U.S. district judge John Gibney struck down Texas Governor Rick Perry’s attempt to get his name on the Virginia Republican primary ballot in March. The ruling also means Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Jon Huntsman will not be included on the Virginia primary ballot.
The Virginia State Board of Elections can now send out the Virginia Republican primary absentee ballots starting next week as scheduled. On Tuesday, Mr. Gibney ordered Virginia elections officials to stop printing primary ballots for the upcoming.
However, the judge changed his stance Friday, claiming that the Republican presidential candidates knew about the Virginia primary requirements well in advance and essentially waited until the last minute to file the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Virginia’s requirements.
Virginia requires candidates to collect a total of 10,000 signatures, with a total of 400 signatures from each of the state’s 11 congressional districts.
Mr. Perry’s camp originally filed the lawsuit after claiming that they collected over 6,000 signatures.
Mr. Gingrich reportedly turned in over 10,000 signatures, but the not enough of them could be confirmed as valid and he was ultimately eliminated from being placed on the ballot. The former House speaker, along with Mr. Huntsman and Mr. Santorum joined Mr. Perry’s lawsuit a week after he filed it.
Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Ron Paul will be the only two candidates included on the Virginia ballot.
“They knew the rules in Virginia many months ago; the limitations on circulators affected them as soon as they began to circulate petitions,” Judge Gibney said in a written statement Friday. “The plaintiffs could have challenged the Virginia law at that time. Instead, they waited until after the time to gather petitions had ended and they had lost the political battle to be on the ballot; then, on the eve of the printing of absentee ballots, they decided to challenge Virginia’s laws. In essence, they played the game, lost, and then complained that the rules were unfair.”
The ruling is the latest blow to Mr. Perry’s camp this week, as a top South Carolina Republican donor recently defected from his camp regarding comments that he made about Mr. Romney being a “vulture capitalist.” He continues to finish at the bottom of the race in most recent polls.
