On March 3, Joe Slavet, a Republican businessman from Silicon Valley who had been running for Governor of California, announced that he won’t run. He had been considered one of the prominent Republicans running, but the other two Republicans, Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton, were far ahead of him.
On March 3, Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic Party, posted a letter on the party’s website. It asks Democratic candidates for Governor not to file if their chances of winning seem low. And it says if they do file, but their chances seem dim, they should announce no later than April 15 that they are suspending their campaign. In California, candidates who file cannot later remove their names from the ballot.
It is unfortunate that Hicks doesn’t publicly call for adding write-in space to the November ballot. California elections generally allow write-in votes, but in 2012 the legislature passed AB 1413, which removed write-in space from the November ballot for congress and partisan state office.
On February 20, a 9-day trial concluded in Florida Decides Healthcare v Byrd, n.d., 4:25cv-211, the lawsuit over laws passed by the Florida legislature last year making it almost impossible for initiatives to get on the ballot. The trial did not go well for the state. See this story, describing how the judge characterized the state’s evidence about petition fraud as “junk science” and “nonsense.”
Closing briefs are due March 19.
A bill is pending in Oklahoma to add a proposed constitutional amendment to the November 2026 ballot. It would say that every qualified political party is entitled to have a nominee on the general election ballot in all partisan elections. If HJR 1019 passes, and if the initiative for a top-two system has enough valid signatures, then there would be two competing measures on the November 2026 ballot, which would not be compatible with each other. Here is the text of HJR 1019. The bill has a hearing in the House Rules Committee on March 5. The chief sponsor is Representative Eric Roberts ($-Oklahoma City).
Dr. Angelo “Doc” Mancuso, who served in the Alabama legislature as a Democrat 1988-2002, will run for state representative, 7th district, as an independent this year. See this story.
In February 2026, the state Republican Party barred Mancuso from this year’s Republican primary ballot, because he had been a Democrat in the past.
No Democrat is running in the 7th district this year.
