February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
O’Hara has been banned from voting in his native Brooklyn because he voted from his girlfriend’s address during several elections in 1992 and ’93.
He is the first New Yorker to be convicted of voting fraud since suffragette Susan B. Anthony in 1876.
O’Hara has charged that the case against him was generated by a Democratic Party leadership in Brooklyn angered by his maverick politically activity over the year.
O’Hara has run for various offices as a Democrat in opposition to party leadership’s choice. He has also managed campaigns for others not on the party’s official slate.
O’Hara’s case is listed for appeal in a Brooklyn federal court on Jan. 31. The hearing, however, could be moved into February, O’Hara said this week.
In an editorial last week, the Times Union said that the federal court had the power to set aside a decision of the New York Court of Appeals that upheld O’Hara’s conviction for voter fraud.
The paper expressed the hope that the federal court would do just that “in the name of justice, and in the interest of democracy.”
DIED AFTER SEEING LATE MOVIE
The Dublin man who was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Pennsylvania just before Christmas was returning from a midnight showing of the latest “Lord of the Rings” movie,” his widow Elaine Smith said this week.
Paul Smith, a 37-year-old married man with a 3-year-old daughter, was found dead by Interstate 81 on Wednesday morning, Dec. 18. The car in which he had been driving alone was found crashed about a half mile from where his body was found. It had apparently veered off the highway and down an embankment.
Smith had managed to walk the intervening distance from the car, but police believe that at this point he was struck by another vehicle.
Paul Smith had lived in Hanover Township, close to Wilkes-Barre, with his wife, Elaine, their daughter, Kaylee, as well as Smith’s stepson, Christopher Mendoza.
“Paul had read all the ‘Lord of the Rings’ books; he was a big fan,” Elaine Smith said.
She said that he had decided to see a midnight showing of the 3-hour-long film, which had just opened in area theaters.
But, as it turned out, the showing at the local theatre was all booked up. As a result, Smith drove to another theater farther away from the couple’s home. He was killed while returning home sometime after 3 a.m.
MCGUINNESS FOR ALBANY
Sinn F