On Saturday, the Michigan Tea Party held a nominating convention in Saginaw and nominated 23 candidates.  On July 26, it filed the list with the Secretary of State.  The Secretary of State has still not validated the party’s petition, but the petition is very likely to have enough valid signatures.  In Michigan, partisan ballots contain a party logo.  The logo for the Tea Party contains a coiled rattlesnake, with the words “Don’t Tread on Me” underneath.

The party didn’t nominate anyone for Governor, and Michigan has no U.S. Senate race this year.  The party only nominated two candidates for U.S. House.  One is the First District, which is a very strong Democratic-leaning district.  But the other Tea Party nominee is running in the 7th district.  The vote in that district in 2008 was close between the two major parties.  The Democratic nominee received 157,213 votes, and the Republican received 149,781.

The party nominated four statewide nominees, for Secretary of State, Attorney General, Board of Regents, and State Board of Education.  For the State Senate, it nominated 6 candidates.  Two of them were close in 2006, the last year Michigan voted for State Senate.  In the 13th district the vote had been Republican 57,204, Democratic 56,484.  In the 7th district it had been Republican 59,647, Democratic 56,156.

For state house, the party nominated 8 candidates.  In two of them, in 2008, the vote had been very close between the two major party candidates.  The 43rd district had been Republican 20,219, Democratic 19,373.  The 51st had been Republican 29,921, Democratic 26,587.

The party’s state chair is a former United Auto Workers official who says he has never been a Democrat.  However, he refuses to say who funded the petition drive, and most observers believe that it was funded by someone whose motivation is to help Democratic nominees.  The Tea Party pressure groups in Michigan say they had nothing to do with the petition drive.

The petition requirement this year in Michigan is 38,024.  This is the first petition to place a previously unqualified party on the ballot in Michigan since 2002.  Michigan makes it easy for a ballot-qualified party to remain qualified, so it is extremely likely that the Tea Party will also be on the ballot in 2012.  Parties must poll a number of votes equal to 1% of the winning Secretary of State’s vote total, and it is unheard of for any ballot-qualified party that runs for Board of Regents, or Board of Education, to fail to poll that number of votes for those offices.  The formula usually requires about 20,000 votes.  Voters are more willing to vote for minor party nominees for unimportant statewide office, such as Board of Trustees or Board of Education.  Thanks to Bill Hall for this news.  The other ballot-qualified minor parties in Michigan are Constitution (still called U.S. Taxpayers in that state), Green, Libertarian, and Natural Law.

On June 22, two Florida Republican donors had brought a lawsuit in state court in Florida, alleging that because Governor Charlie Crist switched from being a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, to being an independent candidate for U.S. Senate, that he must return campaign contributions made by people who object to what he did.

That case, Morton v Crist, had been filed in circuit court in Collier County, 10-3846-ca.  Governor Crist, as the Defendant, had the case moved to federal court, because Crist is running for a federal office, and federal campaign finance laws supercede state campaign finance laws, for candidates for Congress and President.  The federal case is in U.S. District Court, Middle district, Fort Myers, number 2:10-cv-450.

On July 26, the Plaintiffs filed a motion to move the case back to state court.  They argue this is not a campaign finance lawsuit, but a lawsuit over breach of contract.  It will probably take several weeks for the federal court to decide whether to return the case to state court.  See this story.

On June 26, a U.S. District Court in Illinois set out procedures for the special U.S. Senate election.  The three qualified parties may choose a nominee by party committee.  Every independent candidate who ends up certified for the November ballot in the regular U.S. Senate election is free to also run in the special U.S. Senate election.  That is also true for the nominees of the unqualified parties that petitioned statewide this year, including the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party.

Illinois has a special U.S. Senate election because of an earlier 7th circuit opinion, which said that a gubernatorial appointee can only serve until the next regularly-scheduled statewide election.  The last person who was elected to this seat was Barack Obama in 2004.  He resigned from his seat after he was elected President in November 2008.