Jon Barrie is the U.S. Senate nominee of the Independent American Party of New Mexico. On June 26, he filed 10,279 signatures to be on the November ballot. New Mexico is the only state that requires qualified parties to submit petitions for their nominees (notice this is not the same thing as states that requires candidates to file signatures to appear on a primary ballot; those people aren’t nominees until they have won the primary). So even though the Independent American Party had already filed one petition earlier this year to become ballot-qualified, the law required an entirely separate petition for Barrie.

Barrie will be the first person on the November ballot to run for U.S. Senate in New Mexico, other than Democratic and Republican nominees, since 1996. Thanks to Stephen Dolgos for this news.

On May 29, the Republican Party of Sanders County, Montana, filed a federal lawsuit, to overturn the Montana law that makes it a criminal offense for a political party to endorse a candidate for state court judge. Montana elects state court trial judges in non-partisan elections. The case is Sanders County Republican Central Committee v Bullock, 6:12-cv-46. The case is assigned to Judge Charles Lovell.

On June 26, the Republican National Committee, and a prospective donor to the party who lives in Alabama, filed a lawsuit against the federal law that limits how much money an individual may donate to a national committee of a political party. The case is McCutcheon v Federal Election Commission, 1:12-cv-1034. It is filed in Washington, D.C., and the plaintiffs have requested a three-judge court, which is the norm for lawsuits that challenge federal campaign finance laws. The lawsuit also challenges the law that limits an individual’s total donations in any two-year period to all federal candidates and to political parties, combined, to a certain amount of money. Here is the brief.

Under current federal campaign law, political parties have more restrictions relative to receiving donations and spending money than any other type of group. Thanks to Dan Tokaji for the link.