Antonio Delgado continued his attempt to have independent candidates Dal LaMagna and Diane Neal thrown off the November ballot last Friday, as his supporter and political ally Rima Liscum filed specific challenges to their petitions.
As reported in the Albany Times-Union, Liscum is a close associate of Delgado and has personally contributed to Delgado’s campaign.
In challenging the petitions, Delgado’s associate Liscum designated high-powered and high-priced attorneys Marc. E. Elias and Emma Olson Sharkey of Perkins Coie LLP in Washington, D.C., and Robert M. Hardlng and Joshua L. Oppenheimer of Greenberg Traurig, LLP, in Albany as her attorneys of record.
These are the same four attorneys who last April were hired to remove Green Party nominee Steve Greenfield from the November ballot. In that instance, Elias, Olson Sharkey, Harding and Oppenheimer were unsuccessful in removing Greenfield from the ballot.
“Make no mistake, Antonio Delgado, Nancy Pelosi or whoever is paying these high-priced lawyers to subvert Democracy in the 19th district are nervous,” Faso campaign manager Tom Szymanski said. “Antonio Delgado’s candidacy is flawed and they know he can’t win the race on his own merits.”
Elias, described as a Democratic “super-lawyer,” was general counsel to both the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign in 2016. However, he is most well known for facilitating payment to Fusion GPS for the “Russian Dossier” in 2016.
Elias’ political committee clients include the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, as well as Nancy Pelosi’s House Majority PAC which has already reserved more than $200,000 in advertising in Albany for its campaign against Faso.
John Faso is a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and the Lugar Center Bipartisan Index recently named him as one of the most bipartisan members of Congress. Faso and his wife, Mary Frances, a registered nurse, are the proud parents of two children. They have lived in Kinderhook, New York, for more than three decades.