Committee because their nominating petitions were accepted by the municipal clerk after the 4 PM filing deadline on March 23.
Perth Amboy Republican Municipal Chair Sharon Hubberman filed a lawsuit last week alleging the tardiness should invalidate petitions filed by a rival, Jeremy Baratta, a former secretary of the local zoning board.
In court filings, Municipal Clerk Victoria Kupsch and Assistant Municipal Clerk Theresa Lopez stated that the clock on the wall in their office didn’t match the time stamp. Hubberman alleged that the municipal clerks were playing favorites.
Superior Court Judge Pedro Jimenez, Jr. said that “the only clock that can matter is the clock on the date stamp.”
“That is the one that we have to go by, because that is the one that verifies when a filing was made,” he said. “There have been cases where things were date-stamped after the deadline, which were not accepted and the case law is pretty clear that there has to be a legit excuse to show that it could not have been date-stamped prior to the deadline.”
Jimenez excoriated Baratta’s decision to skip today’s court hearing, stating he had a responsibility to the candidates whom he had agreed to file on behalf of.
“Mr. Barata simply missed the statutory filing deadline due to his own inadvertence,” Jimenez said. “While we all make mistakes, some of those carry more significant consequences than others.”
Jimenez said Baratta’s candidates are free to mount write-in campaigns in the June 2 Republican primary.
