Judge rules against Binder on GOP ballot

WEST CHESTER >> A Common Pleas Court Judge has ordered the name of an East Bradford attorney removed from the Republican Party ballot for the upcoming Municipal Primary Election for one of West Chester’s two district court positions, ruling that he did not have enough valid signatures on his nominating petition.

Judge Jacqueline Carroll Cody ruled on Friday that Bret Binder had failed to deliver petitions with the required 100 valid voter signatures to have his name appear on the GOP ballot to face off against incumbent Magisterial District Judge Mark Bruno. Cody did so after hearing arguments in a hearing last Friday.

Binder’s name will now appear only on the Democratic ballot in the May 16 primary. Bruno’s name will appear on both ballots.

An attorney for Binder, Lawrence Otter of Doylestown, said the candidate was preparing an appeal to challenge Cody’s ruling on his argument that the challenge to Binder’s petition filed by the Republican Committee of Chester County and West Chester resident Richard Anstey was deficient as it was “poorly crafted.”

“She’s wrong on the law,” Otter said in an interview Wednesday. He said that Cody had not accepted his argument that the challenges to individual signatures on nominating petitions must list the page and line numbers of the signatures in question to be valid. “The (state) Supreme Court says that’s the way you have to do it.”

The attorney who represented the committee and Anstey, Michael Gill of the West Chester firm of Buckley, Brion, McGuire & Morris, at the hearing before Cody could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

In the petition filed on March 15, the challengers said that Binder’s petition to appear on the GOP ballot contained a number of signatures that did not conform to state law regarding nominating petitions.

Among the challenges were that some who signed were not registered Republicans in Chester County; had already signed petitions for Bruno; gave improper addresses; had illegible addresses or dates when they signed; or had identical handwriting as other signatures.

The petition cited 26 signatures that should be considered invalid. Binder’s petition contained only 109 signatures, so the loss of those challenged signatures would drop him below the 100 necessary to have his name appear on the GOP ballot. In her order, Cody did not cite which signatures she was voiding as invalid, only that Binder’s name be stricken from the GOP ballot.

The court that the two men are seeking to supervise as magisterial district judge is among the busiest in the state, and has the highest volume of cases in the county. In the past decades, it has handled over 283,000 cases — criminal, civil, and parking-related. The court jurisdiction covers three wards in West Chester — wards three, six, and seven — and the townships of East Bradford and West Bradford.

Binder is an attorney in private practice with the East Bradford firm of Binder & Canno, handling mostly real estate and business law. A Democrat, he previously ran for state representative in the 156th Legislative District in 2014 and was a law clerk for retired state Supreme Court Justice Sandra Schultz Newman.

Bruno, a lifelong resident of West Chester, is among the longest serving of any of the lower court judges in the county, having taken the position more than 18 years ago. Among the various awards and honors that Bruno cites in his resume, he lists past president of the Special Court Judges Association of Pennsylvania, and chairman of the Minor Court Rules Committee of the state Supreme Court. He took office in November 1998.