Posted on 12/24/2011 8:29:18 PM PST by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
So if Joseph Stalin were to run a tight campaign I should vote for him?
Frankly, I"m growing a bit weary of Newt's whining. He's wasting valuable time whining about the negative campaigning against him.
Of course, it's true but still he would be better off stating what he desires to do rather than whining about being a victim.
Happy Christmas Morning to all!
Springfield ... the qualifications that Newt and Perry failed to meet isn’t a “rule” of the RPV, it’s a law of the Commonwealth of Virginia, applicable to all D’s and R’s seeking to be on the presidential or U.S. Senate primary ballot. VA was for many years/decades, and may still be, under scrutiny of the DOJ, so one might assume the qualifying law is legit and Constitutional. (does anyone really want to challenge or modify the law when Holder is in charge?)
No one can explain how it is that in ‘08, six GOP presidential hopefuls made the primary ballot under the same requirements, in the same time frame, but suddenly on 12/24/11 the law is unconstitutional because ‘our’ guy(s) didn’t make the cut. I say that as an early Newt supporter on these site.
I’m sure Newt and his campaign team had no idea 2 months ago that he’d be in the lead now. It’s my belief that he entered the fray to frame the debate (which he’s done to a great extent), rather than win the nomination outright. But, he IS in the race, he IS now in the lead, and it IS for the Office of President of the United States. After the fact, we can’t ask that the law, or rules by which we entered the game, be changed. It’s a little too SoreLoserman for me. 11 years later we’re STILL hearing Gore won the popular vote! So what??
I ‘get’ that Newt’s campaign doesn’t have the funds and, time is short with the early primaries/caucuses being moved up. But that doesn’t explain not only my or my household’s VA voters never receiving a call or email asking to sign a petition, but CharlesWayneCT’s not even getting a response to his offer to collect signatures. That’s inexcusable.
Maybe we can not “blame” Newt or even his campaign. They fumbled the ball. That doesn’t make it the NFL’s or the ref’s error. So you pick up and go on to the next play. The primary clock is not at 00:00. It’s barely 14:59. It is not the end of the game. You might say they just had a bad end to the 1st quarter. If they want to win, they can’t sit around and spend their halftime energy on what has happened that can’t be undone. They have to look forward to what comes next. I see this as an opportunity for Newt, or Perry, or whoever the eventual nominee may be, to keep a very close eye on their ground game in all 50 states.
Why do you need to lie like that?
“And again”..............(keep lying)
If an address went as follows; “John Doe, 1024 1st St.” and was written on the petition as; “John Doe, 1024 First Street.”, it was thrown out.
Again, this has never been done before. Not to mention that the Lt. Governor of Virginia, is on Romney's campaign staff. Romney had help in getting the ridiculous 15,000 signatures. To do so, takes lots of help and money, as well as time.
No wonder that out of the six candidates, only 2 qualified. Virginia has taken their Primary voting regulations to preposterous levels. And this recent fiasco reeks of election tampering to help Romney take it.
There is a strategic reason for this. I have read that statistics show that the peson that RESPONDS to negativ ads by calling them out frequently wins. Just as there was a strategy behind Newt's slam at Judges, being that IA coservatives recently impeached the six judges that pushed gay marriage on the state. He is playing chess while the others are playingt checkers. You will see when the vote occurs.
If his soon to be released book (mid next years I believe) does still harp on man-made global warming and our need to combat it, I think your pondering will cease.
I don’t trust him. He’s been off the reservation way too much for my trust.
He didn't get the required number of signatures from each district.
This rule has never been enforced before. Nobody even knew about it.
Until Myth's minions discovered it.
The Romney FIX is in! But it sounds like a protest/legal action may also be happening. This is just too coincidental that Romney got just over 15,000 signatures, no more, no less, which also qualifies under this stupid rule, Romney could win it all without holding a Primary. (That is if no other candidates can qualify)
THANK you!
Over a month ago, VA GOP officials were granting interviews on this subject and it was being talked about in major news venues.
To attack the "system" at this point is just lame.
The Cain campaign, for example, was using volunteers to collect signatures at the polling places on the last local election day. This was a very good, effective and efficient strategy that no doubt would have been successful.
Newt isn't on the ballot because he left the project until the last minute, had to scramble, and there's just no way to meet the requirements that way.
Virginia GOP officials were warning Newt OVER A MONTH AGO that he'd better get moving if he wanted to make the cut.
According to RVP officials in this story, they hadn't even heard a whisper that Gingrich even had started collected signatures, and again, that was over a month ago.
I don’t think write-in campaigns are as difficult as they used to be.
If Newt is truly as popular as the polls say, I don’t see it being a big problem for people to vote for him as a write-in candidate.
The deadline for this process is Dec. 22. Virginia officials say that any campaign that hasn’t started the process probably would not make it. “If they are not already collecting petitions, they are going to have a hard time getting on the ballot,” says the Virginia official involved in regulating the process.
State GOP sources say they know the campaigns of Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain are already working to get signatures. Those officials say they simply don’t know about others, including Gingrich, who has shot toward the top of national polls in recent days. The officials’ concern is if well-wired state GOP officials haven’t heard about them, the signature-gathering efforts by other campaigns may be inadequate or nonexistent.
And don't forget Gingrich is a Virginia resident. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of GOP politics in Virginia knows, at the minimum, the process is a lengthy one.
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