Jon Huntsman has been disinvited from a lavish fundraiser for the Republican National Committe. According to this story, the reason is that Huntsman said publicly a few days ago that the nation needs a new political party. Thanks to Rick Hasen for thee link.
Scotusblog is the nation’s leading blog for U.S. Supreme Court news. For many years, it has reviewed all cert petitions, and then it chooses “petitions to watch”. This watch list consists of cases that Scotusblog believes have a fair chance to be accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court. On March 2 Scotusblog identified Libertarian Party of North Dakota v Jaeger as the “petition of the day”, and the blog will keep the case on its “petitions to watch” list.
On March 2, the Tennessee Attorney General’s office filed a notice, indicating that he expects to appeal the ballot access case to the 6th circuit. The case is Green Party of Tennessee v Hargett. On February 3, the U.S. District Court had held the state’s ballot access law for minor parties to be unconstitutional.
On March 1, a Missouri state trial court struck down a portion of the law on statewide initiatives in Missouri. This story explains that the law requires a financial impact statement for any initiative to be prepared by the State Auditor. But, the court said, the Missouri Constitution limits the powers of the State Auditor to specified duties, and preparing an impact statement for initiatives isn’t one of those duties.
On March 1, Idaho Governor Butch Otter signed H391, which abolishes the presidential primary, effective this year. If the bill had not passed, the primary would have been May 15.
Generally, when other states have abolished presidential primaries, the rationale is to save election-administration expense. But Idaho is holding its primary for all other office besides President on May 15 anyway, so the bill barely saves any money. The major parties are using caucuses instead of the presidential primary, but even a non-binding “beauty contest” would have attracted a lot of attention to Idaho, and probably increased primary turnout.
Two states will hold presidential primaries on May 15: Nebraska and Oregon.
