The campaign group of Donald Trump tried to get his rival Republicans
kicked off the ballot in Illinois – but the attempt failed when his
state chair failed to bring duplicate copies of the required forms.
The Guardian has learned that on Wednesday, the last day for
candidates to object to signatures submitted by rival campaigns to get
on the ballot, chair Kent Gray showed up at the Illinois board of
elections a few minutes before it closed. Illinois has some of the
toughest ballot access laws in the country, and qualifying for the
ballot requires gathering a different number of signatures in each of
the state’s 18 congressional districts. Candidates often stumble trying
to fulfill the state’s requirements; conservative challenger Rick
Santorum faced major obstacles in 2012.
Approached by the Guardian, Gray referred all questions to campaign
spokesman Hope Hicks, who said he “was not available” to the press.
Hicks did not respond to follow-up questions from the Guardian.
State politicians have long had a “gentleman’s agreement”
that candidates would not attempt to contest each other’s signatures and
throw each other off the ballot. But challenging petition signatures as
a form of political chicanery in the Land of Lincoln has a long
history. Barack Obama first won election to the state senate in 1996 by
successfully challenging the signatures of his incumbent opponent and
getting her removed from the ballot.
It had been widely reported
that the campaign of Governor John Kasich of Ohio, a vocal Trump
critic, had problems gathering signatures in Illinois, and
representatives of Kasich, along with the campaigns of Florida senator
Marco Rubio and neurosurgeon Ben Carson, were monitoring for any
objections from rival camps. It seemed that they had dodged a bullet
until Gray walked in attempting to object to a number of candidates on
the grounds that some of their signatures were invalid, although exactly
who he focused on is unclear.
But Illinois
law requires that someone objecting to a candidate’s nominating papers
bring both the original and two duplicates. Gray only brought the
original. His arrival in the board of elections office with just minutes
left set off a scramble among those campaigns who had representatives
there to monitor proceedings. Several had brought objections of their
own to file defensively, only if someone objected to their presence on
the ballot.
Credit:The Guardian
The Carson campaign made ready to file their defensive objections but
apparently did so in such a rush, with only minutes left, that they did
not file sufficient duplicates as well.
The Illinois board of elections confirmed to the Guardian that there
were two failed attempts to challenge the nominating papers of
presidential candidates on Wednesday.
But because of Gray’s snafu in failing to provide the needed
duplicate copies of the objections, every Republican candidate who filed
will be on the ballot in Illinois for the state’s 15 March primary.
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