Last week, former US Attorney Pat Meehan flagged his own nominating petitions for possible forgeries, asking the Delaware County DA (who, incidentally, is a major donor to Meehan’s campaign) to investigate the matter. Meehan’s campaign isolated the possible forgeries as the work of one veteran GOP operative, Paul Summers, who was responsible for 650 of Meehan’s 3,627 submitted signatures. (To qualify for the ballot, House candidates must file 1,000 valid signatures.)
It looks like the Lentz campaign thinks there may be even more meat on that bone:
Republican congressional candidate and former U.S. attorney Patrick Meehan filed nominating petitions riddled with enough errors to disqualify him from the ballot in the Seventh District U.S. House race, according to a challenge filed with Commonwealth Court.
The motion asks the court to rule that most of the 3,623 signatures Meehan submitted are invalid, leaving him with fewer than the 1,000 required to run in the May 18 GOP primary. […]
Technically, the petition challenge was brought by four unknown registered Republican voters in Delaware County, though the Lentz campaign expressed support in a statement released Tuesday night after the document was filed.
The challenge says two longtime leaders of the county GOP, Thomas Judge Sr. and John McNichol, were among those who signed affidavits as circulators of Meehan petitions without witnessing the signatures of voters, as required by law.
A line-by-line examination of the petition sheets found fictitious signatures, people who were not registered to vote or were not enrolled with the Republican Party, illegible signatures, and other defects, the complaint said. All signatures gathered by circulators who acted improperly should be thrown out, it said.
“What’s unusual is when a candidate recognizes impropriety,” said Cliff Levine, a Pittsburgh lawyer specializing in election law who filed the challenge. “Mr. Meehan agrees with us that there was impropriety. Our point of difference is over the scope.”
More from PA2010:
The complaint is nothing if not wide in scope, claiming to have evidence enough to strike 2,284 signatures simply on their individual merits. The signatures in question, according to the complaint, include ones that, among other things, were illegible; incomplete; belonging to voters not registered in the district; belong to voters not registered as Republicans; or forged entirely by someone else. It further alleges that many of the petitions on which signatures were gathered were circulated by people other than those who signed affidavits confirming they had witnessed each signature.
The full complaint is available here (.pdf). This looks like it’ll yield some pretty juicy news in the coming weeks, to say the least. I especially love Meehan’s response:
Meehan also said this his campaign had reviewed Lent’s nominating petitions and found 550 signatures that could be challenged (Lentz’s campaign collected more than 5,000).
“But I chose not to engage in the waste of court resources that your campaign has willingly embraced,” Meehan wrote. “I believe voters deserve better.”
So are we to believe that Meehan is not challenging Lentz’s petitions because he respects “court resources”, or because he knows that, even if his challenges were successful, Lentz would still have over four times the required signatures to qualify for the ballot? I think we all know the answer to that one.
RaceTracker Wiki: PA-07
I am looking forward to a no-holds-barred death match between Bryan Lentz and the Delaware County GOP machine. The county GOP was only lukewarm about Curt Weldon because of his ethics issues, so Sestak didn’t have to face the full wrath of the Delco GOP machine. Meehan has strong and unanimous support from the local GOP. This is going to be a very nasty campaign.
I like that Lentz decided to draw first blood and is taking responsibility for the ballot challenge. But I question whether it’s worth the effort to kick his primary opponents off the ballot. He would steamroll them anyway.
If you’re not from the area, it’s hard to understand the extent the local GOP’s power. It is literally impossible to get a job at the courthouse without GOP registration. Ugh, I cannot wait to vote.
Even if it fails, it knocks Meehan off message for weeks. And I notice there was no statement from Meehan’s campaign saying they believe most of their signatures will hold up in the end. I think they’re probably pretty worried.
So here’s a question – what happens if Meehan is knocked off the ballot? Is there a primary challenger to him?
had good intentions by looking into problems with his own signatures, but it looks like his honesty might prove to be his own downfall here. That would almost be too bad, because this is shaping up to be one of the premier house races in the country.
This race has big stakes on both sides because this is turning into a progressive district, yet I feel that Meehan could become one of those really strong incumbents that is able to weather really strong democratic cycles and a democratic PVI. The onus is on Lentz to make sure such a scenario doesn’t come to pass, and his campaign made a strong move here by attaching it’s name to the proceedings. If nothing else, it makes Meehan sweat it out a bit and knocks him off his prescribed campaign path.
Meehan could still get on the November ballot by winning the GOP primary as a write in, which wouldn’t be hard.