The saga of Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver’s ballot access in New Jersey’s 10th congressional district may finally be drawing to a close, with Administrative Law Judge Kim Belin issuing an opinion keeping her on the ballot for a second time after rejecting potentially damning text messages as evidence.
McIver’s 1,081 petition signatures were challenged for listing one person, McIver’s mother Robin, as the sole circulator; one of McIver’s primary opponents, former East Orange Councilwoman Brittany Claybrooks, argued that such a feat would be logistically unlikely. Claybrooks’ case was bolstered when a McIver aide, Hassan Adbus-Sabur, said in a text group chat that he collected some of the signatures himself; he told the New Jersey Globe the same thing when asked.
Those texts were presented as evidence in a hearing yesterday, with two different members of the group chat testifying as to their authenticity. But a separate text thread was also presented as evidence by McIver’s side: one in which Abdus-Sabur recants his earlier statement and tells McIver that he “lied” and “misspoke” when he claimed he collected some signatures.
In her decision today, Belin rejected both sets of text messages as evidence for a variety of technical reasons. Most importantly, she said, the witnesses who spoke to the validity of the text messages could not personally verify that Abdus-Sabur had sent them or that they had not been tampered with.
“I find that neither Parker nor Alston-Singleton [two members of the group chat who received Abdus-Sabur’s original texts] were able to confirm that Mr. Abdus-Sabur actually authored the text messages or that the text messages had not been altered,” Belin wrote. “In fact, Alston-Singleton stated that the exhibit used during her testimony was not from her cell phone and she did not know whose cell phone was used for the exhibit.”
Belin also noted that all of the witnesses involved had some potential biases; the two witnesses who testified on Abdus-Sabur’s original messages both admitted to personally disapproving of McIver’s work as city council president, while the witness who testified on Adbus-Sabur’s subsequent recantation was a McIver aide who could be biased in favor of his boss.
Missing from any of the proceedings were the three people who could have actually shed light on the controversy themselves: LaMonica McIver, Robin McIver, and Hassan Abdus-Sabur. McIver’s attorneys declined to make the candidate or her mother present for the hearing, and a subpoena from Claybrooks’ attorney on Abdus-Sabur was unable to compel him to come.
Thus, Belin was limited to analyzing text message evidence only – evidence that she ultimately decided was not robust enough to warrant tossing McIver from the ballot.
Belin’s decision is subject to review by Secretary of State Tahesha Way, who will certify the final list of candidates in the special primary for the late Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-Newark)’s seat by noon tomorrow. Way had already rejected Belin’s decision on the matter once before; Belin kept McIver on the ballot in an earlier opinion last week, but Way remanded the case back to her after determining that the judge had not given enough time for evidence to be presented.
It remains to be seen whether Way will accept Belin’s new decision as sufficiently thorough. A separate case involving a challenge to Claybrooks’ petitions is also still ongoing, with Way rejecting two different opinions from Administrative Law Judge Susana Guerrero; Guerrero is currently holding a second hearing on that case.