Finley May Take Legal Action in NYTHA Election Dispute

by T.D. Thornton

After failing to make headway with an official protest letter that demanded a new election, Terry Finley said he now believes he will be forced to resort to legal action in an attempt to resolve his disputed 14-vote loss in the Dec. 1 election for the presidency of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association. 

Finley is contesting the election, which he lost to incumbent Rick Violette, Jr., 625-611, on the grounds that as many as 1,500 eligible NYTHA voters either did not receive ballots or received them too late to be counted in the official tally. 
In addition, Finley has charged the NYTHA with not conducting the election in an ethical manner because three of the election committee members are either NYTHA employees or consultants who “serve at the pleasure of the president and the board,” making it impossible for them to function in a “fair and unbiased” manner. 

“This is America, and one of the core tenets is we have fair elections,” said Finley, the president and founder of West Point Thoroughbreds. “We’re not a third-world country. I’ve got no problem getting beat. And who knows, maybe I’ll get beat if we have a re-election. I’m okay with that, I really am. But you’ve got to afford people the opportunity to have a voice, and this was absolutely, totally out of the box. It’s just not right.” 

NYTHA officials have yet to confirm the official results, number of votes cast or number of ballots that were sent out. Yesterday, NYTHA officials declined to comment or return phone calls when reached by the TDN. 

“I have nothing to say,” NYTHA executive director James Gallagher said on Thursday before hanging up abruptly.
 
Neither Violette, a trainer who has served as the organization’s president since 2008, nor Alan Foreman, who serves as both an attorney and an election committee member for the NYTHA, returned voicemails Thursday before the deadline for this story.

“You really just shake your head and say, ‘You can’t really make this stuff up.’” Finley said. “We’re probably just going to have to go through the court system.” 

Finley said that, initially, he had no plans to contest his narrow defeat. 

“But then I was literally inundated with people who knew I had lost by 14 votes. They contacted me saying they had begged and pleaded to get ballots, and that they either didn’t get them or they had gotten them too late,” Finley said. “That’s what caused me to change my mind and to protest the election.” 

In his Dec. 8 letter to NYTHA sent via certified mail, Finley initially alleged that some 1,000 members did not receive ballots in time for the election. But in a phone interview Thursday, he said he now believes that number might approach 1,500. 

“The real key here is the organization does not keep a current membership list,” Finley explained. “So when someone gets a horse and gets licensed from New York State [as an individual owner or via partnership], NYTHA does not have a process whereby they get an update for their list. It seems like a no-brainer, but NYTHA has refused to make any substantive effort to sync with the state. As a result, they either don’t send out ballots to people or have a woefully inadequate roster.” 

A page on the NYTHA website explains that “Any owner or trainer who is licensed by New York State Racing and Wagering Board (NYSRWB) and has run a horse at the NYRA tracks in the past two years is automatically a NYTHA member.” 

All members, Finley said, are supposed to be eligible to vote. 

Rick Porter, owner of Fox Hill Farm, said he complained to NYTHA officials about not receiving a ballot. According to Porter, when a NYTHA official checked the mailing list, it came up with a Kentucky address that he no longer uses. He told the official that all his other correspondence from NYTHA comes to his proper Florida address, which is also the address on his New York owner’s license. 

“The bottom line is, if Finley can document that a number of people didn’t get their ballots, I think they should have a new election,” Porter said, pointing out that he has since heard of at least six other New York owners who did not get ballots. 

Harry Landry, an owner and breeder based in Saratoga, got his ballot the very day results were to be tabulated. 

“I was so annoyed when I read the letter,” Landry said. “Here I am opening it at the post office, and it says my response was supposed to be received by Dec. 1, which is the day I received it.” 

Finley said he was aware of the address database problem before the election, and when he pointed it out to NYTHA officials, they chalked it up to the state not being cooperative about releasing names and addresses of horsemen. 
Lee Park, a spokesman for the New York State Gaming Commission, confirmed this could be a problem, saying the names of occupational licensees are searchable on the NYSGC website, and you can even import them into a spreadsheet. But for privacy reasons, the state won’t release addresses, even if an entity makes a freedom-of-information request for them. 

“I do understand that this is the first time there’s been a contested election in a long, long time for the presidency,” Finley said. “But when we brought this up, it just seems as if [NYTHA] just did what they wanted to do. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say ‘the state won’t provide us with names’ while not being aggressive about coordinating with [the New York Racing Association] and doing everything you can to get more and more people who are eligible and [should be] members of NYTHA. You can’t be passive on both fronts.” 

Another plank in Finley’s protest is that three election committee members—Gallagher, Foreman and NYTHA auditor Craig Gegorek—should not have been overseeing the voting, because as employees or consultants serving under the incumbent administration, “they have an interest” in keeping the status quo. 

“There’s really no independence at all. That in and of itself is a conflict,” Finley said. “They’ve just had no accountability for so long that they are amazed that anybody would say, ‘Hey, this is not the way things should work.’” 

In his protest letter, Finley further accused Foreman of misrepresenting his positions during the campaign process, and of trying to obtain support for Violette from horsemen in Kentucky, Florida and California who are also eligible to vote in New York. 

“The ball is in their court,” Finley said. “What needs to happen is every eligible member of NYTHA should get a ballot and we let the chips fall where they may. I like to think there’s a good shot that we have a new election because I really believe that’s what should happen.”