Today, the Colorado Secretary of State announced the results of the final petition signature reviews…and, look, it’s not just Republicans who have a tough time getting on the ballot by gathering signatures.
First, the one who made it on the ballot. Former state Rep. Joel Judd just barely made the ballot to run in House District 5, a district he represented from 2002 through 2010. He submitted 2,497 signatures. He was required to have 1,000 valid signatures. He ended up with 1,001 valid signatures, which means that 1,496 were deemed invalid. What happened there, Joel? That’s about the worst percentage of valid signatures that we’ve ever seen. Really.
Then, there were three who didn’t make it on the ballot: Attorney General candidate Brad Levin, Senate District 34 candidate Jonah Weiss, and Attorney General candidate Amy Padden, who withdrew her signatures. While Republican candidates primarily had trouble in the Second Congressional District (aka Boulder), Levin had problems in nearly every district except for the First and Second. He submitted 15,996 and ended up with just 8,979 valid signatures. He needed 10,500, so he missed it by a wide margin.
Without Levin and Padden on the ballot, it appears that the Democratic Attorney General’s primary will come down to Phil Weiser, who has raised buckets of money, but has zero name recognition, and state Rep. Joe Salazar, who suffers from extreme “foot-in-mouth” disease, although he has the hearts of the grassroots.
Rock and a hard place, Democrats. No envy on this side of the aisle.