According to this story in Tucson Weekly, the Tucson Democratic Party’s attempt to keep Greens out of this November’s partisan city council races is likely to backfire.

The Democratic Party challenged Dave Croteau’s petition to get on the Green Party primary ballot in the 7th district. Party primaries are on September 1, 2009. But because Croteau acknowledges that his petition probably doesn’t have enough signatures of Green registrants in the 7th district, he will bow out of the race. Instead, his campaign manager, Dave Ewoldt, will run as a write-in in the Green primary in September for the same seat. Assuming he gets at least 7 write-ins, he will be nominated and appear on the ballot in November.

Furthermore, Tucson Greens are now mulling over having candidates in the third and fifth districts as well. Arizona has a very fair law on the subject of how many write-in votes are needed in a partisan primary for a candidate to be nominated. The number is proportionate to the number of registered voters in that party. Since Greens don’t have a very large registration, their members only need a small number of write-ins to be nominated in the Green Party primary. Thanks to Gregg Jocoy and Green Party Watch for this story.

Dave Croteau can’t be a write-in in the Green Party primary, because in 2005 the legislature said that candidates who try to get on a ballot and fail cannot then qualify as write-in candidates.