BY JACK DELANEY AND COLE SINANIAN
A fierce race in South Queens’ state assembly District 38 is headed to court after Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-backed challenger David Orkin accused centrist incumbent Jenifer Rajkumar of falsifying petitions in a lawsuit that aims to have her dropped from the ballot.
Rajkumar, once a high-profile ally of former Mayor Eric Adams, dismissed these claims in a statement as “political mudslinging” and pointed to a critique of Orkin penned by Latinos Against Socialism.
During petitioning season, which runs from late February to early April, state-level candidates pound the pavement to secure enough signatures from party-affiliated voters in their district — 500 for the Assembly or 1000 for the Senate — to qualify for the June 23 primary.
But Orkin’s lawsuit, filed on Thursday in Queens Supreme Court, names nine specific instances of forgery on Rajkumar’s 2500-signature petition, arguing that there are likely more and that Rajkumar’s name should therefore be removed from the June primary ballot. The court is expected to schedule a hearing and issue a ruling by mid-May.
Rajkumar’s petition allegedly includes the signature of Cary Tilton, a longtime DSA member who signed Orkin’s petition and had also volunteered with several DSA-endorsed campaigns.
“Signing this petition would fly in the face of every action and decision I’ve made in years and is an impossibility,” Tilton said in a statement.
In another instance, three separate pages of Rajkumar’s petition contained the signature of Orkin’s neighbor Phoebe Defino, all of which are forgeries, according to the lawsuit. The signature of one Paul Mastrioanni, meanwhile, shows up on two separate pages of Rajkumar’s petition despite him only signing it once, making one legitimate and the other a forgery.
According to a press statement from Orkin’s campaign, his team began verifying Rajkumar’s petition signatures as part of a “standard review” and identified multiple signatures from “community members who are active supporters of Orkin’s grassroots effort.”
In addition to forgeries, Orkin’s campaign accused Rajkumar of a “disturbing pattern of fraud” that includes entries with non-existent addresses.
“When we began this campaign, we knew that my opponent, the Assembly Member Jenifer Rajkumar, had a high tolerance for corruption,” Orkin said in an Instagram video posted Friday afternoon. “We were still shocked to find what might be the biggest case of petitioning fraud in New York City’s history.”
But Rajkumar’s campaign has pushed back, filing its own motion to dismiss the suit. “This lawsuit is a blatant political stunt from a DSA-backed campaign that knows it cannot compete on the ground,” said spokesperson Arvind Sooknanan in a statement. “Team Jenifer looks forward to a resounding win at the ballot box, where the people of South Queens will reject these desperate tactics and stand with Jenifer’s relentless hard work, historic representation for underserved communities, and a leader who truly loves this job and the people she serves.”
This is not the first time Rajkumar’s campaign has been accused of petition fraud. A 2022 investigation by the New York Focus found that a canvasser working for Rajkumar’s campaign and that of then-state Senate candidate and former City Council member Elizabeth Crowley forged at least four signatures. The irregularities were uncovered by volunteers for now-state Senator and DSA member Kristen Gonzalez, who noticed several names that had suspiciously similar signatures.
City-level races have seen their own share of similar cases. Also in 2022, four residents of Brownsville in Brooklyn accused local Democratic Party leaders of forging their signatures as part of a borough-wide effort to knock grassroots challengers off the ballots for county committee leaders. (The party has for decades faced allegations of exploiting technicalities in the petitioning process to cherry-pick candidates.)
Former Mayor Eric Adams faced accusations of forged signatures in both his 2021 and 2021 campaigns, meanwhile, but ultimately was not penalized.
Rajkumar was first elected to her Assembly seat, which includes Glendale, Ozone Park, Richmond Hill, Ridgewood, and Woodhaven, in 2020, beating out longtime incumbent Michael Miller by a large margin.
After winning reelection unopposed in 2022 and 2024, Rajkumar now faces a stiff challenge from Orkin, an immigrants’ rights attorney running as part of a left-flank DSA slate seeking to support Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s platform in Albany.
For more information about the candidates, read our roundtable interview with Rajkumar here and our conversation with Orkin here.
