Apr 9, 2014 By Steve Ferris sferris@heraldstandard.Com 2 min read

A Commonwealth Court judge on Tuesday threw out Rose Mary Ambrosino’s nominating petition to run for the Democratic nomination to represent the 32nd Senatorial District.

Judge Bernard L. McGinley determined that the petition, which was challenged by Patricia Basinger of Connellsville and Marybeth Homistek of Fairchance, was invalid at a hearing in Pittsburgh.

They filed a challenge to 428 of the 582 signatures on Ambrosino’s petition. Candidates are required to gather 500 signatures of registered Democrats in the district to appear on the May 2 primary ballot. Ambrosino, of Uniontown, had 582 signatures on her 31-page petition.

In court documents, Pittsburgh attorney Clifford B. Levine, who represented Basinger, argued that the petition contained “numerous defective signatures, illegible signatures, signatures in the hand of another and signatures of unregistered voters” and that entire pages of the petition may be invalid because of defects in the affidavits of seven people who circulated petitions for Ambrosino

Pages circulated by Jennifer L. Jeffries, Terrell A. Poole and Florence W. Archol should be nullified because they did not provide full or current addresses on their affidavits, Levine said.

The pages circulated by Felicia Fike, Rebecca McGifford, Ashley Leventry and Gina Marie Pellick-Pascolini should be disqualified because the circulators are not registered Democrats, which the election code requires, Levine argued.

The pages allegedly invalidated by defective circulator affidavits represent 190 of the 428 challenged signatures, according to Levine.

Ambrosino could not be reached for comment.

Deberah Kula and Harry Fike are seeking the Democratic nomination for the seat held by Sen. Richard A. Kasunic, who decided not to run for another term.