Volker challenges Konst petition in State Senate race
About 90 voters are subpoenaed
At about 11 a. m. Saturday, two men in a truck pulled up to Ann Shanley’s Lancaster home, opened her front door and put some paper inside.
She had been served a subpoena ordering her to court for signing a petition to support Kathy Konst in her race against State Sen. Dale M. Volker, R-Depew.
Shanley was stunned — especially after learning she was one of about 90 potential voters targeted by Volker for subpoenas ordering them to court Tuesday.
Volker and Konst are in a blistering race for the 59th District seat, which represents residents of southern Erie and Wyoming counties, and sections of Livingston and Ontario counties.
“Volker’s going to have a lot of people angry at him,” said Shanley, who is a friend of Konst, a two-term Erie County legislator, and Konst’s husband, Harry. “People can’t take off work without pay for this kind of thing. It’s just dirty politics. I’m very aggravated.”
So was Konst. “It’s just so over the top — absurd,” she said. “I think Volker must be very nervous.”
State Supreme Court Justice Timothy J. Drury signed the subpoenas Saturday.
Volker’s campaign originally sought about 250 subpoenas.
This new development came just days after the state Board of Elections in Albany rejected objections by Volker supporters to Konst’s Integrity Party candidacy on the Nov. 4 ballot.
The election board held that of the more than 5,000 signatures that Konst’s campaign collected, 3,129 contained valid signatures, with 3,000 required to be on the ballot.
Craig Miller, a spokesman for the Volker re-election campaign, said the campaign sought the subpoenas because of an “obvious pattern of deceit and fraud” in Konst’s petitions.
“We found signatures from Canada, from George W. Bush,” he said. “It merits further investigation.”
Konst, though, said it was routine to find invalid signatures on petitions, which is why political candidates always collect far more signatures than they need.
“Go through Volker’s signatures and tell me how many Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck signatures you find,” she said.
Konst also is running on the Democratic Party line. But she is hoping her minor party line will make it easier for disaffected Republicans in the heavily GOP district to vote for her.
In any case, she said she received dozens of calls from people who had signed her petition and reported being intimidated by private investigators and “goons showing up at the door.”
Shanley’s experience mirrors that. She said a private investigator came to her door last week demanding information about the petition she had signed, both from her and two of her grown children who had also signed.
“He wanted to know was I sworn in [when she signed the petition] and did I raise my hand. He wanted to know was it a man or woman who asked me sign.”
She couldn’t remember exactly — she was at the Taste of Lancaster when she signed the petition — but she thought it was a man.
“He said that was the problem,” Shanley said. “He said he could throw me in jail.”
Shanley’s son also must show up in court — a problem because he just started a new job and won’t be paid. One of her daughters also will appear. She didn’t sign anything, Shanley said, but Volker’s people mixed her up with another daughter.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, Konst was fighting off another attack from the Volker campaign — her failure to file pre-primary and post-primary financial disclosure reports.
The state Board of Elections is demanding that she appear to explain the problem. But Konst said her campaign’s failure to file the information is part of a statewide problem with filing information electronically.
“We’ve been trying to [file the reports],” she said. “There’s some sort of glitch with the system [in Albany]. A lot of candidates are having the same problem.”
Konst said she is most worried the subpoenas will dampen the enthusiasm of voters in the future.
Shanley agreed: “I don’t think I’ll ever sign a petition again.”
