The unofficial totals for the special election in Florida’s U.S. House election are: David Jolly, Republican, 48.5%; Alex Sink, Democrat, 46.7%, Lucas Overby, Libertarian, 4.8%. See this story.
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U.S. District Court Judge Michael Watson will hold a hearing in Libertarian Party of Ohio v Husted, 2:13cv-953, on Thursday, March 13, at 2 p.m. This is the federal case over whether the Libertarian candidates for statewide office should be removed from the Libertarian primary ballot.
The state’s brief, filed on March 11, argues that the state’s interest in having each petition sheet show the identity of the circulator’s employer is to prevent corruption. The obvious question, though, is why the state’s interest in disclosure of campaign spending should not be placed on the candidate, rather than the circulators. If Ohio required the candidate to list his or her expenditures, that alone would satisfy the state interest in disclosure of campaign spending. As far as is known, no other state requires circulators to fill in a blank on each petition sheet identifying the circulator’s employer.
The state also says the law, requiring circulators to list their employers on each petition sheet, is six years old, and the Libertarian Party should have challenged it earlier.
On March 11, the U.S. Senate passed HR 2019 unanimously. It had passed the House on December 11, 2013, by 295-103. It ends public funding for major party presidential conventions, a program that has existed since 1976. See this story. The money will instead be spent for research on childhood diseases. The bill is sponsored by Representative Gregg Harper (R-Mississippi).
The only party, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, which ever received public funding for its national convention was the Reform Party in 2000. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
New Jersey State Senator Peter Barnes (D-Middlesex) has introduced SCR 71, to provide for an elected Attorney General. New Jersey is one of seven states in which the voters don’t choose the Attorney General.
If the bill is enacted this year, the voters would vote in November 2014 on whether to change the State Constitution to provide for such elections.
David Catania, who has been a member of the Washington, D.C. city council since 1997, will run for Mayor as an independent this year. See this story.
He was first elected in a special election in 1997 as a Republican to an at-large seat. Because the election was a special election, parties did not have nominees. Catania faced two Democrats and a Socialist Workers Party candidate, and won with 43% of the vote.
He was re-elected as a Republican in 1998 and 2002. In those races, he was helped by a D.C. election law that lets the voters choose two at-large members in any single election year, but forbids any party from running more than one nominee. The intent of this law is to prevent one party from winning all the Council seats. In 2004 he left the Republican Party and became an independent. He was re-elected as an independent in 2006 and 2010.