THE
CityREVIEW NewRochelle August 12, 2016 | Vol. 4, Number 21 | www.cityreviewnr.com
Benson knocked off primary ballot in DA race By COREY STOCKTON Staff Writer
Hillary Clinton accepted the nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, July 28, becoming the first female ever to be nominated for president by a major political party. For more, see page 6. Photo courtesy Twitter
DiNapoli: Mid-Hudson region economy shows strength By SIBYLLA CHIPAZIWA Editorial Assistant The mid-Hudson region is showing economic strength following the recession, but its high cost of living and doing business could obstruct future growth, according to an economic profile released by the Office of the New
York State Comptroller. State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a released statement that while the region’s closeness to New York City has helped the economy, it “needs to carefully manage its ongoing need for services and infrastructure improvements given the already high cost of living.”
The mid-Hudson region is made up of the counties of Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Dutchess, Ulster and Sullivan, with a total of 198 municipalities. The biggest highlight of the report is the annual regionwide unemployment rate dropping from 7.6 percent in 2012 to 4.7
percent in 2015. Further, according to the state Department of Labor, the unemployment rate for June 2016 has improved with the mid-Hudson region’s rate averaging out to just below 4 percent, which is lower than the state’s 4.7 percent for the same ECONOMY continued on page 9
Following a ruling by the Westchester County Board of Elections, Mitch Benson will not be able to challenge for the Republican nomination for district attorney, ending his plans of a primary battle against GOP frontrunner Bruce Bendish. The Board of Elections requires potential candidates for elections to submit petitions from registered voters within the party whose line they are seeking to run on. Both Benson and Bendish surpassed the 2,000-signature requirement, but on Aug. 3, the county Board of Elections found more than 1,000 of Benson’s 2,700 signatures to be invalid. Benson filed a lawsuit with the Westchester Supreme Court in attempt to validate his petition, and even though the court reinstated some of the grieved signatures, it wasn’t enough for him to meet the requirement to appear on the primary ballot. Doug Colety, commissioner of the county Board of Elections, said the Judge Bruce Tolbert— alongside attorneys for Benson, Bendish and the Board of Elections—went through Benson’s petition line by line for three days, by which time it became “mathematically impossible” for him to meet the requirement threshold. “The majority of [the chal-
lenges to Benson’s petition] pertained to people not registered to vote, people not enrolled in the Republican Party and defective witnesses’ petition statements,” Colety told the Review. Bendish submitted more than 4,000 signatures to the Board of Elections following his endorsement by the county GOP at the party’s nominating convention in April. At the convention, Bendish also received nearly 75 percent of votes from Republican delegates. Following the court’s decision, Benson said, “While I disagree with certain discretionary and technical determinations which invalidated hundreds of signatures, I recognize it is part of the political process and within the authority of the Board of Elections and the court to make the decisions they did.” Now, Bendish, 69, will begin his general election campaign against Democratic candidate Anthony Scarpino. “We’re comfortable that we put this primary question behind PRIMARY continued on page 11