Three Republican presidential primaries were held on June 3. The Montana results are: John McCain 76.3%, Ron Paul 21.5%, uncommitted 2.2%. This is Ron Paul’s second-best primary showing for 2008, after Idaho.
South Dakota results are: McCain 72.5%, Paul 17.1%, Huckabee 7.4%, uncommitted 3.0%.
New Mexico results are: McCain 86.0%, Paul 14.0%.
California held its primary on June 4 for all partisan offices other than president (the California presidential primary had been in February). Elections officials estimate the turnout was only 31% of the registered voters. If so, that would be the lowest California statewide primary turnout in history. The previous low had been the June 2006 primary, with 33% of the registered voters.
For the Peace & Freedom Party, and the American Independent Party, of California, the June 4 event is of crucial importance. Elections for county central committee were held on June 4. The results will determine which presidential candidates will be nominated by those parties, especially for the Peace & Freedom Party. However, many of the candidates were write-in candidates, and write-ins are always the last to be counted. Full results may not be known until early July.
Also important for the Peace & Freedom Party are the results for Assembly, 5th district, in Sacramento. There is a contest between Gerald Frink and C. T. Weber for the party’s nomination. Both Frink and Weber hope that Weber wins. But since the write-ins will be slow to be counted, and since Weber was a write-in candidate, we must wait for those results also. The race is important, because California law irrationally requires a write-in candidate in a party primary to get thousands of write-ins, no matter how few registered members the party has. But if Weber, a write-in, receives more votes than Frink, whose name was on the ballot, that will set up the conditions for a lawsuit to perhaps finally overturn the California law on the maximum number of write-ins needed for a candidate to become a party nominee.
As of 11:15 pm Mountain Time, the results of the Republican New Mexico presidential primary are: John McCain 86.6%, Ron Paul 13.4%.
The results for Montana and results for South Dakota are here.
On June 3, Jim Ogonowski, the choice of leaders of the Massachusetts Republican Party for U.S. Senate this year, was told by the Secretary of State that he does not have enough valid signatures to be on the Republican primary ballot. The law requires 10,000 signatures, and Ogonowski has 9,970, according to the Secretary of State. Ogonowski disputes this and says some of his signatures were lost by town clerks. He is also free to run as a write-in candidate in the September primary. However, he would need 10,000 write-in votes, and in addition, of course, he would need to outpoll the one Republican who did get on the primary ballot. That candidate is Jeff Beatty. Beatty doesn’t have as much support among party leaders, but he did a better job of collecting signatures.
I wrote to every Republican state legislator in Massachusetts in early 2007, and urged each one to introduce a bill, making ballot access to the primary ballot easier. None of them responded. The Republican Party only had U.S. House candidates in 2006 in three of the ten districts. The Green Party, which was also a ballot-qualified party in 2006 (and still is) didn’t have any U.S. House candidates in 2006, and doesn’t this year either.
