On June 9, Virginia Democrats held a primary to choose a gubernatorial candidate. Terry McAuliffe, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, placed a distant second to a Virginia state legislator, Creigh Deeds. See this story. McAuliffe spent the most money, and had been endorsed by former President Bill Clinton, and had once been considered the front-runner.

But McAuliffe received bad publicity less than two weeks ago, when Theresa Amato’s book about the Nader 2004 campaign was published. The book, “Grand Illusion: the Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny” revealed that McAuliffe had told Nader in early 2004 that Nader must not get on the ballot in 19 particular states, and that if Nader agreed, McAuliffe would steer campaign contributions to him for his campaign in 31 other states. The press asked Nader to corroborate the story, and he did so, and that made the news.

On June 9, the Maine Senate passed LD 1041 on second reading. UPDATE: on June 10, the House passed the bill on third reading. The bill still must pass the Senate on third reading. This is the bill that alters the method by which a party remains on the ballot. Existing law requires it to have polled 5% for either Governor or President. The bill changes this to keep a party on the ballot if it has 10,000 registered members who voted at the last general election. The only party now on the ballot besides the Democratic and Republican Parties is the Green Party, which has about 31,000 registrants.

Filing for 2009 Washington city and county elections closed on June 5. The primary is in August. One incumbent city coucilmember, Janet Way, will probably not appear on the August ballot because she tried to file for re-election online, and had computer problems. See this story. Thanks to Chris Roberts for the link.

The newspaper story says that although on-line filing closed at 4 p.m., the King County Elections Department would have let her file in-person as late as 4:30 p.m. However, that would have meant a trip in rush-hour traffic from her home in Shoreline, to downtown Seattle. Shoreline is 15 miles north of Seattle.