Green Party gubernatorial candidate could lose ballot position

After a fourteen-hour marathon court hearing today, a judge has rejected 303 signatures from the nominating petition of the new Green Party candidate for governor, Lily Benavides, leaving her with a cushion of just 142 as she heads into day three of a challenge mounted by Democrats.

Benavides is a late replacement candidate after Stephen N. Zielinski, Sr., facing serious health issues, withdrew from the race earlier this month.  New Jersey election law requires independent candidates to refile petitions to protect their ballot position if a candidate drops out.

The Green Party nominee submitted 2,444 signatures, 444 over the required 2,000-signature threshold.  After Raj Parikh, the attorney for the Morris County Democratic Committee, challenged 428 signatures in court over two days, bringing Benavides’ total down to 2,141.

Administrative Law Judge Tama Hughes ended today’s hearing around 11:30 PM and will resume the third day at 9 AM tomorrow.  There are still hundreds of signature challenges remaining; Hughes has reserved judgment on two signatures.

The deadline to reach a decision is tomorrow, with Secretary of State Tahesha Way making the final call.

But the greatest obstacle to Benavides’ candidacy is a legal issue that Hughes has not yet decided: the Green Party paid Geoff Sebesta, a political operative from Winchester, Kentucky, to come to New Jersey and secure petition signatures.

Parikh maintains that the state election law requires petition circulators to be eligible to vote, and that would disqualify eighteen books of petitions witnessed by Sebesta since a Kentucky resident isn’t eligible to vote in New Jersey.

Barry Bendar, the New Jersey Green Party election chairman, says paid circulators in the past without a problem, citing Libertarian Party filings in 2024 that included an out-of-state circulator.

“Any prior acts or omissions of the Division are irrelevant to the application of the law and binding precedent here,” Parikh said.  “The Division of Elections accepts petitions as they are and leaves it to this very challenge process to identify defects. The lack of a prior challenge does not equate to or support a modification of an express and clear statute and binding precedent from the Superior Court.”

Bendar noted that a new state law that doubled the number of signatures needed for an independent candidate to get on the ballot from 1,000 to 2,000 “placed quite a burden on us, but we took up the challenge.”

He said Zielinski obtained nearly 4,000 signatures after contracting with a company that “specialized in using professional petitioners for prospective candidates for office.”