Bill Nojay was facing an FBI investigation and fraud trial in Cambodia when he died of an apparent suicide Friday.
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Bill Nojay took his own life in Rochester last Friday, but that failed to stop him winning more than 60 per cent of the vote in a Republican primary election this week.
Nojay, 59, reportedly shot and killed himself in front of a Rochester police officer who had responded to a call to “check the welfare” of an individual in the area. “Never once did I ever advocate for people to vote for Nojay; what I always said was that I’m leaving it up to the voters to vote for whomever they choose; now others may have done that, I did not partake in that”, Reilich told WXXI News. “It’s such an unusual situation”, Milne told The Associated Press as unofficial results showed him trailing by almost 1,000 of the 4,500 votes cast.
Republican leaders from several counties will now have to get together and choose a candidate. “They really did some things in the past few days that were in poor taste in my opinion to sway the vote”, he told reporters.
While rare, posthumous elections do happen, notably when Missouri Democratic governor Mel Carnahan died in a plane crash but defeated the Republican incumbent and future United States attorney general John Ashcroft in a 2000 Senate race. Carnahan’s wife filled the senate seat until a special election in 2002. Since 1962, four people who died close to Election Day have been elected to the House of Representatives.
Nojay was first elected to the Assembly in 2012. He had graduate degrees in law and business from Columbia University and was a research fellow at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, Nepal, according to his official biography. However, the New York Daily News says the Federal Bureau of Investigation was expecting his surrender on Friday because Nojay also stands accused of additional fraud charges in the states too. Mr Nojay had denied fraud was committed. His advocacy for small businesses and gun owners played well in the mostly rural 133rd Assembly district, and also on his daily radio show.
Milne, the mayor of Honeoye Falls, has since accused local GOP leaders of flooding constituents with robocalls. I must also say that while there were extraordinary influences in the outcome of the election, which I believe were unethical, it is something I have to accept.
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