On December 3, Virginia Delegate Joe T. May announced he has left the Republican Party and, if there is a special State Senate Election in district 33, he will run as an independent. May was elected as a Republican to the House of Delegates in 1993 and has been re-elected ever since, except that in the June 2013 Republican primary, he was defeated for re-election by a vote of 2,958 to 2,201.

There will be a special State Senate election in the 33rd district if the incumbent, Mark Herring, resigns from the Senate. Herring was apparently elected Attorney General on November 5, but the election is so close, there will be a recount, so Herring won’t resign his Senate seat until that is settled.

May decided to leave the Republican Party because he is unhappy with the Republican Party’s plans to hold a nominating convention in Sterling, Virginia, on the evening of December 16, to select a Republican nominee, assuming there will be a special election. May says a small handful of party officials decided on that site and it will prevent may voters from participating.

Meanwhile, the control of the Virginia State Senate between the two major parties is unknown. Here is a fascinating article describing the byzantine rules that will determine who gets to set the dates for future State Senate special elections, and how the timing will affect control of the Senate.

Paul Zukerberg, a candidate for Attorney General of the District of Columbia, has re-filed his lawsuit to force the District to hold an election for that post. He originally filed in the District’s own court system, but the D.C. government moved the case to U.S. District Court. The U.S. District Court ruled against Zukerberg on a technicality. Zukerberg has now re-filed, and is back in the D.C. court system. See this story. The story says the first court date won’t be until February 28, but it seems likely Zukerberg can get the case expedited, because the primary is April 1.

The voters of D.C. passed a charter amendment saying that voters would start electing Attorney General in 2014, but the District doesn’t want to hold the election until 2018. The ballot language specified that the first election would be in 2014, but the actual text of the amendment (which wasn’t printed on the ballot) said the city could decide when to start electing that office.

On November 26, Massachusetts Governor Duval Patrick signed HB 3764, which moves the 2014 primary date from September 16 to September 9. The bill only applies to 2014, so under current law, primaries in years beyond 2014 continue to be seven weeks before the general election, which would have been September 16 in 2014 if HB 3764 hadn’t passed.

The legislature created HB 3764 on November 18. The House passed it the same day and the Senate passed it the next day. Until the bill passed, Massachusetts had been scheduled to have the latest primary of 2014. But now, it is merely tied with Delaware, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island for having the nation’s last 2014 primary. Thanks to Tony Roza for this news.