The Massachusetts Republican Party’s preferred candidate for U.S. Senate this year may have failed to gather the needed 10,000 valid signatures to place his name on the Republican primary ballot. See this story. The candidate is Jim Ogonowski. He is 82 signatures short, except that there may be some additional signatures for him still in the mail to the Secretary of State’s office from a few town clerks.
Massachusetts and Virginia are tied in having the highest number of signatures needed for a candidate (with party organization support) to get on a primary ballot for statewide office. Each state requires 10,000 signatures. In Virginia, any registered voter may sign, and signatures generally aren’t even checked. But in Massachusetts, only registered members of that party, as well as independents, may sign to place a candidate on a primary ballot.
A second Republican in Massachusetts (one who is not favored by the party organization), Jeff Beatty, did get enough signatures, so the party will have a US Senate nominee no matter what happens to the Ogonowski petition.
What a debacle! “Party’s preferred candidate†kind’a says it all. Our MassGOP is out of touch, and they picked a known loser to go up against John Ketchup Kerry. [Do they want to lose?]
Jeff Beatty got over 25000 signatures – so the voters have already spoken. Defeating Kerry is too important for us to waste any more time on RINO OGO. If he still aspires to public office – let him run a write-in campaign against his former nemesis – Niki Tsongas. He ~ almost ~ beat her last year.
Grrrr!
I think the Massachusetts Party is shifting its support to Beatty as we speak. Ogo’s lack of campaign organization has hurt him greatly. All the negative press on his failure to get enough signatures for ballot access eliminates him from contention by default. And even if he gets another 80 or 90, Ogo won’t have enough to survive legal challenges to all the invalid signatures currently on his sheets. In fact, not only has Ogo’s lack of organization damaged him for this election, it harms his credibility if he ever decides to seek elected office in the future. Party leaders and financial backers will be very hesitate to invest their time or their money.
I took a look at this guy’s website (Mr. Beatty) and I can’t imagine someone like him has a snowball’s chance in hell of defeating an incumbent Democratic senator in what is arguably the most liberal state in the nation at a time when the electoral mood is overwhelmingly against Republicans anyway. The Republican Party didn’t even bother running a candidate against Kerry in 2002 and he was reelected with 80% of the vote. In addition, this fellow Beatty apparently has never been elected to anything and has one previous run for public office under his belt, for Congress I believe, which he lost overwhelmingly.
Someone who isn’t a rabidly pro-military, pro-guns, conservative Republican please tell me why Mr. Beatty is such a fabulously attractive candidate to run for the US Senate against John Kerry.
As state chair of Virginia’s Independent Greens, we’ve run statewide drives for years.
I can only have sympathy for any candidate, or party that misses the ballot, especially after collecting thousands of signatures over months.
Lord willing, and the creeks don’t rise, the two larger parties will recognize what is so obvious to third parties, Green Party, Constitution, Libertarian…Independents…
The signature requirements are too high. A reasonable reduction to 5,000 or so in Virginia and Mass would be vast improvement.
5000? How about 1000? That’s what we have in Ohio for major parties in a statewide race. Better yet, it takes only 50 signatures to run for major party nomination for US House. And wouldn’t you know it? We still don’t have a bunch of “frivolous candidates” “clogging up the ballot” and causing “voter confusion”.
With all respect to Mr. Gaines’comments — there is a better than snowball’s chance of Mr. Beatty winning the election. Mr. Kerry has generated a great deal of antipathy throughout the Commonwealth. It certainly was apparent when I collected signatures for Mr. Beatty. Both Republicans and Democrats are tired of the self-serving Senator as he has worn out his welcome after 24 years. Jeff has the relevant experience — check out the website at http://www.jeffbeatty.com — to represent the commonwealth. After all 30,000 donors and 15,000 signatories can’t be wrong!