First there was this.
Tarrant County Republican Chairman Tim Davis wants seven Democratic judicial candidates running in the March 3 primary election removed from the ballot, saying their candidate filings had several errors.
Davis formally challenged the ballot applications and petition filings on Wednesday, asking the Tarrant County Democratic Party to review the candidates and declare them ineligible to run.
Davis also deemed Republican candidate Zee Wilcox ineligible to run for the Texas House. Late Friday, she filed a lawsuit challenging his decision.
Under state law, local parties are responsible for reviewing applications for compliance. They have the authority to reject filings that do not meet procedural requirements.
All seven judicial candidates are running unopposed in the Democratic primary, meaning if they are not removed from the ballot, they will be on the ballot in the November general elections.
However, if they are removed, the judicial seat likely will go to the Republican nominee by default.
“We are committed to reviewing (Davis’) concerns carefully and in accordance with the Texas Election Code,” read a statement from the Tarrant County Democratic Party. “Additionally, we question many of the assertions made, and in those cases, we will be standing strong to keep our candidates on the ballot.”
My initial response was that this was annoying, and possibly a sign of some concern in Tarrant County by the ruling Republican Party that they will have their hands full this fall, but I didn’t think much more about it than that. Until I saw this.
The Tarrant County Democratic Party challenged the eligibility of all 41 Republican judicial candidates and two for Texas House in the March 3 primary election, seeking to remove all 43 from the ballot.
Democrats announced they formally challenged the filings Tuesday morning, alleging that the candidates submitted applications with multiple errors. The action came roughly a week after local Republican Party chairman Tim Davis challenged seven Democratic candidates.
“These aren’t minor errors,” Allison Campolo, chair of the Tarrant County Democratic Party, said in a press release. “We’re talking about petitions that don’t meet basic legal requirements, even though it’s very clear about what is needed for a candidate to appear on the ballot.”
To run for a judicial position in Tarrant County, candidates must collect at least 250 voters’ signatures on a petition in support of their candidacy. In lieu of paying a filing fee, candidates can collect a total of 750 signatures.
Campolo alleged some GOP election applications had altered candidate information, incomplete or missing voter signature information and missing details as well as redacted public information such as signers’ birthdays.
Davis, the GOP chair, said in a statement that Republicans received the challenges and are beginning their review.
“From the first pass, it appears the Democrats were about as sloppy with their challenge as they were with their original filings,” Davis wrote, adding that he noticed several typos, formatting issues and legal errors in the Democrats’ challenges.
The majority of the challenged candidates are running for the 39 judicial and justice of the peace positions in Tarrant County up for grabs in November. One seat has multiple Republican candidates contending, and all but three of those positions are held by Republican incumbents. Democrats have 17 candidates running for those spots.
If any of either party’s candidates are removed from the March ballot, leaving them without a November nomination, the parties’ executive committees can select replacement nominees.
Those wishing to appear on the November ballot can file as a write-in candidate in races that saw candidates declared ineligible.
The Tarrant Dems didn’t mess around here. We had our own judicial petition issues here, but on a much smaller scale. Given that the parties could replace disqualified nominees on the ballot, it’s not clear to me how big a deal any of these challenges might be if they’re successful. Probably a bigger deal for the Republicans in that many of the challenged candidates are incumbents, but it might be harder for Dems to find suitable replacements who could get up to speed on fundraising quickly. It’s all hypothetical for now. I can’t recall seeing anything quite as big as this before, so I will definitely keep an eye on what happens. Lone Star Left has more.