Texas Gov. Rick Perry is appealing a federal judge’s decision not to force Virginia to add his name and the names of three other Republican presidential candidates to the state’s primary ballot.
A lawyer for Perry filed the appeal Sunday, just two days after U.S. District Judge John Gibney determined Perry, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman waited too long to complain about the state’s tough ballot restrictions.
Gibney agreed that a state law barring the Republican candidates from using out-of-state petitioners to gather signatures was likely unconstitutional, but he questioned why the candidates didn’t mention their concerns until after the Dec. 22 filing deadline. Candidates could begin collecting signatures July 1.
In his filing to the U.S. Fourth District Appeals Court, Perry lawyer Joe Nixon insisted that Virginia’s 10,000-signature requirement was a violation of free speech and Gibney’s reasons for ruling against the candidates were “illogical.”
“Candidates for the presidency are focused on running for president, not on fighting legal battles to preemptively hold state election laws unconstitutional,” Nixon wrote.
Perry submitted just 6,000 valid signatures after hiring a Utah-based company to gather petitions. Gingrich came up short when a number of his signatures were tossed and he later blamed fraud for his failure to make the ballot.
Huntsman and Santorum didn’t hand in petitions at all. Huntsman quit the presidential race Monday.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli asked the appeals court Sunday to reject Perry’s plea to put him on the ballot, citing Gibney’s assertion that Virginia’s ballot restrictions were “plainly constitutional.”
Noting the July 1 start date to collect signatures and that Perry declared for the presidency on Aug. 13, Cuccinelli asserted that “rather than having challenged that requirement at a time when success would have allowed him to use nonresident circulators, he attempted to comply with the requirement by hiring a private vendor.”
Cuccinelli added that retroactively adding candidates to the March 6 primary could be very costly to localities and cause confusion for voters who receive multiple ballots.
Early last week, Gibney ordered localities to stop printing and mailing ballots with just the names of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas — the only two candidates to hand in 10,000 valid signatures. That restriction was lifted Friday, allowing the state to meet the federally mandated Jan. 21 deadline to send ballots to overseas military personnel and disabled voters.
State election officials insist that further delay would jeopardize their ability to meet the deadline.
