Maloney, Saujani File Petitions

By [Dan Rivoli] The East Side is off to the races. Rep. Carolyn Maloney and Reshma Saujani filed signatures necessary to get on the Democratic primary ballot in September.Once the signatures are certified, this will be the first time Maloney will face a primary challenge since her election in 1992. In her first race for office, Saujani, a former hedge fund attorney, filed 7,250 signatures's nearly six times the minimum amount of signatures for a House race. That will provide a buffer for petition signature challenges, which have p[revented previous candidates running against Maloney](http://www.observer.com/4451/when-carolyn-maloney-didnt-like-primaries) from making the ballot. â??I"m incredibly thankful for our grassroots support's and to our staff, unpaid interns and volunteers for working so hard to get our campaign on the ballot, gathering more than 7,250 signatures and ensuring that after 18 years, voters will finally have a choice in this election, Saujani said in a statement. Maloney, meanwhile, filed more than 23,000 signatures, a hefty sum for this race.ˆ  With a small army of volunteers and interns's the 300th intern recently joined Team Maloney's her campaign knocked on 27,564 doors and dialed 35,171 numbers. Maloney"s petitions were also carried by party Democratic club members. She also petitioned on a slate with the local incumbent Assembly members and state senators. â??I am honored by the overwhelming grassroots support across the district, Maloney said in a statement. â??As I"ve petitioned with my volunteers to get on the ballot, I"ve heard from voters about their priorities and concerns. Their ideas inspire me to fight even harder for New Yorkers in Washington. " But Saujani"s campaign was hit by a fact-checking group that analyzed mailers her campaign sent to the district"s voters. FactCheck.org analyzed claims made in the Saujani mailer that declared her team has taken â??NOT ONE PENNY from special interests. (Saujani is refusing to take money from Political Action Committees, or PACs.) â??Um, really? What about the $220,000 Saujani has received from Wall Street, her leading source of campaign funds, the FactCheck.org piece reads. The piece notes that money from political action committees isn"t the only form of â??special interest cash, and Saujani is relying heavily on money from people working in the financial industry. Saujani"s team is standing by the claims, splitting the difference between a company"s political action committee and those that just work for the company. â??Here are the facts: Reshma Saujani is the only candidate in this race who hasn"t taken a penny from special interest PACs's while Carolyn Maloney has taken more than $2.5 million during her career, said James Allen, Saujani"s spokesperson, in a statement. â??While Reshma was raising money solely from individuals, Carolyn Maloney wasˆ [exploiting her position](http://blog.politicalpartytime.org/tag/spencer-bachus/) on the committee negotiating financial reform toˆ raise money[ at the home of a financial lobbyist](http://politicalpartytime.org/party/22274/) during the negotiations. (The Saujani campaign included the links in the statement.) The statement refers to the committee that Maloney sat on which hashed out the details of the financial reform bill that passed. The Saujani campaign had criticized Maloney for attending a fundraiser at a James Taylor and Carol King concert. There were other lawmakers there, but Maloney was the only one there during the financial reform negotiations. In other East Side races, Assembly Member Jonathan Bing got a challenge from Gregg Lundahl, a government teacher at Washington Irving High School. Lundahl submitted slightly less than 2,400 signatures's more than the 500 needed. Lundahl is getting union support for his bid after Bing authored a bill to end last-hired-first-fired system for teacher layoffs. The teacher"s union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), blasted the bill. The AFL-CIO endorsed Lundahl as well. Michael Mulgrew, the head of the union, gave Lundahl $477.50. The UFT kicked in $3,800. Bing, however, is getting help from Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and charter school groups in his re-election bid. Klein put in $1,000 toward Bing"s $438,000 war chest. Democrats for Education Reform donated $1,000. But unions didn"t ignore Bing entirely. He got money from building workers union 32BJ, health care union 1199/SEIU and DC37, the municipal workers union. No other Democrat has challenged State Sen. Liz Krueger or Assembly Member Micah Kellner. Updated.