Here is a link to the Utah state elections web page, showing election returns for the June 26 primary. In the Republican presidential primary, the vote so far is: Mitt Romney 93%, Ron Paul 5%, Fred Karger 0.3%, Rick Santorum 2%, Newt Gingrich .5%.
In the Constitution Party gubernatorial primary, the results so far are: Kirk D. Pearson 65%, Brandon W. Nay 35%.
On June 26, former New Mexico State Senator Joseph Carraro filed a petition to be on the November ballot as an independent candidate for State Senate. He will be the only opponent to the Republican nominee. See this story. Carraro served in the legislature 1984-1988 and 1992-2008.
Carraro will benefit by the fact that this year, for the first time in many decades, New Mexico’s general election ballot has no straight-ticket device.
This November, current or former state legislators who were previously major party nominees are running for the legislature as independents in at least four states. Those former or current state legislators are Kyle Johansen in Alaska, Kathleen Curry in Colorado, Nancy Argenziano in Florida, and Joseph Carraro in New Mexico. Johansen and Carraro were formerly Republicans; Curry and Argenziano were formerly Democrats.
A former California legislator, Anthony Adams, ran for Congress this year, but because he didn’t place first or second in the June 5 primary, he can’t run in November. If California didn’t use a top-two system, he probably would be on the November ballot as an independent candidate.
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 June 26, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted ruled that Gregory Jolivette cannot be an independent candidate for the legislature, even though he submitted enough valid signatures to run for the 51st State House seat. See this story.
Ohio does not have registration by party, but election officials do keep a record of which party’s primary ballot a voter chooses. Ohio law is vague about who can be an independent candidate. Section 3513.04 only bans people who were defeated in a party primary from being an independent candidate. But by tradition, Ohio election officials have expanded that ban, and regularly block people on the basis that they have recently voted in a party primary, or recently were on a political party committee.
As the story reveals, the Secretary of State used personal details about Jolivette’s political activity to justify preventing him from being an independent candidate. Jolivette may sue, although the precedents on this issue in Ohio state court are not very favorable.
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.
