Supporters of Lenora Fulani and Frank MacKay are fighting over who decides which candidates get the Independence endorsements and ballot lines.

Dr. Lenora Fulani, a perennial third-party candidate, has been a thorn in Frank MacKay's side for years. And now MacKay, chair of the state Independence Party, is hoping the courts will allow his latest effort to push Fulani and her supporters out of the party.

On April 24, the state's Court of Appeals heard arguments about which faction of the party—the state or the city—controls who gets the party line on the ballot in local elections.

Last June, the state party passed a rule that only the executive committee can issue certificates of authorization, which enable fusion voting, prompting the suit. No matter what the Court of Appeals decides, the state party will endorse candidates in cross-county races. The executive committee also conceded citywide elections. The court ruling will decide only who controls endorsements and ballot lines in elections for borough president, Council, Assembly and State Senate.

Those in the city party, which consists of all the borough committees except for the Bronx and maintains a single office for all boroughs' committee chairs in Lower Manhattan, say this amounts to disenfranchisement.

“MacKay is trying to marginalize the leadership and strip us of our local control,” said Cathy Stewart, chair of the New York County Independence Party. “He wants to control this very valuable piece of political real estate.”

The city leadership, according to the state party, consists only of people loyal to Fulani, a political activist and leader of several third parties.

Fulani did not return a call for comment. But her supporters insist she is responsible for the party's growth in recent years. They credit her with giving blacks and Latinos an alternative to voting for Democrats, which they say explains the votes on the Independence line which helped Michael Bloomberg win both his mayoral campaigns. The city party, which now boasts 92,000 members, has doubled enrollment since 2000.

The Court of Appeals decision, Stewart said, will determine where New York's third largest party goes from here.

“What is the Independence Party brand? That's what's at stake,” Stewart said. “Is it going to be one more top-down controlled third party, or a fundamentally new party that's run from the bottom-up?”

MacKay disagrees with this assessment, arguing that he is in fact trying to put a new leadership structure in place to limit the power of Fulani and long-time cohort Fred Newman, who he says run the city parties like a political cult.

“We didn't take away any local control because there is no local control,” MacKay said. “All the power comes from Fred Newman.”

The schism began after Fulani's anti-Semitic comments from 1989 surfaced in 2005. Instead of denouncing them, Fulani defended them.

“That got the ball rolling,” MacKay said. “Any time she comes across as a spokesperson for the party, it's always death. She's a poison.”

Fulani repudiated the statements last year as she began exploring a 2009 run for mayor.

But that was insufficient for MacKay, who was prompted to change the endorsement process as another way of stripping power from the city organizations.

Under his system, county candidate screening committees make recommendations to the state party executive committee. Though the executive committee has the final word, MacKay said he anticipates that it will generally defer to the county decisions.

“We would lean heavily on the opinions of the local people to make the decision for the local offices,” MacKay said. “These are not ‘yes’ people. They are activists, purists and volunteers.”

The disputed rule dictates that only the state executive committee can endorse candidates in cities with populations of a million or more. This was a deliberate maneuver to solely affect New York City. The state’s second-largest city, Buffalo, has a population of less than 300,000.

“The idea that New York City is the size of many states warrants a different set of rules,” MacKay said. “When a cult of 100 or so people comes in and they could dominate a party while it's fuming out the hatred toward the Jews, it certainly warrants the party to govern itself.”

MacKay's previous attempt to seize more control by trying to strip Fulani, Newman and 100 followers of their enrollment in 2006 was reversed in Manhattan and Brooklyn courts.

There have been other problems as well: in 2002, the city Board of Elections investigated the city Independence Party for inflating its committee membership with voters who do not live in the city or have registered to vote elsewhere.

Despite his intention to block Fulani, MacKay—who now chairs the Independence Party of America—said she is irrelevant to what he called prosperous growth of the party in the state, since she is not well known outside of city politics. Enrollment is expanding rapidly. Fundraising, aided by contributions from the state’s GOP politicians, has remained consistently high.

All this may enhance the impact of the Court of Appeals ruling, expected in May, before this year's petitioning period for state races begins. This fall, the outcome of at least two State Senate races in Queens could potentially rest on the number of votes cast on Row C. And with more than 30 Council seats and all three citywide offices going vacant next year, the power of the local endorsements could be even stronger in 2009.

“In several races where it's close,” said Michael Zumbluskas, member of the state party's executive committee, “the Independence Party can be the difference.”