Gingrich Campaign Slams Virginia Primary System After Failing to Qualify for Ballot

FOX News ^ | December 24, 2011 | Associated Press Staff

[no dems]

Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich's campaign attacked Virginia's GOP primary election system on Saturday for keeping him off the state's March 6 Super Tuesday ballot. The state party said that Gingrich, who lives in Virginia, had failed to submit the required 10,000 signatures to appear on the ballot. The Gingrich campaign responded that "only a failed system" would disqualify Gingrich and other candidates. It said Gingrich would pursue an aggressive write-in campaign, although state law prohibits write-ins on primary ballots.

Gingrich campaign director Michael Krull said in a statement: "We will work with the Republican Party of Virginia to pursue an aggressive write-in campaign to make sure that all the voters of Virginia are able to vote for the candidate of their choice." However, state law says this about primary write-in campaigns: "No write-in shall be permitted on ballots in primary elections."

Forty-six delegates will be at stake in Virginia's Super Tuesday primary. That's a small fraction of the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination. But they could prove pivotal in a close race, especially for a candidate like Gingrich, who expects to do well in Southern contests. Gingrich already missed the deadline to appear on the ballot in Missouri's Feb. 7 primary, though he insists it doesn't matter because the state awards delegates based not on the primary but on a Republican caucus held in March. "After verification, RPV has determined that Newt Gingrich did not submit required 10k signatures and has not qualified for the VA primary," the party announced early Saturday on its Twitter feed.

Gingrich had been concerned enough to deliver his signatures personally. Rushing from New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Jan. 10, he held a rally Wednesday in Arlington, Va., where volunteers asked supporters to sign petitions.

[HiTech RedNeck]

There is more to the technicality than that, I am told. So many signatures have to be gotten from every precinct. Even in areas that are so Ratty they could be mistaken for laboratories.

[RIghtwardHo]

You’re too inept, disorganized, and flat out stupid to get on the ballot in time and you blame the system? Yeah, Gingrich is the smartest man in the room. *eye roll* And to cavalierly toss around that Pearl Harbor analogy ...

Romney and Gingrich are our top two, huh? Sad. Just sad.

Wish some others (esp Sarah) had jumped in this race.

[RIghtwardHo]

“occupy Virginia” hahahahah Good one. =)

[bwc2221]

“Remember the buzz going around because Gingrich left Iowa and headed back to his Virginia home ?”

I thought Newt was going back to Virginia to hear Callista sing in the church choir.

This isn't the first time this has happened. Newt will not be on the Missouri ballot because he filed late. He almost missed being on the Ohio ballot.

[Paleo Conservative]

It’s not just Gingrich. Only Romney and Paul qualified. Considering how many other states Gingrich, Perry, et al qualified for the ballot, the Virginia system seems to be overly restrictive.

[okie01]

This isn't the first time this has happened. Newt will not be on the Missouri ballot because he filed late. He almost missed being on the Ohio ballot.

The Missouri "primary" is actually a straw vote, as no delegates will be at stake.

Missouri holds caucusses a week or two later and the results of that election will determine the delegate count.

Newt is eligible for the caucusses.

[Springfield Reformer]

I’m not a big fan of Newt, but I am an attorney who has worked ballot access cases, and it would be a mistake to dump this all on Newt and all the other candidates who didn’t survive the signature war in VA. The RNC did push the whole national process forward. This is akin to rushing the passer. A hurried pass often leads to disaster. Newt and his team were doubtless trying to respond to all 50 fronts in the accelerated ballot access battle, and it may be they simply didn’t have the money to buy the ground troops necessary to pull off a highly technical play like VA. That’s not necessarily a demonstration of an organizational skills deficit.

BTW, Illinois is bad too. Not the same rules exactly, but if they were the same, good luck finding 40 let alone 400 eligible R’s in some districts. Big money and two or more years of advance planning with party cooperation could do it. Being the beneficiary of a recent popular surge, not so much. Advantage, money.

