Harrison's Belmont, disqualified as supervisor, takes eligibility case to Court of Appeals

Former Harrison Supervisor Ron Belmont — who won the 2023 Harrison supervisor's race but was subsequently disqualified from holding that office by a state Supreme Court judge — has asked New York's top court to intervene.

On Thursday, Belmont's attorneys asked the Court of Appeals to agree to hear the dispute over his eligibility to hold office, from which he was disqualified by Justice Lewis Lubell in December.

In the November general election, Belmont, a registered Republican, won a longshot write-in campaign against current Supervisor Richard Dionisio, also a Republican, who was running for re-election. Belmont also beat out the Democratic candidate, Mark Jaffe.

But after declaring Belmont the winner of the race, Lubell held that he was ineligible to hold office. On the same general election ballot, Harrison voters had also approved a term-limits measure preventing a supervisor from serving for more than five terms. Belmont previously served as supervisor for five terms, from 2012 to 2021.

An appeals court dispensed with the case in February, swiping aside nearly all of the complex legal arguments that both Belmont and Dionisio had advanced. Instead, a four-judge panel of the Appellate Division decided the issue based on a bureaucratic quirk. Because the Westchester County Board of Elections certified the term limits result before the result for the supervisor's race, then Belmont could be prevented from taking office, the panel ruled.

Belmont's attorneys lambasted this reasoning in their application to the Court of Appeals Thursday, arguing that the "arbitrary timing" of when various results are certified should not control who wins an election. They further blasted Dionisio for waiting until after the general election to bring a legal challenge to Belmont's eligibility.

"After all, it was Dionisio who caused the issue to be addressed after the election, throwing the entire election into turmoil," they wrote. "There was no indication before the [election] that Dionisio would raise the issue, which would have provided Belmont and the electorate a red flag as to the general election's validity."

If two judges on the Court of Appeals want to hear the case, then the case will be taken up by the full court. A decision could be rendered before the end of the month.

Asher Stockler is a reporter for The Journal News and the USA Today Network New York. You can send him an email at astockler@lohud.com. Reach him securely: asher.stockler@protonmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Harrison NY supervisor eligibility case taken to high court by Belmont