A prominent lawyer who is a candidate for mayor of New York City filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to run on the Independence Party line in the general election in November.
The lawyer, Jim Walden, left the Democratic Party more than a decade ago and hopes to run as a third-party candidate.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, argues that a state law enacted in 2022 that prohibits the use of the word “independence” on a ballot line is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit calls the law a “naked attempt to limit competitive elections, enforcing a duopoly between the Democratic and Republican parties.”
Mr. Walden, a former prosecutor who is running on an anti-corruption platform, said in an interview that it made sense for him, as a political outsider, to run on the Independence Party ballot line, as former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg did in 2001, 2005 and 2009. Mr. Walden has said that he is a political independent and has some views that are liberal some that are conservative.
“I think that people are sick and tired of the extremes of the parties driving the conversation,” he said. “People want to focus on the pocketbook issues that matter to them.”
The field of candidates in the mayoral race is unsettled, and it is possible that a third-party challenge could play a significant role.
Mayor Eric Adams, a conservative Democrat who has been indicted on federal corruption charges, is facing a competitive Democratic primary in June. Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, is planning to run for mayor as a Republican again after losing to Mr. Adams in the general election in 2021.
The Independence Party once had more than 400,000 registered voters in the state. Some Democrats have argued that its name sowed confusion by courting independent voters who were unaffiliated with any party.
The party was founded in New York State in 2001 and has endorsed Republican and Democratic candidates, including former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who is considering running for mayor. It was led for years by Fred Newman, a highly unconventional psychotherapist who helped Mr. Bloomberg become mayor.
In 2020, the party lost its ballot status after failing to meet a new threshold for third parties, which must garner at least 130,000 votes or 2 percent of the total vote to stay on the ballot.
Gov. Kathy Hochul then signed a law in 2022 prohibiting a state party from using the words “independent” and “independence” in its name.
Mr. Walden’s lawsuit argues that the state law violates the First and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution by limiting political speech and violating the equal protection clause. He said he believed that the lawsuit was a “slam dunk.”
Mr. Adams, who was a registered Republican in the 1990s, has been friendly with President-elect Donald J. Trump and recently opened the door to returning to the Republican Party. He has a record-low approval rating, and his campaign was recently denied public matching funds.
Mr. Walden said that he believed that Democrats would choose either a weak candidate in Mr. Adams or what he described as a “far-left” politician, who would then face Mr. Sliwa, leaving an opening for a third-party candidate.
“I’m confident that there’s enough purple that there’s a very wide path for me to win this race,” he said.
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