On June 10, Andy Gottlieb filed his brief in the Second Circuit in his ballot access case, Gottlieb v Lamont, 22-449. The issue is the Connecticut petition requirement for legislative candidates, 5% of the number of registered voters who are enrolled in that party, to be collected in only 14 days. Here is the opening brief. The U.S. District Court had upheld the requirements.
The Yonkers Times has this article about the Democratic Party’s challenge to all the statewide petitions filed by the nominees of unqualified parties. The article came about because the Green Party and the Unite New York Party issued a press release, criticizing the Democratic Party for its challenges.
The article says that seven gubernatorial candidates filed petitions. Groups that have their own nominee are the Green, Libertarian, and Unite NY Parties. Groups that put Lee Zeldin, the likely Republican nominee on their petition, are Independence and Parents. It is not known whom the Freedom and New Vision Parties listed for Governor.
The article does not mention an independent petition filed for U.S. Senate, for Diane Sare, and that petition has not been challenged. She submitted approximately 60,000 signatures.
The publication City Limits has this long story about petitioning in New York state. There isn’t a great deal of new material in the story, but it does quote a lot of candidates who complain about the system. Only toward the end does the article mention the alternate idea of filing fees. In most states, no petition whatever is needed to get on a primary ballot. Those states depend on filing fees to keep the ballot from being too crowded.
On June 10, the Tennessee Supreme Court removed Bobby Starbuck Newsom from the August 2022 Republican primary ballot. He has been trying to run for U.S. House this year, but the Republican Party has a new bylaw, barring candidates in its primary who did not vote in three of the last four Republican primaries. Newsom couldn’t comply with that because he hasn’t lived in Tennessee long enough.
First he sued in federal court, charging that the new rule imposes a qualification to run for congress that is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, but the U.S. District Court ruled against injunctive relief. Then he dismissed his federal case and sued the Republican Party for having violated the state’s open meetings law when it removed him. He won injunctive relief in the state trial court, but the Tennessee Supreme Court has reversed that, saying the open records law only applies to political parties when they are acting as an election administration body. Here is the 7-page decision in Newsom v Tennessee Republican Party, M2022-00735.
California held its top-two primary on June 7, 2022. The Green Party, and the Peace & Freedom Party, each had higher percentages for statewide offices than they had received in the 2018 top-two primary.
In the 2022 primary, each party had three statewide candidates who polled over 2%. By contrast, in 2018, each party only had one candidate who polled 2%. Polling 2% guarantees a party continued qualified status for the next two elections.
In 2022, Peace & Freedom polled 3.1% for Treasurer, 2.3% for Insurance Commissioner, and 2.1% for Lieutenant Governor. But in 2018, it only had one candidate who polled over 2% for a statewide office: Treasurer 2.3%.
In 2022, the Green Party polled 3.5% for Controller, 2.7% for Attorney General, and 2.5% for Secretary of State. But in 2018, it only had one candidate who polled over 2% for a statewide office: Secretary of State 2.1%.
Last autumn, the two parties worked out an agreement to endorse each other’s statewide candidates, and to discourage its members from running for a statewide race if the other partner party had already announced a candidate for that particular office.
The Libertarian Party, and the American Independent Party, didn’t run any statewide candidates in 2022, but they each have far more registrations than they need to retain their qualified status.
