The Virginia deadline for getting candidates on the June 2012 congressional primary has now passed. The U.S. Senate seat up this year is an open seat, because incumbent U.S. Senator James Webb is not running for re-election. Only one Democrat, and only three Republicans, submitted signatures. Each needed 10,000 signatures, and each submitted at least double that amount. See this story. UPDATE: this post has been re-written on March 31 to show that three Republicans, not two, qualified. The third is E. W. Jackson.
Statewide candidate petitions in Virginia require at least 400 signatures from each U.S. House district in the state. The news story does not say if the candidates complied with the distribution requirement based on the old U.S. House boundaries, or the new ones. The new ones were only settled earlier this month, when the Voting Rights Section of the U.S. Justice Department approved the boundaries of the new districts.
The Virginia legislature passed a bill last month, saying for 2012, petitions are valid whether they are based on the old districts or the new districts. However, Governor Robert McDonnell still hasn’t signed that bill, HB 1151. He must act by April 10. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.
The article says the deadline is Thursday, so more candidates may submit petitions (or the article is wrong).
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Other articles I read did in fact say the deadline was 5 pm Thursday…I wonder if Bob Marshall (or anyone else) turned in signatures on time. An odd twist in this is that the Radtke and Allen campaigns turned in their signatures at the same time in the hopes of being listed at the top of the ballot, since the order is determined by when candidates turned in signatures, but since these two turned them in at the same time, the SBE says their two names will be drawn from a canister at random. Also interesting – as the financial underdog, Radtke had to go to Costco and buy clipboards with her son to give to petitioners – and yet the Perry, Gingrich, and Santorum national campaigns couldn’t get enough signatures for president!
http://wtvr.com/2012/03/12/radtke-allen-first-to-submit-signatures-for-senate-primary/
Bob Marshall did in fact get his signatures in, so it’ll probably be at least a four-way Republican race: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/virginia-politics/post/del-bob-marshall-delivers-signatures-for-virginia-gop-senate-primary/2012/03/28/gIQAsv17gS_blog.html