Barry Hess is the only Libertarian running for Governor of Arizona in the party primary. His petition for a place on the Libertarian primary ballot was challenged by a Republican activist, but the challenge was defeated. See this story.
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Ruben “R.J.” Hernandez is on the ballot as a candidate for California Assembly, 77th district, in the northeastern part of the city of San Diego. He has been a registered Democrat for several years. He was the only person who filed in the June 2014 primary to run against Republican incumbent Brian Maienschein. With only two candidates in the race, of course he easily qualified to run again in November, even though he only polled 29.4% of the vote against Maienschein in the primary.
Hernandez has announced that he has changed his registration from “Democratic” to “independent”, sometime in the last month. The Registrar of Voters’ office hasn’t processed the change yet. Although no one can stop him from making this change, California election law dictates that he will still appear on the November ballot as a Democrat. The law does not permit a candidate to have a different partisan label in the November election than the label used in the June primary.
On June 18, Mark Tuohey, a prominent attorney, entered the race for District of Columbia Attorney General. See this story. There are now two candidates; Mark Zukerberg had been the only candidate. It was Zukerberg who won the court battle to hold the election for Attorney General.
It is still not clear how the election will be conducted, because the ballot measure setting up the office said the Attorney General would be elected in a partisan race, yet D.C. already held its partisan primaries this year, back on April 1. Both Zukerberg and Tuohey are Democrats.
A popular election for the post of Attorney General gives activists an opportunity to raise objections to various unfair D.C. election laws. The District of Columbia prints write-in space on the November ballot for President, and allows presidential candidates to file as declared write-in candidates. However, the Board of Elections refuses to tally the votes for declared write-in presidential candidates. An actual election campaign between candidates for Attorney General could give activists a chance to question all the candidates about this voting rights violation. Also, D.C. is one of only a handful of jurisdictions in the nation that require more signatures to get on the ballot for President than for other jurisdiction-wide office, and that could also be raised.
The four candidates for U.S. House, in the special June 24 election in Florida’s 19th district, will debate on the evening of June 19. The candidates are Republican Curt Clawson, Democrat April Freeman, Libertarian Ray Netherwood, and write-in independent Timothy Rossano. The debate is in Fort Myers and is sponsored by WINK News. See this story (scroll down).
On June 18, the Rhode Island Senate passed SB 8072, which eliminates the straight-ticket device. However, because the Senate amended the implementation date of the bill, it must return to the House for concurrence. The Senate version of the bill doesn’t take effect until 2015, whereas the House version takes effect in time for the 2014 election. UPDATE: actually, both houses passed a version that takes effect after 2014, so the bill is through the legislature.