Last weekend, the Minnesota gubernatorial nominees of the Republican Party, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and the Independence Party (Tom Emmer, Mark Dayton, and Tom Horner) debated each other. The debate was feisty. See this news story.
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Nicholas Dibs’ petition to be an independent candidate for California’s U.S. House district 37 has been approved, and he will be on the November 2010 ballot. He is the second independent candidate for Congress to qualify in California this year. The 37th district is in Los Angeles County and is represented by Democrat Laura Richardson. Thanks to E. G. Garay for this news.
On August 17, the lawsuit Morton v Crist was moved from U.S. District Court in Fort Myers, back to state court in Fort Myers. The lawsuit had originally been filed in state court on June 22, but it had moved to federal court in July.
The issue is whether various donors to Governor Charlie Crist are entitled to a refund of their campaign contributions. They gave money to his U.S. Senate race while he was still running as a Republican. They are angry that he switched to being an independent candidate. They assert that this is a contract dispute, not a campaign finance lawsuit. All campaign finance laws concerning candidates for federal office are federal laws; states are not permitted to have campaign finance laws for federal office. This is partly why there has been so much confusion as to whether this case belongs in federal or state court.
On August 18, William McVay asked the Delaware Supreme Court to hear his appeal in McVay v Department of Elections for Kent County. The case number is 528,2010. McVay is a Libertarian nominee for the legislature, and he will appear on the November ballot. He is a registered Libertarian. He had also filed to run for the same office in the Republican primary. Elections officials refused to let him do that, after the Republican Party complained. The lower court gave no relief.
There is no law in Delaware that says a candidate must be a member of a party, in order to file to run in its primary. In 1994, the state let a registered Democrat run in the Republican primary for State Senate, and she was then elected as a Republican. The only difference between that situation, and McVay’s situation, is that the Republican Party welcomed one “outsider” into its primary, but not the other.
On August 17, Wyoming held its primaries. No one filed to run for Teton County Attorney in the Democratic primary. However, 109 Democrats cast a write-in vote for Greg Blenkinsop for that office, so he is the party’s nominee. See this story.
Wyoming is not one of the 35 states that require a write-in candidate to file a declaration of write-in candidacy in advance of any primary or general election, as a condition of counting write-ins for that candidate. Wyoming law requires a write-in candidate to receive at least 25 write-ins in a primary in order to be nominated. If the election returns show that anyone received that many write-in votes in a primary, and outpolled any other candidate for the nomination, then elections officials contact the individual and ask whether he or she wants the nomination. In this case Blenkinsop accepted the nomination, even though he had not initiated the write-in campaign. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for the link.