On Sunday, June 28, Emidio “Mimi” Soltysik died. He had been the Socialist Party’s presidential nominee in 2016. Also, he was the candidate-plaintiff in a lawsuit against the California law that won’t let members of unqualified parties have their “party preference” on the ballot for congress and partisan state office. He basically won the lawsuit in the Ninth Circuit. The panel did not strike down the law, but sent it back to the U.S. District Court for a trial. But he had to dismiss the lawsuit at that point because of his debilitating liver cancer.

Here is the wikipedia article about him.

The federal lawsuit Gonzales v Madigan, n.d., 1:16cv-7915, is finally over. In 2016 Jason Gonzales qualified for the Illinois Democratic primary, 22nd district, to run against long-time Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. The district is majority Hispanic. Gonzales alleges that after it was clear that he was filing, Madigan recruited two other Hispanic-surnamed candidates to run in the same primary, allegedly to split the vote among three Hispanic-surnamed candidates.

In most states that would probably not lead to a lawsuit. But in 1974, the Seventh Circuit had ruled in Smith v Cherry that such behavior violates the Constitution, and Illinois is in the Seventh Circuit. Gonzales sued in 2016, and lost the case in 2019, after a convuluted process that included sanctions for failure to produce certain documents. Last year Gonzales asked for a rehearing, but that was denied on May 23, 2020. The appeal period has now passed, and Gonzales did not file a notice of Appeal to the Seventh Circuit.

Madigan is running again in 2020. He did not have any primary opponents in 2018 nor 2020. He has been in the legislature since 1970.