Foster's Nomination Petition Challenged by Rudnick as 8th Race Heats Up

With the deadline for challenging approaching, one challenge has already been filed in the 8th District City Council race, against Independent .

According to the office of the County Board of Elections, a challenge was filed on behalf of Independent candidate to the nomination petition for Foster.

Foster has 875 signatures on his petition, which he began circulating six days before the deadline to submit.

Larry Otter, Rudnick’s attorney, said that he would challenge more than 300 of those signatures as line-item eliminations. Signatures can be eliminated on the basis that some of the signers are not registered voters and some live outside of the 8th District.

“He’s submitted approximately 875 signatures, and he needs 750 for the nomination. I can challenge approximately 350 and all I have to win is 150 of them, so do the math,” Otter said.

Another reason for challenging signatures is that volunteers who circulated the petitions were not all from within the district. Although an opinion written by the judge in a District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania- Morrill vs. Weaver (2002)- states that requiring the circulators to live within the district violates Freedom of Speech, Pennsylvania courts have “uniformly rejected that opinion,” Otter said.

Responding to the challenge, Foster said, “I got my signatures in five days and I hurriedly got them in at the 11th hour. Is it possible that people who said they were registered in the 8th and weren’t? Sure. If you live on Stenton, one side is the 8th and the other isn’t, so it can get confusing, but I was very careful about asking those questions.”

The deadline for challenging the nomination petitions is 5 p.m. Monday, so more challenges may come. Neither Rudnick nor Foster would discuss their future legal strategies in the 8th District race.

“I practiced law for a long time, and I know a lawyer’s worst nightmare is having his client talk off at the mouth on matters that are going before a court,” Rudnick said. He added that he would have a statement prepared when the matter is resolved.