On May 30, an Emerson College Poll was released for the California gubernatorial race. The primary is on June 2. the poll suggest that there is fair possibility that Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer will be on the only candidates in the general election. See it here.
In New Mexico, an irrational law says that even after a party has petitioned for qualified status, it must then also submit a petition for each of its nominees (except for presidential nominees). This “double-petitioning” requirement is unique in the nation. After the party has nominated someone in a convention, that nominee should be deemed to have public support, because the nominee is the choice of a party that has already shown public support. Maryland once had a system like this, but Maryland’s highest state court invalidated it in a 2003 Green Party victory.
The Forward Party is a ballot-qualified minor party in New Mexico and now it is engaged in completing nominee petitions, including two tough petitions for statewide office. They each need 14,246 signatures. The nominees are Bob Perl for U.S. Senate, and Michael Vigil for Auditor. If the party successfully completes either petition, that will have been the most difficult ballot petition ever completed by the Forward Party in any state. The petition deadline is June 22.
The 2023 session of the New Mexico legislature doubled the nominee petition requirement in 2023, in one of the worst changes to ballot access in the last four years.
No Republican is on the primary ballot for New Jersey’s U.S. House seat in the 8th district. But the county chairs of all the counties in the district are endorsing Aristotle Eliopoulos, who qualified as an independent but who is a registered Republican. See this story.
On May 29, Texas Public Opinion Research released a U.S. Senate poll. Libertarian nominee Ted Brown, one of three candidates on the ballot, was at 1%. But then poll then asked undecided respondents to reveal who they are leaning toward. The results of that question: 19% Ken Paxton, 17% James Talarico, 13% Brown, 50% said they didn’t lean to anyone at this point. See the results here.
On May 21, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray addressed an interim meeting of the Joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisons Committee. He again wants the legislature to increase the independent candidate petition from 2% of the last U.S. House vote, to 3% for statewide races and 5% for district races. See this story. Wyoming already has the nation’s highest percentage for independent presidential candidates. Although Indiana also has a 2% requirement, Indiana’s law fixes the 2% denominator on a race that is only up in midterm years, when the turnout is lower. Wyoming’s requirement has the “see-saw” effect, in which the requirement is effectively much higher in midterm years, because it is based on the high-turnout presidential years.
