Brookings Dems Strangely Unconcerned About Doomed House Candidates’ Petitions

The court challenge to the nominating petitions of District 7 Democratic House candidates Bill Adamson and Zach Kovach that I reported over a month ago has finally reached the Brookings newspaper. Brookings County Democratic Party chair and District 7 Senate candidate Mary Perpich tells supporters there’s nothing to worry about:

“We have no reason to believe that we’re not going to be in the race, and we’re just campaigning as we would have without this,” she added, with the candidates planning to attend the state convention scheduled in the middle of June. 

“I don’t think the supporters should be overly concerned with this,” Perpich added. “These things happen all the time, and I expect that we will find that our candidates will be OK in the end after the decision is made. They will survive this challenge and as a result, we are just going to go ahead and campaign as usual” [Eric Sandbulte, “Lawsuit Challenges District 7 Democrats’ Petitions,” Brookings Register, 2018.06.08].

Actually, one reason to believe that Adamson and Kovach aren’t going to be in the race is Perpich’s own bad petition experience in April. Republicans challenged Perpich’s Senate nominating petition for the presence of Rep. Spencer Hawley’s invalid notary seal. Secretary Krebs looked at Perpich’s petition, looked at Hawley’s invalid seal, and tossed that petition. Hawley also bogusly notarized all of Kovach’s petition sheets and half of Adamson’s, invalidating them as surely as he invalidated Perpich’s. The only difference between the Republican challenge of Perpich’s petition and District 7 independent House candidate Cory Ann Ellis’s challenge of her Democratic opponents’ petitions is that the GOP filed its challenge early with the Secretary of State while Ellis filed her challenge after the five-day SOS challenge window, meaning she has to get a judge to rule on the petitions. But the law is the same: without a valid notary seal, Kovach’s petition is invalid. Counting other errors, Adamson’s petition is also invalid.

I appreciate optimism… and believe me, I’ve been trying to find some legal interpretation to make me optimistic about Adamson’s and Kovach’s petitions. But supporters of the Democratic ticket in District 7 should be concerned. The only legal option I can see for saving Adamson’s and Kovach’s spots on the November ballot is for Brookings County Democrats to avail themselves of House Bill 1286: start a petition to create a new political party, collect signatures from at least 2,775 voters (District 7 has 3,723 registered Democratic voters who should be willing to sign), file that petition by July 1, and nominate Adamson and Kovach as the new party’s District 7 House candidates.

Heck, you can even have Spence Hawley notarize that new party petition, since he refiled his notary papers and was re-entered in the notary database on May 1.