HILLTOWNS — A court challenge has taken Democrat Hébert Joseph off his own party’s line as he attempts to unseat Conservative Chris Smith as the legislator for Albany County’s 39th District.

According to a petition signed by Smith and attorney Matthew Clyne, Joseph’s nominating petition was invalid because some of the sheets within the petition had the names of other candidates whose petitions would need to be filed in different offices, and because some sheets included two witness signatures when the sheets, in accordance with state law, explicitly state that there may only be one witness, according to court documents. 

Albany County Supreme Court Justice Denise Hartman ruled in favor of Smith’s challenge on April 28. She had stopped short of invalidating Joseph’s entire petition, choosing instead to strike the non-compliant sheets from his petition, ultimately leaving him with far less than the 118 signatures he needed to appear on the Democratic line.

Only 24 signatures were left valid out of the 280 signatures Joseph submitted, by the court’s count. 

Joseph could not be reached for comment.

Smith told The Enterprise that the issues with Joseph's petition were brought to him by the Albany County Board of Elections. Albany County’s Democratic Elections Commissioner Kathleen Donovan said that the board of elections had a split decision over the validity of the petition.

“Once I learned that they were sloppy, I had to act upon it,” Smith said.

Smith had won twice on the Democratic line — first in 2015, unseating Republican incumbent Deborah Busch, and then again in 2019, running unopposed — while Clyne, his lawyer, was formerly the Democratic commissioner for the Albany County Board of Elections. 

Smith did not seek Democrats’ endorsements this year, nor did anyone besides Joseph. 

Removal from the Democratic line is an ironic blow for Joseph, who as chairman of the Democratic Party in Rensselaerville, successfully kept state senate candidate Gary Greenberg off a Democratic primary ballot in 2020 over signatures that were considered invalid for various reasons, such as the person who signed listing the village they lived in rather than their town (which appears to have occurred on Joseph’s petitions as well). 

After all was said and done, Greenberg was left with 291 signatures out of the 337 he submitted — just nine short of what was then a 300-signature requirement. 

Albany County’s Democratic Elections Commissioner Kathleen Donovan told The Enterprise this week that, short of an appeal, there’s no way that Joseph will be able to appear on the Democratic line, but he will still appear on the Working Families party line and he can still get signatures to appear as a candidate running on a line for an independent party he would create.

“He could go back to the people who signed for him on the Democratic petition and have them sign for him on the Independent [line] or any other voter who has not signed another [valid] petition,” she said in an email. “As an Independent candidate, he would need 208 signatures to get on the ballot on an independent line. An Independent petition would require him to create a party name and party logo as well.”

The filing dates for independent petitions, she said, are May 23 to 30, and the signing period has already begun. 

Albany County Democratic Chairman Jacob Crawford told The Enterprise that he has “not had a chance to strategize and discuss with Hébert his plan for an independent ballot line for November. The loss of the Democratic Line for candidates in the Hilltowns is a definite setback. Row A on November ballots will be very successful throughout Albany County and we expect our candidates running on the Democratic Line to be successful across the board.”

Joseph has criticized Smith, who owns Maple on the Lake in Berne, for his low political profile and has promised that, if he wins, he will donate $2,500 to each library in the district, and $10,000 a year to the Hilltowns Community Resource Center over the four years.

After the recent redistricting, the 39th District is made up of Berne, Rensselaerville, and Westerlo, plus a small portion of New Scotland.