Petition challenge filed against Acevedo in Allentown City Council race
A petition challenge has been filed against Luis Acevedo seeking to reject his bid to be a Democratic candidate for Allentown City Council in the May 20 primary.
John Santana, a resident of Allentown, filed a nomination petition challenge on Friday in Lehigh County Court.
Santana, an Allentown resident, is alleging that Acevedo’s statement of financial interests was received by the city clerk’s office past the deadline. Santana’s lawsuit says it was received via email at 5:39 p.m. on March 12, a day after the March 11 deadline.
Attorney Matthew Mobilio, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Santana, said that outside groups, campaign managers and candidates actively look for these discrepancies.
“There are always people monitoring everything that's being filed for missing signatures, for fraudulent signatures, for statements of financial interest that aren’t filed [on time],” Mobilio said in a phone call. “It’s all a matter of public record.”
Mobilio also noted that late filings of statements of financial interests cannot be cured, meaning they cannot be corrected.
Acevedo declined to comment. Santana could not be reached for comment.
Acevedo is among eight Democrats who filed nomination petitions for four open seats on council. In addition to collecting valid signatures, candidates must file financial interest statements.
The other candidates are incumbents Cynthia Mota, Daryl Hendricks and Natalie Santos, and Jeremy Binder, Christian Pungo, Patrick Palmer and Ben Stemrich. No Republicans filed nomination papers.
Acevedo is a manager for RJ Walker and is president of the East Side Memorial Little League. He ran an unsuccessful primary campaign for council in 2023.
Santana most recently worked as a field organizer for the Pennsylvania Democrats, according to his LinkedIn page. In April 2022, he was one of two people who challenged the nominating petitions of Norberto Dominguez Jr. of Allentown. Dominguez dropped out of the Democratic primary for the state House 22nd District after his nominating petitions were challenged in Commonwealth Court.
Challenging nominating petitions is a longtime campaign strategy that has been used more frequently in recent elections. Often the validity of signatures are challenged.