Adam Giambrone is the NDP’s high-profile nominee in the Scarborough-Guildwood byelection — for now. Pending legal action.

A New Democrat from west end Toronto, he is at the centre of a mini-civil war in the suburban east end. Late Wednesday, NDP headquarters received a lawyer’s letter threatening to invalidate the nomination unless there is a full accounting of how Giambrone and his supporters seemingly got around the rules.

The party’s high priesthood presumably saw Giambrone as their ticket to success — a politician with high name recognition who could boost their prospects in the campaign. But if Giambrone is a star candidate, he is also brimming with notoriety — not just now, but in the past.

Famous for chairing the TTC until 2010, he is also infamous for dropping out of the last mayoral campaign — ensnared in a tissue of lies over a sordid sex-on-his-city-hall-couch scandal. Yet Giambrone never considered himself a spent force — plotting his political comeback with cinematic vision:

Sex, Lies and Rehabilitate.

In real life, the golden boy isn’t sitting so pretty. Nor is the party.

The local suburban riding association is in open revolt. And the downtown NDP establishment is closing ranks behind Giambrone, a former federal party president with close ties to the top echelons.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has warmly embraced Giambrone’s candidacy, posing with him for a stream of photo-ops that she cheerfully retweets. But Giambrone’s perceived duplicity, and the party’s complicity, are a double blow that the rank and file won’t swallow.

Giambrone’s public rehabilitation began last year, when the disgraced politician appeared at the podium during the NDP’s big policy convention. He was also asked to co-chair a candidate recruitment drive — and in Scarborough, he came upon Amarjeet Kaur Chhabra.

You might think Chhabra came straight out of central casting: an articulate union organizer with local roots, a young woman who immigrated from India and overcame her disability from childhood polio to provide the white bread NDP with badly-needed new blood and a fresh look. With Chhabra, New Democrats could tick off every box on their diversity checklist.

But at the 11th hour, Giambrone had second thoughts — concluding that he was the best choice. He telephoned his fresh recruit, Chhabra, to confess that he would challenge her for the nomination.

This goes beyond bait-and-switch recruitment tactics. It’s bait-and-bigfoot.

In no time, Giambrone rounded up a posse to push him over the top at the weekend nomination meeting.

And who were all his new-found suburban supporters, whose names didn’t appear on a printed list of members signed up before the 30-day cut-off? Riding stalwarts challenged the unlisted new arrivals, but NDP secretary Darlene Lawson vouched for one of them and waved off all objections.

Twelve names are in dispute. Given that Giambrone won by a mere two-vote margin, the outcome is now in doubt. Chhabra’s lawyer is demanding that the NDP come clean on all those mystery members at the meeting.

“If we do not receive a satisfactory response from you by Thursday, July 18, 2013 at noon, Ms. Chhabra will be forced to take legal action, including seeking an urgent order invalidating the results of the nomination meeting and requiring such a meeting to be held again prior to the byelection,” reads the letter from lawyer Paul-Erik Veel.

“The NDP is the party of fairness and justice, so I’m fighting for fairness and justice,” Chhabra told me in an interview. “I do not believe that due process was followed.”

She’s not alone.

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Joy Taylor has been emailing me daily updates, imploring me to write about a miscarriage of democracy.

“Can you imagine my frustration that a nomination was stolen from a vibrant, wonderful candidate in Amarjeet Chhabra?” she asked. “It is honestly keeping me awake at night.”

Taylor is a lifelong NDP activist. At age 90, that amounts to 74 years of licking envelopes and rallying to the cause. Horwath routinely greets her with a hug at party events. But when Taylor marched up to Horwath outside Giambrone’s campaign office the other day to hand her a protest note, there was no warm embrace — just stony silence.

“An illegal candidate is to run in our riding,” Taylor fumes. “I cry for people in my riding.”

And what is her message to Horwath?

“You have betrayed me.”

I asked Giambrone’s spokesperson for a response, but he didn’t return the call. Over at headquarters, Lawson, the NDP secretary, refused a telephone interview, emailing this cut-and-paste comment:

“Our party values the democratic process under which our candidates are chosen. Internal party matters are addressed internally and confidentially as per party policy.”

Taylor, Chhabra and others say they are NDP true believers and longtime Horwath loyalists. But their first allegiance is to party democracy. And the rule of law.

As we Canadians like to lecture banana republics, democracy isn’t just about voting day. It’s also about nominations and due process in between elections.

That’s why Taylor, who has backed the NDP in every election of her long life, says she won’t be casting a ballot for Giambrone on Aug. 1.

Martin Regg Cohn’s provincial affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca , Twitter: @reggcohn

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