And so while I get the “rule of law” thing, please recall that here in America the highest law is the Constitution, and one of the highest functions of that constitutional law is to protect our right to put the people on the ballot that we believe best represent our interests. It is the very soul of the rule of law that the rules of the parties are and should be subordinate to that higher principle. If the majority of Republicans in VA want Newt or Bachmann or whoever else on the ballot, no party rule should be so onerous as to prevent that from happening. And any rule that prevents almost all of the viable national candidates from successfully jumping that signature hurdle is, on its face, adverse to that constitutional interest. This can and should be challenged by the excluded candidates as a group.

[DoughtyOne]

Was he a third way numbskull? Lordy...

The problem with some of these jackasses, is that they drop out of sight for a while, and then you forget what a dumb ass they were the last you heard of them.

If he really was a third way supporter, then he’s simply another Leftist(R).

[nathanbedford]

Thanks to all three of you for contributing the bulk of the very few rational posts on this and other threads concerning the Virginia primary petition fiasco.

Springfield Reformer, I think your insight, "it may be they simply didn’t have the money to buy the ground troops necessary to pull off a highly technical play like VA. " is probably the closest to the truth which will emerge in the near future.

The rules were the rules and were known to all or were discoverable by all. If candidates did not qualify under the rules it is not evidence of a conspiracy. It might be evidence of ineptness or it might be evidence that the process is so complicated and onerous that it requires time and money to fulfill which Gingrich did not have. We simply do not know.

If blame is to be accorded to Gingrich it is probably blame which should go not to events which occurred in the last few days but to events which led up to the abandonment of his campaign by his staff. The Virginia regulations require money and staff on the ground and Gingrich has been trying to compensate for an absence of both with a top-down, free media campaign. These events expose the vulnerability of trying to compensate and improvise across a continent containing 300 million people.

Nor do these events demonstrate that the "establishment" has it in for Gingrich or that the establishment GOP controlled these events. There is simply no such evidence. Whether or not the establishment GOP in Virginia is against Gingrich and for Romney cannot be concluded from these events or upon the facts as we now know them.

The fact that Gingrich is debarred from the primary election in Virginia (absent a court challenge which he should bring for a number of reasons) does not mean that Romney is destined to get the GOP nomination. Again, these events simply don't warrant that conclusion which has been repeatedly drawn on these threads. The number of delegates forfeited relative to the number needed for nomination is too trivial.

If we want to know how the Gingrich campaign is faring, we should look for reports about whether he has been able to reconstruct a staff and whether he has been able to set up state organizations. Ask whether money has been rolling into his campaign or not. These are the long-term factors which will determine the primary process leading to the nomination.

These events in Virginia are not apocalyptic, they are to a degree evidence of a shoestring campaign. The responsibility for the condition of the campaign ultimately is Gingrich's. They do not prove a lack of intelligence on Gingrich's part-as has been alleged of these threads-nor do they prove an inability to manage an organization. They might reveal an arrogance in assuming that he can run a top-down, personality oriented campaign.

But the evidence is not in.

Full disclosure: I support Gingrich.

[JediJones]

They haven’t said he was disqualified on the technical aspect of not having 400 votes from each precinct. That standard is much easier to meet than the 10,000 valid addresses for registered voters. You could meet double that 400 standard and still not have 10,000 signatures, let alone valid ones.

One question I have is whether the campaigns have access to verify the addresses themselves. If not, then suddenly it seems like a very bad, arbitrary law that violates equal protection. They might be forced to turn in signatures without having any way of verifying whether the addresses match the ones on the voter rolls. Since voters of a higher economic status are more likely to be able to afford to move, it actually risks disenfranchising their right to get a candidate on a ballot moreso than poorer voters. Their addresses are more likely to be out-of-date.

Nevertheless there was a clear path to get on the ballot. Just get 400 signatures from each district and then 10,600 more signatures from the most friendly areas. It doesn’t matter how sloppy you got all those since they said they wouldn’t verify anything if you hit 15,000. Although I am still unclear as to whether that means they also waived verification that you had 400 from each district. If they didn’t check the addresses on Romney’s signatures, how did they verify which district those voters were in?

I do think that if Newt and Perry couldn’t muster the time or money to get the signatures, then I find it hard to believe they’ll have the resources for a court challenge, which has much less of a guarantee for a favorable outcome.

