A man who recently died won the Republican primary for state assembly in a northern New York district on Tuesday.
Although uncommon, this was by no means the first time American voters have cast their ballots for the deceased.
Bill Nojay, 59, the incumbent in the 133rd district near Rochester, fatally shot himself last Friday, the New York Times reported. His name still appeared on the primary ballot and he beat his opponent, Rick Milne, the mayor of Honeoye Falls.
Now that Nojay has won, a successor must be chosen within 10 days of his death by the chairmen of the Republican parties in Monroe, Steuben and Livingston counties, which make up New York’s 133rd district. That person will go on to face Democrat Barbara Baer, a lawyer and social worker who is running unopposed, in the general election.
Lowell Conrad, the chairman of the Livingston County Republican party, told the Times he hoped to find someone “as close to him as possible, philosophically” to take Nojay’s place.
The incumbent assemblyman was an early supporter of Donald Trump’s presidential run and urged him to run for New York governor as a path to the White House in 2013, according to the Times. Nojay was later a co-chairman of Trump’s New York campaign committee.
The Hornell Republican committee had previously endorsed Nojay. Despite his death, they encouraged citizens to cast their vote for him on Facebook. A page for Nojay’s campaign asked voters to honor the assemblyman’s memory by voting for him one last time. While one voter expressed discomfort with the “idea of casting a ballot for someone to be named later”, the few other online commenters said they would vote for Nojay.
“Asking people to vote for Mr Nojay, I don’t believe that’s truly being done to memorialize the person; I believe it’s because they want to get their own local person elected,” Milne told the Times of his opponent on Monday.
Both local and national elections have seen politicians elected posthumously. In 1962 in California, congressman Clement Miller who died in a plane crash was reelected to the House of Representatives, according to the Washington Post. In 1972, congressmen Nick Begich and Hale Boggs vanished in a plane in Alaska and won their reelections. Former Missouri governor Mel Carnahan won the US Senate race in his state in 2000, though he died in a plane crash. Congresswoman Patsy Mink won re-election in Hawaii in 2002 after she died from pneumonia. Local officials have been elected in Missouri, Washington state, Tennessee, Florida and Alabama despite having passed away before the election. Their posts were filled by appointments or special elections.
The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported that Nojay was scheduled to appear in court on Friday on fraud-related charges over his handling of a trust fund as an attorney. Additionally, he was “a silent partner in a company that won a tentative contract to oversee the second phase of the $1.3bn Rochester schools modernization project” and involved in a separate fraud trial in Cambodia, the paper wrote.
Nojay had a lengthy local political history and was also the host of his own radio show, an attorney and a small-business owner, according to his biography. According to the Associated Press, he was “critical of the state legislature, where he had limited influence in the Democratic-dominated assembly” and “claimed too little was being done to help upstate New York”. He was also an advocate of gun rights and an opponent of abortion, the Associated Press wrote.
The Rochester native had graduate degrees in law and business from Columbia University and was once a research fellow at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, Nepal. He and his wife had three children. His funeral will be held on Friday.
