Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said Sunday that he was wrong to ask state legislators to let more Republican presidential candidates on the state’s March primary ballot, saying it would be unfair to the two candidates who followed the rules to qualify.
Just 24 hours after imploring Virginia legislators to pass emergency legislation opening the primary up to the rest of the field, Cuccinelli now feels “that changing the rules midstream is inconsistent with respecting and preserving the rule of law,” he said in a statement.
“I do not change position on issues of public policy often or lightly,” Cuccinelli said. “But when convinced that my position is wrong, I think it necessary to concede as much and adjust accordingly.”
Still, Cuccinelli maintains that the state should ease its ballot restrictions, considered some of the toughest in the country. Only former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, met the 10,000-signature threshold required to make the ballot. Two other candidates failed to meet the standards, sparking a lawsuit from Texas Gov. Rick Perry and accusations of fraud from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Cuccinelli’s about-face drew praise from Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, who insinuated in a statement Saturday that the attorney general’s maneuver was aimed at getting a more conservative candidate, one whose politics are more in line with Cuccinelli’s, on the ballot. Bolling heads Romney’s Virginia campaign and is expected to face Cuccinelli in the Republican primary for governor in 2013.
“While I do not object to the General Assembly considering changes to our ballot-access requirements for future elections, it would have been inappropriate to make such changes in the middle of the current presidential nominating process,” Bolling said in a statement Sunday night.
The effort to change the ballot seemed doomed from the start. Romney has a number of backers in Virginia’s legislature and House Speaker Bill Howell told The Washington Examiner it was very unlikely both chambers could deliver 80percent of their votes, the margin needed to pass emergency legislation. The State Board of Elections is already working to produce the absentee ballots that will be mailed Jan. 21.
As the state’s top lawyer, it fell to Cuccinelli to defend the state’s ballot-access laws against a lawsuit filed by Perry. Cuccinelli, who was among the first Virginia officials to denounce the ballot rules as unfair after Perry and Gingrich failed to qualify, insisted he would vigorously defend the very law he was criticizing.
Then on Saturday Cuccinelli announced that he would submit emergency legislation to overturn the law he said he would defend and called on lawmakers to rewrite the rules to make it easier for candidates to make the ballot.
Cuccinelli’s opposition sparked concerns from the judge overseeing Perry’s lawsuit, who questioned whether taking a position on the rule compromised his office’s ability to defend the law in the face of a legal challenge. The lawsuit has since been joined by the four other candidates that failed to make the ballot.
A federal judge will hear arguments Jan. 13 on whether the court should intervene and stop the state from sending out absentee ballots with just the names of Paul and Romney.
