The Constitution Party hopes to place a nominee on the Pennsylvania ballot this year for Governor. The party needs 5,000 signatures by August 1. If the drive succeeds, it will be the first time since 1998 that the party has been on statewide in Pennsylvania in a midterm year. In 1998, it received 10.44% of the vote for Governor for its nominee Peg Luksik.
On July 13, the California Secretary of State released the official tally for the June 5, 2018 primary. In three U.S. House races and nine Assembly races, a write-in candidate placed second and will appear on the November ballot. Naturally, these were all races with only one candidate whose name had been printed on the ballot. See the summary pages here.
The three U.S. House races were the 13th, 19th, and 32nd districts. Republican write-ins placed second in the latter two districts, and a Green placed second in the 13th district.
For Assembly, Republicans placed second via write-ins in these districts: 7, 20, 27, 61, and 64. Libertarians placed second with write-ins in these districts: 4, 21, 51, and 69. The 4th district race is easily the most dramatic, because there were three write-ins. The Libertarian got 132, the Republican got 130, and the Green got 128.
The full Statement of Votes (which has the vote by county for every office) is here.
On July 12, a Colorado trial court put Scott Honeycutt on the November 2018 ballot as a candidate for State House, 62nd district. He would have been unopposed for the Republican primary on June 26, if he had been on the primary ballot. He was not on the primary ballot because paperwork from the Republican Party, establishing that he had enough support at a party meeting to be on the primary ballot with no petition, was late. See this story.
The Florida Democratic Party sued the Secretary of State earlier this year, over the law that says the party that won the last gubernatorial election will always have its nominees listed first on general election ballots. Jacobson v Detzner, n.d., 4:18v-262. On July 12, the U.S. District Court set forth some deadlines for the case. Discovery will not be complete until November 8, 2018, so it is obvious that the case won’t be settled until after this year’s election is over.
California may elect an independent candidate to the office of Insurance Commissioner in November 2018. Steve Poizner, who held the same job as a Republican 2006-2010, is on the ballot as one of two candidates for that office again. His only opponent is a Democratic State Senator, Ricardo Lara. As far as is known, there have been no polls predicting who will win this race. If Poizner does win, he will be the first independent to be elected to California statewide office in history.
Joel Fox, editor of Fox & Hounds, here writes that Poizner was John Kasich’s California fundraising manager in 2016, when Kasich ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Poizner was also a national co-chair of the Kasich campaign. Fox says that Kasich encouraged Poizner to run as an independent. Fox suggests that if Poizner wins, that will make it more likely that either John Kasich, or some other prominent person, will run for president as an independent in 2020.
