Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Mitt Romney are the only three Republican presidential candidates who filed petitions on December 7 to be on the Ohio Republican presidential primary. See this story. On the Democratic side, only President Obama filed.
Candidates needed either 1,000 signatures statewide, or 50 in each U.S. House district.
The Ohio presidential primary is not until June 12. It is extremely likely that the December 7 deadline is not final, and that a new petitioning window will open up early next year.
“Maloney said that Ohio’s secretary of state, John Husted, encouraged all of the presidential candidates to make the deadline out of precaution, since the March filing deadline doesn’t apply until the new bill takes effect in January 2011.”
QUESTION: Has the new bill been passed by the legislature? Both houses? Has Kasich indicated that he may not sign it?
Bachman, Huntsman, Paul, and Santorum may look like gamblers on this, but I think there’s more to the story.
Yes, the bill was signed several weeks ago. But it didn’t have an urgency clause so it couldn’t take effect immediately.
The primaries were split in order to provide more time to work out a compromise on the congressional map. At the time, they hoped to get a 2/3 majority in order to permit immediate implementation, but the Democrats backed out.
There is still talk about combining the primaries in late April. There might be enough grousing about the cost of the two elections that a few Democrats might agree, especially since it appears that there will be no compromise on the congressional map.
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Why in the hell didn’t the Ron Paul campaign file petitions in Ohio? This sounds like a major scew up to me.
I hope that the Ron Paul campaign gets another chance to file petitions in Ohio.
Andy, they did. I have first hand personal knowledge that they did. This story is incorrect in not including him.