Virginia AG Backs Off Plan to Put More Candidates on Ballot
Ken Cuccinelli, attorney general for Virginia, has now backed off a proposal to pass emergency legislation that would have given the presidential candidates who failed to get their names on the ballot for Virginia's primary election another opportunity. The move may have revealed some positioning for the 2013 Republican governor's race.
To get on the ballot in Virginia, candidates must get 10,000 signatures with at least 400 from each of Virginia's congressional districts. Only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul met the requirements. Virginia has the strictest ballot requirements in the nation.
Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich thought they had qualified, but not all of the signatures they handed in were certified. Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum failed to turn in signatures by the deadline.
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On Saturday, Cuccinelli released a statement saying he would ask the state legislature to pass emergency legislation that would allow any candidate who qualified for federal matching funds to be placed on the ballot.
“Recent events have underscored that our system is deficient. Virginia owes her citizens a better process. We can do it in time for the March primary if we resolve to do so quickly,” Cuccinelli said.
Some Virginia legislators, however, expressed doubt that they would be able to pass the legislation in such a short amount of time. Plus, Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling, who will face off against Cuccinelli in 2013's Republican nomination process for governor, argued that the move would be unfair to Romney and Paul.
“If you do that it would be unfair to those candidates who qualified for the ballot in accordance with the law and the rules that had previously been established,” Bolling said in a statement.
A day after Cuccinelli's announcement, he said he changed his mind after talking to other Republican and Democratic leaders. After noting that the move would have been unfair to the Romney and Paul campaigns, he wrote, “a further critical factor that I must consider is that changing the rules midstream is inconsistent with respecting and preserving the rule of law – something I am particularly sensitive to as Virginia’s attorney general.”
Perry, the governor of Texas, has sued Virginia in federal court to get his name on the ballot arguing that the onerous requirements represent an unconstitutional restriction on the rights of candidates and voters. Four other candidates, Bachmann, Gingrich, Huntsman and Santorum have since joined in the suit.
Some conservatives, such as Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, have argued that the suit is in opposition to conservative principles because a judge that applies the law as written would not rule in their favor, and they are asking the federal government to overrule a state's prerogative.
In a letter praising Cuccinelli for changing course, Bolling made note of Perry's lawsuit in what can be interpreted as a backhanded compliment to Cuccinelli.
“Going forward, I would also encourage Attorney General Cuccinelli to avoid making public statements that criticize our state election laws while his office is defending the State Board of Elections in a lawsuit that has been brought against them by Governor Perry and certain other presidential candidates.
“I am concerned that such public comments could be used against the Commonwealth in our effort to defend these lawsuits, and I am confident that the Attorney General would not want to do anything that could jeopardize his office’s ability to win this case.”
