Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s request for an emergency motion to prevent the printing and distribution of ballots in Virginia has been rejected:
A federal judge in Richmond said today that he wouldn’t stop the printing before the next hearing in the case, scheduled for Jan. 13. He declined to rule on the merits of Perry’s challenge.
Perry, a Republican, filed an emergency motion yesterday seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent distribution of the ballots without his name. In a lawsuit filed Dec. 27 in federal court in Richmond, Perry claimed that the state’s requirement that petition circulators be eligible or registered qualified voters in Virginia violates his constitutional rights.
“This is probably a case that should have been filed beforehand, not when things went sour,” U.S. District Judge John A. Gibney Jr. said at a hearing in Richmond. He said that regardless of the merits of Perry’s claims, his campaign failed to gather the 10,000 signatures required to get on the primary ballot in Virginia.
“How can I put Mr. Perry on the ballot in light of the requirement?” Gibney asked Joseph M. Nixon, an attorney representing the Texas governor.
How, indeed.
The legal wrangling still isn’t over and the judge has given the other presidential campaigns until January sixth to intervene in the case. A hearing on Perry’s larger case regarding the rules set for signature gatherers is set for January 13th.
In another twist, Judge Gibney took a bit of a swing at Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli:
He told E. Duncan Getchell Jr., the state solicitor general, to write a brief outlining why Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s office does not have a conflict of interest.
Gibney referred to a statement made by Cuccinelli, following the failure of Perry and former house speaker Newt Gingrich to collect the necessary 10,000 signatures to get on the ballot, in which the attorney general urged that requirements for ballot access in Virginia be lowered.
That brief should prove interesting reading.
