Longtime Del. Bob Marshall is considering entering the race for Virginia’s open U.S. Senate seat and has gone so far as to seek legal advice from the attorney general on how to collect signatures for a statewide run.
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Marshall, a Prince William Republican who narrowly missed the party’s nomination for the job in 2008, told The Washington Examiner on Tuesday that he still has people asking him to throw his hat in the ring but he didn’t have a timetable for making a decision.
“Bottom line, am I serious about this prospect? Yes. Definitely,” he said. “But I’ve still got to get all these ducks in line before I set the trip wire.”
Marshall has served in the House of Delegates since the mid-1990s and has a strong record among conservatives. He is well known for circulating controversial anti-abortion bills, pushing a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and civil unions, and leading efforts to keep federal health care reform out of Virginia.
Marshall would join a crowded field of Tea Party candidates who are jockeying for the opportunity to knock off establishment-favorite George Allen for the Republican nomination. Most of the candidates launched campaigns early in 2011.
Earlier this month, Marshall contacted Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli asking for an opinion about the state’s ballot restrictions. Candidates for statewide office must collect 10,000 signatures from registered voters, including 400 from each of 11 congressional districts — a process that has come under scrutiny from current Republican presidential contenders who failed to meet the threshold.
But the General Assembly failed to meet its constitutional duty to redraw congressional district lines by the end of the year, causing confusion as to how candidates should proceed. Presumably, an agreement will be reached or the courts will decide the issue in the coming weeks, but should candidates collecting signatures use the new boundaries or the old ones?
That Virginia’s maps also must get approval from the U.S. Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act means the date to file petitions could overlap with the federal review period.
“If a candidate for U.S. Senate were to circulate petitions on or after Jan. 1, 2012 which listed the date of the Republican or Democratic primaries as the calendar date for the second Tuesday in June, would those petitions be disqualified if a later date were to be chosen because of possible schedule conflict because of Voting Rights Act requirements affecting redrawing of Congressional district lines?” Marshall asked in a letter to Cuccinelli.
Petitions are due to the party by March 29.
