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John Liu Plots a Comeback Trail, Targeting a Renegade Democrat

John Liu, the former city comptroller, campaigned to be mayor in 2013, but finished fourth in the Democratic primary. He is now seeking to re-enter politics, challenging State Senator Tony Avella of Queens.Credit...Uli Seit for The New York Times

The former city comptroller John C. Liu is making another attempt at a political comeback, declaring himself a candidate against State Senator Tony Avella of Queens, a member of the now disbanded group of breakaway Democrats reviled by progressives.

Mr. Liu’s decision to run, and the requisite last-minute petition drive — his supporters started collecting signatures last week and submitted them to the Board of Elections on Thursday — come on the heels of the recent surprise primary victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive political newcomer who dethroned Representative Joseph Crowley, energizing the Democratic Party’s left wing and shaking up politics in Queens, where Mr. Crowley holds outsize influence.

Mr. Avella’s district partially overlaps Mr. Crowley’s district. Mr. Liu ran against Mr. Avella in 2014, in his first bid for a comeback after running a distant fourth in the Democratic primary for mayor the previous year, when he was weakened by a campaign finance scandal. Mr. Avella beat him.

Mr. Avella was one of eight senators who made up the Independent Democratic Conference, known as the I.D.C., which for years worked with Republicans in an arrangement that allowed the Republican Party to control the State Senate.

Progressive Democrats have vowed to unseat the I.D.C., despite a pledge by the group, announced in April by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, to dissolve, rejoin the main body of Senate Democrats and end its alliance with Republicans.

Mr. Avella had been the only senator in the I.D.C. to have avoided a progressive challenger this year, according to Lisa DellAquila, a leader of True Blue NY, an activist group that is focused on defeating I.D.C. members in Democratic primaries, and helped coordinate the petition drive to put Mr. Liu on the ballot.

“A little over a week ago, we got together and I told them that I’d be willing to run, but they had to mount a grass-roots petition drive and get me on the ballot, and if they can do that, I’ll run,” Mr. Liu said on Friday. “I have to be honest, I wasn’t totally sure that they’d be able to do it. It was already the beginning of July, a lot of people are out of town, it’s a holiday week and the deadline was impending in days, but it really was impressive the way they organized almost overnight.”

He needed 1,000 valid signatures from Democratic voters in the district. Ms. DellAquila said that they submitted about 3,000.

Mr. Liu, 51, who has spent the last few years teaching public finance at Columbia University and Baruch College, had been approached in recent months about running against Mr. Avella again but he declined. A former Democratic assemblyman, John Duane, had committed to running, but dropped out after the I.D.C. struck its deal with Mr. Cuomo.

A similar sequence of events occurred in 2014. Then, as now, angry Democrats vowed to challenge I.D.C. members, and Mr. Liu entered the race. But once the I.D.C.’s leader, Senator Jeff D. Klein, responded by pledging to return to the Democratic fold after the elections, much of the momentum behind challenges like Mr. Liu’s — as well as union support for them — disappeared.

Mr. Liu said that experience contributed to keeping him on the sidelines this time. But after Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s victory, a coalition of progressive groups renewed efforts to draft him as a candidate.

The petition drive to put Mr. Liu on the ballot was first reported by the New York Post.

In 2014, when Mr. Liu ran against Mr. Avella, he was endorsed by the Queens County Democratic Party, which Mr. Crowley leads. This time the county machine has endorsed Mr. Avella, the incumbent. Mr. Avella and his staff did not respond to requests for an interview.

Mr. Liu, who immigrated from Taiwan as a child, has been one of the city’s most successful Asian-American politicians and the first to be elected to a citywide office, when he won the comptroller’s race in 2009.

But in 2013, his campaign treasurer and a fund-raiser were convicted in a straw-donor scheme that allowed other backers of Mr. Liu to donate more than the maximum contribution allowed by city law. Mr. Liu, who was not charged with wrongdoing, has repeatedly characterized the federal investigation as a “witch hunt.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 18 of the New York edition with the headline: Liu Enters Primary In Queens For Senate. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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