Posted on 01/15/2012 7:16:35 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Texas Gov. Rick Perrys lawyers filed a motion with a federal appeals court Sunday, seeking to win him a place on the Republican presidential primary ballot in Virginia even though his campaign failed to gather the 10,000 signatures required by state law.
On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge John Gibney ruled that Perry, Newt Gingrich and other candidates who failed to make the cut waited too long to pursue their legal challenges, which were brought as ballot printing was getting underway and the mailing of absentee ballots was about to commence. However, Gibney said Perry and the other candidates would like have prevailed on their claim that a Virginia requirement that ballot petition circulators be Virginia residents violates the Constitution.
In a motion filed at 7 A.M. Sunday with the Richmond-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, Perrys legal team argues that it would have been too speculative for them to file suit before Perry failed to make the 10,000 signature threshold last month. Perry asks that his name be place on the March 6 ballot or, at a minimum, that the printing of ballots be suspended until his lawsuit can be resolved.
Perry filed this lawsuit on December 27, 2011, the same date the names of candidates qualified to appear on the ballot were scheduled to be certified and just two business days after Defendant Mullins made a preliminary determination and publicly announced Movant did not submit enough petition signatures to qualify to be placed on the ballot. Prior to this date, Movant reasonably expected to meet the requirements of Virginias likely...unconstitutional election law, and Respondents could not have suffered any injury, as they could not have begun the process of finalizing their ballot orders, the Texas governors lawyers wrote in their motion (posted here).
Another illogical result of the District Courts reasoning is that it would require [Perry] or any candidate for the Presidency, to pre-emptively apply for injunctive relief while there remains a possibility that they may collect the requisite number of signatures to appear on the primary ballot. This is absurd. Candidates for the presidency are focused on running for president, not on fighting legal battles to pre-emptively hold state election laws unconstitutional. When Movant filed his candidacy, he expected to be able to comply with section 24.2-545 of the Virginia State Code. [Perry] timely, and steadfastly, moved to protect his constitutional rights once his claim was ripe, and he cannot be charged with inexcusably or unreasonably delaying the filing of this suit, the Perry motion said.
About 90 minutes after the motion was filed, the 4th Circuit issued an order requiring the states lawyers to respond to Perrys application by Monday.
Only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul made the Virginia ballot. Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Jon Huntsman have sought to bootstrap on Perry's suit and are likely to join in his latest motion.
In rejecting Perry's request for an injunction, Gibney cited the long-standing legal doctrine of laches. The principle, which is not set out in any statute or rule and dictates no particular amount of time in which a suit may be filed, mandates that a party asking for relief from a court not delay the case unreasonably in a way that disadvantages another party to the case.
Here is a LINK to the ruling.
I believe it will be appealed on VA banning petition circulators from out-of-state [described in link] using case law.
Buckley v Am. Constitutional Law Found., 525 U.S.182 (1999) which was used in Meyer v Grant, 486 U.S.414,421 (1988)...
Commonly referred to as "Buckley." [In context of the First Amendment, the Court must "be vigilant....to guard against undue hindrances to political conversations and the exchange of ideas."]
Pages 12-14 outlines why Judge Gibney ruled against them [the entire ruling is interesting and informative]
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VA primary is 2 months away. RCP has Perry at 5.7 in SC and 3.5 in FL. Both of those primaries are going to be held this month. If he performs at those levels in two southern states and remains in the race, he’s Don Quixote.
Maybe he’s doing this for Newt?
I call BS on the state of Va.
If these were DemoRats candidates this carpola wouldn’t even exist.
I don’t know. Whatever the reason, the VA rules, strict an silly as they may be, have been well known for some time.
at least we will get to see how strong the ‘not Romney’ vote will be
In the two races so far he got a lot of democrap votes, while our GOP conservatives were split among all the other candidates
Thanks for keeping us up to date on this ridiculous situation.
I believe that a lot of Virginia residents are just now becoming aware of this situation and will start putting the pressure on officials to do the right thing.
This should not affect people who didn’t try to get signatures, I wouldn’t think.
It should only affect Perry and Gingrich, each of whom had the required number of signatures but are being questioned about the citizenship of the people who gathered the signatures.
Is that what you think?
Maybe he’s doing it for conservatives, against Romney.
Maybe he’s doing it for himself and for the country.
At any rate, he’s doing it.
No one else is.
That’s the way he governs also.
Get out, Rick. You don’t have a chance and Santorum does.
Imagine if Texas had been the first Primary state instead of political backwater states like Iowa and NH. Whole different ballgame.
Agree...that maybe he's doing it for conservatives, against Romney.
Perry sauntered in to the race (late) without a plan, organization or money. You can’t win in America like that. It’s his own fault.
If this convoluted primary season does nothing else, it should at least result in states re-assessing their primary times.
Now Texas is being pushed farther back because of some judge’s injunction agains the re-districting which he claims hurts minorities.
That decision is in limbo and while it is, we can’t have a primary. grrrr
Ordinarily posters who make the kind of comment you just made get a very snarky reply from me.
But I’ve vowed, just for today, to try to ignore stupidity.
Are you a Texan?
Do you like Perry or not?
If you’re ‘well aware of the way he governs’ you should like him very much.
Sauntered? Think not. He may have loped.
We have a whole slew of candidates who entered this race on a wing and a prayer (maybe not a prayer).
Gingrich had been an unpopular figure to conservatives for a long time, though we may not be sure why.
Ron Paul is a notorious nut but has some dedicated followers along with some media and dems who promote him to make us look stupid.
Santorum didn’t have a dime and he lost his last political contest when his own state rejected him (by a huge margin) for a democrat.
Huntsman is an enigma. He was off working for Obama and suddenly decides he should be president.
Cain? Cain had nothing except that he was different and seemed like a decent guy. I don’t think he ever intended to win and was totally surprised when he got some support. I think he intended all along to get publicity, a job at Fox News, sell books, or maybe a position in Romney’s administration.
Did I leave anyone out? Well, yeah, I did.
Romney. He’s been planning this for four years, has plenty of money and organization and the support of the media.
There ya go.
RICK PERRY 2012
They changed the rules somewhat in the last month which gave very little time to adjust. They knew what they were doing. The GOP and the State decided to give Romney the vote.
Newt had the signatures needed but this rule change eliminated enough to go below 10,000 required.
But lets go one step further. All Stated should be required to place on their ballot any candidate receiving Federal funds. No exception. This is leading to a Federal election for President. Virginia seems like another backward thinking State.
Perry had a plan, an organization, and tons of money. He was being handed the nomination on a silver platter.
He blew it, because nobody knew the guy was lazy and couldn’t string 3 coherent sentences together.
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