One of the Republican candidates seeking the nomination to run against Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) recently dropped out of her primary race and blamed Governor Andrew Cuomo’s “draconian” lockdown orders for hurting her campaign.

Scherie Murray told “Fox & Friends First” on Thursday: “It’s unfortunate, but what we’ve learned is the governor’s selective executive orders have really put a wrench into my campaign.”

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“He had the choice to change the election in ways for which it could have been a more democratic process, but instead he chose to leave portions of the designating nominating petition process open to challenges and unfortunately I succumbed to challenges from my opponent and the local establishment,” Murray said.

Murray also cited Cuomo’s nursing home policy (no longer used) for which critics claim is responsible for thousands of coronavirus deaths.

Cuomo’s office has said the original nursing home policy was in line with a March 13 directive from the Trump administration’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that were distributed to all states regarding how to diminish infections in nursing homes. The guidance says “nursing homes should admit any individuals that they would normally admit to their facility, including individuals from hospitals where a case of COVID-19 was/is present.”

New York’s nursing home coronavirus death count was at 5,601 last week, an increase of 203 over six days. Murray said, “The governor’s draconian, heavy-handed, ill-advised executive orders not only killed our most vulnerable population, but it also killed our opportunity to ballot and it really infringed upon my First Amendment rights.”

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How Were Other Candidates Able to Navigate These Obstacles?

Fox News host Todd Piro noted that “critics would say other candidates were able to deal with those executive orders and remain on the ballot” and wondered how she would respond to those observations.

“To add insult to injury we sourced a vendor who we tasked in good faith to collect qualifying petition signatures and according to the overarching entity, the New York City Board of Elections, unfortunately that vendor violated New York state election laws so it was a double whammy for the campaign with the governor’s executive order,” Murray said. “Had he not selectively changed portions of that petition process perhaps we could have prevailed,” she said, adding that “it’s a tough pill to swallow.” June 23 is New York’s primary election.

This piece originally appeared in ThePoliticalInsider.com and is used by permission.

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