The Forward Party will petition to get its nominee on the ballot for Governor of Minnesota. He is Cory Hepola, a former radio talk show host in Minneapolis. The party also hopes to persuade Richard Painter to be its nominee for Attorney General of Minnesota. Separate petitions of 2,000 signatures would be needed for each. Petitioning cannot start until April.
The state chair of the Forward Party of Minnesota is John Denney, who was formerly an Independence Party nominee for Congress.
On February 15, the Rhode Island Senate Judiciary defeated SB 2258. It would have moved the deadline for all non-presidential candidates to file a declaration of candidacy from June to April. It also would have moved the non-presidential independent candidate petition deadline from July to June.
On March 4, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Gettleman, a Clinton appointee, issued an injunction, directing Cook County, Illinois election officials to recognize that the Libertarian Party is ballot-qualified for all partisan Cook County office this year. The officials had determined that even though the party polled enough votes in 2020 to be ballot-qualified inside Cook County, the party could only nominate executive positions in its June 2022 primary, not county commission candidates. Here is the four-page order in Libertarian Party of Illinois v Yarbrough, n.d., 1:22cv-578.
On March 4, U.S. District Court Judge Richard E. Myers, a Trump appointee, ruled from the bench at the close of the hearing in Cawthorn v Circosta, e.d., 5:22cv-50. He enjoined North Carolina election officials from permitting a challenge to the ballot access of Congressman Madison Cawthorn on the grounds that the Fourteenth Amendment, section three, bars congressional candidates who engaged in insurrection after having taken an oath to the Constitution. The judge said that when Congress passed the Amnesty Act in 1872, that suspended that part of the Constitution. That point is legally contested; the other side says the 1872 Amnesty Act just applied to the Confederate officials for their actions in the civil war.
The written opinion will be posted here when it is available.
On March 2, the Tennessee House Elections & Campaign Finance Subcommittee passed HB 2067, the bill to make it easier for a new party to get on the ballot. The bill next goes to the Local Government Committee; the hearing will be March 8, Tuesday.
