[This story has been updated.]

The race to succeed Adriano Espaillat in the Assembly, a crowded field featuring no less than eight candidates, is in danger of being overshadowed by Miguel Martinez, the disgraced former City Council member who ran against Espaillat in the 2008 primary for the seat.

Martinez, who is currently serving a five-year jail sentence after admitting to stealing tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money, has ties to two of the candidates running. And a third candidate, NelsonDenis, is using the Martinez scandal to cast doubt on his prime rival’s credentials.

Denis, a former Assembly member and film producer who represented the neighboring district in East Harlem before being unseated by Adam Clayton Powell IV, claims that his chief rival, Guillermo Linares, a former Bloomberg administration official who previously held the Council seat from 1992 through 2001, is tainted in the eyes of voters by his failed attempt to win Martinez’s seat last year. (Linares was tapped by Martinez’s committee on vacancies to run in the councilman’s place, but was booted from the ballot days later for filing errors attributed to Martinez’s campaign.)

“His attempt to get on the ballot with the Martinez signatures left a real terrible taste in everybody’s mouth,” Denis said. “It was not just with respect to that race. It was like a statement of character.”

Denis is also alleging that Linares’s campaign is really a self-serving attempt to gain a foothold in the community for an eventual run for Charlie Rangel’s congressional seat, at the time when the long-serving congressman retires or is defeated.

“I see a lot of political triangulation,” Denis said.

Linares dismissed Denis’s allegations, explaining that he was first interested in running for Eric Schneiderman’s State Senate seat, but decided instead to run for Assembly after learning that Espaillat would be seeking that office.

“I felt that the two of us running from the same base was not the best thing to do,” said Linares, who was the first Dominican elected to any political office in New York. “We would cancel each other out.”

Espaillat endorsed Linares’s candidacy, as have a host of other elected officials, including Schneiderman, Rep. Charlie Rangel, Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has not weighed in, but some supporters say an endorsement could be forthcoming.

Linares and Espaillat did not always see eye-to-eye. In 1999, Linares ran for district leader against Martinez, who at the time was considered Espaillat’s protégé. Linares also ran against Schneiderman in a primary in 2002. After that failed bid, he was hired by the Bloomberg administration.

Denis, who once produced a quasi-autobiographical film called Vote For Me! about his previous runs for office, predicted that Espaillat and Linares’s “marriage of convenience” will likely fall apart when both make known their intentions to run for Rangel’s congressional seat.

Linares’s supporters, on the other hand, portray Denis as a political opportunist who only moved into the district to run for office.

Denis, who is riling up local pols with his souped up campaign truck, complete with oversized speakers and pictures of his face on the side, is also trying to influence other North Manhattan races, encouraging attorney Richard Realmuto to run for Civil Court judgeship.

As they battle for the same base, Linares and Denis finished this filing with very similar numbers. Laura Acosta, Linares’s campaign manager, said the campaign raised around $51,000 and gathered over 5,000 signatures. Denis’s campaign, on the other hand, raised about $52,000 and gathered some 6,000 signatures, said campaign manager Eli Valentin.

With all the sniping between Linares and Denis, the other candidates in the race, like Miguel Estrella, Julissa Gomez and Gabriela Rosa, expressed concern that their campaigns would go unnoticed. To that end, Rosa, a former staffer for both Assembly Member Denny Farrell and Martinez, has secured endorsements from both Farrell and Council Member Robert Jackson.

Rosa, who was chief of staff for Martinez before resigning in 2004, several years before his arrest, batted back the suggestion that her work for a man now behind bars in federal prison could hinder her candidacy as well.

“One of the reasons I left was because I was smelling something fishy around,” Rosa said, “and I didn’t know where it was.”