To me it makes more sense to lobby the legislature or the party to change the rule in a way that doesn’t favor any candidate or invalidate the effort of the ones who did get signatures. One way is to say, if a candidate wins any other state’s primary, they can be added to the Virginia ballot.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

I agree that 10,000 petitions is reasonable, but how many were thrown out? “Disqualified”? Did Gingrich offer any numbers?

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

“Even if he wins VA, it will not benefit Ron Paul in the long run and it will embarrass Mitt Romney and the Elite GOP Establishment.”

Darn STRAIGHT!

[tarheelswamprat]

If he really was a third way supporter, then he’s simply another Leftist(R).

It was more than just being a supporter. Gingrich became a personal friend of the Tofflers, socialized with them and even considered them as mentors, in much the same manner as Bill Clinton considered his professor Carroll Quigley, author of "Tragedy and Hope", as a friend and mentor.

At this point, solely because of his abilities and willingness to take the fight to his opponents, and the lack of other, more suitable, viable and trustworthy alternatives, I will support Gingrich, but I do not trust him.

Gingrich is possibly the ultimate stealth candidate - the problem is that it can cut both ways. It all depends on what in his his mind, and more importantly, in his heart. Some people do change, re-examine their premises, learn from their mistakes, etc.

If Gingrich has done so, experienced an epiphany of sorts, so to speak, and decided to attempt a restoration of as much of our original constitutional Republic as possible, then he will be a formidable adversary in combating the corrupt establishment which is trying to remake America and the world as their own personal fiefdom, with us as their serfs, naturally.

However, if he's still on their side and supports their globalist agenda, then he could be their fallback option should Romney fail, and thus the ultimate Trojan horse/Pied Piper to deceive and lead the American people into oblivion as far as their freedom, rights and sovereignty are concerned.

At this moment, Gingrich is an enigma to both sides. I don't trust him, and there is plenty in his background and history to merit that distrust. By the reverse token, because of that same history the elites have good reason to expect he's still their man, but they don't trust him fully either, hence their current all-out effort to knock him out and lock-in the nomination for Romney, and even start floating trial balloons about Jeb Bush and other wholly-owned establishment assets again.

As I've said before in other discussions, we're in uncharted territory and the only thing we can say for certain is that the course ahead is uncertain, treacherous and dangerous, and that the mythical America wherein "the People" can truly, freely choose their leaders and government is dead, and the game is rigged, but even so we have no choice except to play.

[Pollster1]

While I’m even less a fan of the alternatives on the VA ballot than I am of Newt, he’s the one who messed up. Newt needs to get his act together in the other 49 states (56 for those still listening to Obama) and not mess up again. I knew the rules and what could go wrong. Newt should have known too, should have checked the signatures more carefully, and should have had a larger buffer. Now he should take his loss like a man and focus on what he can fix in the other states.

[no dems]

Ref. your Post #30: That’s why a Congressman or Senator is rarely elected President. The last “sitting” Senator to be elected, before Obozo, was JFK. And the last Congressman elected President was James Garfield.

[no dems]

But, don’t forget; Perry didn’t make the VA ballot either. So, just being a Guv. does not guarantee that you have organizational skills. I’m beginning to wonder what skills Perry has at all. Dude is dumb as a can of Spam.

[no dems]

The process is geared to the rich and connected..
______________________________________________________________
I don’t see how either of those two stipulations would eliminate Newt. He’s definitely in the “one percent” and in the Virginia/D.C. area, he’s definitely connected.

[no dems]

Yes, the buck stops with Newt; he's the candidate. But, he should not have even had to concern himself with this. That's why he pays a staff and HIS FRIGGIN' CAMPAIGN MANAGER SHOULD BE FIRED!!!

[no dems]

I hope Newt has surrounded himself with people he can trust.
______________________________________________________________
Me too, because he sure as hell didn’t surround himself with people who are competent or he wouldn’t be in this mess.

[Vigilanteman]

I think post #30 sums up this problem pretty well.

Mickey Mouse requirement, maybe. But certainly not overly difficult.