December 16 was the deadline for candidates running for the vacant U.S. House seat in Ohio’s 8th districts. Twenty candidates filed. See the list here. James J. Condit, Jr., who was the Constitution Party’s nominee for that seat in 2014, filed to run in the Green Party primary.
On December 8, U.S. District Court Judge William K. Sessions cleared the way for the Vermont Progressive Party and some of its candidates to proceed in a campaign finance case. Corren v Sorrell, 2:15cv-58. Dean Corren had been the party’s nominee for Lieutenant Governor in 2014. After the election was over, Vermont state officials said Corren must pay $72,000, consisting of a fine and a refund of all the public funding he had received in 2014. The reason was that a Democratic Party official had sent an e-mail, inviting persons on her e-mail list to attend a rally at which Corren would be speaking. The Democratic Party did not have its own nominee for Lieutenant Governor in 2014, and instead cross-nominated Corren.
The state claimed the e-mail was an illegal campaign contribution.
The recent procedural ruling says Corren can maintain his federal lawsuit on some points, even though a case is pending against him in state court. Furthermore, it says David Zuckerman may intervene in the case to raise the points that Corren can’t. Zuckerman wants to run for Lieutenant Governor as a Progressive in 2016. Zuckerman is also permitted to challenge another Vermont law which says candidates who receive public funding may not announce until February 15 of the election year.
If Corren wins the case, he will seek the Progressive Party nomination for Governor in 2016. A hearing will be held in the case on January 24 at 9:30 a.m. See this story.
On December 16, filing for the Ohio 2016 primary closed. Here is a list of the candidates who filed for statewide office. Ohio has three ballot-qualified parties: Republican, Democratic, and Green.
No one filed in the Green Party presidential primary, but the party does have a candidate for U.S. Senate, which is the only other statewide office up in 2016.
For the presidential primary, 12 Republicans filed and 5 Democrats filed.
FrontloadingHQ has been running a series of blog posts, explaining the Republican delegate apportionment rules for each state. So far thirteen states have been covered. The blog’s author, Josh Putnam, has been posting a new state approximately every day. He covers the states in the order of their caucuses and primaries.
For example, here is his Vermont post, which was posted on December 17. He posted Iowa on October 6; New Hampshire on October 12; South Carolina on October 14; Alabama on November 9; Alaska on November 12; Arkansas on November 14; Colorado on December 9; Georgia on December 10; Minnesota on December 12; Oklahoma on December 13; Tennessee on December 15; and Texas on December 16.
According to this story, the December 15, 2015 Republican presidential debate had the third highest viewership of any televised presidential primary debate in U.S. history. This is more evidence that having as many as nine candidates does not limit the usefulness or success of a debate.
In the entire history of the U.S., there have never been a general election with more than seven presidential candidates who had enough presidential elector candidates to theoretically win the election. The position of the Commission on Presidential Debates, that its debates should be limited to two candidates, is no longer tenable. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
