CHALLENGE HOPES TO GIVE LINDSEY GRAHAM’S EVENTUAL OPPONENT MORE TIME …
A Republican political group has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice in the hopes of extending the 2014 GOP primary race for the U.S. Senate – potentially making reelection a little more difficult for incumbent liberal Lindsey Graham.
The complaint wouldn’t affect this spring’s primary election date (June 10) but it could potentially extend the runoff election period by several weeks – assuming none of the candidates receive more than 50 percent of the vote on the first ballot.
In such instances, state law calls for a runoff election to be held between the top two finishers two weeks after the primary. As it stands now, that runoff date would be June 24.
Carolina Conservatives United – a group which is opposing Graham’s candidacy – says that isn’t enough time.
Specifically, the group claims in its complaint that this narrow time frame violates a 2010 federal law mandating at least a 45-day window for shipping runoff ballots to uniformed members of the U.S. Armed Forces serving overseas. Oh … and allowing sufficient time for those ballots to be returned, obviously.
State leaders say the federal law doesn’t apply to them. They claim that South Carolina’s current primary and runoff system is covered by a 2006 state statute which instructs uniformed servicemen and women to “rank” candidates on primary ballots in anticipation of a possible runoff.
Those preferences are then applied to the runoff ballot.
Hmmmmm … that doesn’t seem like the same thing to us. Also, it gives these voters no recourse in the event major revelations are made about the candidates during the runoff period.
Anyway, if this complaint is successful we could be looking at a 45-day extension of the South Carolina GOP runoff election – which could potentially give one of Graham’s five GOP primary challengers an extra month-and-a-half to campaign (and give conservative groups which oppose Graham an extra month-and-a-half to run ads against him).
In other words it makes things harder on Graham … which given his terrible voting record is something we have no problem embracing.
19 comments
Good. Frack Grahmnesty
I am not sure this is the best route to take. Everyone should be making their best effort to light graham up on his voting record so someone, anyone with a pulse, can get in to a runoff with him.
Go Nancy go!
I doubt it’ll hurt him, it just means his donors will have to piss away a bit more money getting him through.
Graham will win, yet again. He’s the more moderate person running.
I’ll bet $50 right now that there is no runoff. First one to reply gets the bet.
C’mon, fellow barrister. I don’t want Lee Bright’s bubble to burst for another 45 days. He’ll have plenty of opportunities in that time to sponsor more frivolous, pandering bullshit laws in that time. Then he’ll crawl back into his hole, or crawl back on his soapbox, and thank the Lord that debtor’s prison is not an option for him.
And Lee, I know you are lurking on the board somewhere, like that Bill Connor asskisser that pops up from time to time. I’ll be the first to downvote me, to save your double-chinned fat ass the time and trouble.
FITS should take bets. I’m going to guess Graham gets 45 in the primary.
There is a web site where members can buy “stock” in various candidates in different races. Ten people pay a dollar for stock for their two candidates, $5 is on each. Candidate “A” wins so all ten dollars go to the people that bought stock in “A” so they each get two dollars. That web site is used to prognosticate various races. Not sure how accurate it is but if you are on the winning side you get your money back and then some (the web site takes a cut of course), can’t remember the name of the web site. Be interesting if Fits could do something like that, I would have made a killing on Sanford.
Unless a better true Conservative candidate steps forward, I’m not sure what good more time does…
There is something slightly amusing about this Tea Party type group trying to get the federal government to step in and trump state law.
What happened to “States Rights?”
Since it is a Federal Election me thinks Federal Election laws would trump. But anywho.. Graham will win and this is all a wasted effort. The Dems will turn out in droves for him in the primary ensuring a more than 50% majority for Ms. Thang.
I agree. On any other topic the teabaggers would be cutting back flips trying to keep the Feds from doing anything.
The challengers can hardly raise the funds necessary to compete in the primary. By extending the date of the runoff from 14 days to 45 days (or more) the CCU might be requiring their darling candidate(s) to spend funds they don’t have. Graham’s campaign has a huge war chest and can easily afford it.
Perhaps the CCU would be more effective to spend its money directly on a runoff candidate’s campaign, assuming that there is in fact a runoff.
Everyone keeps acting like Ted Cruz is some sort of model to beat the nefarious “Establishment.” Welllll, i) he raised a ton of money; ii) he wasn’t primarying an incumbent; iii) his opponent was boring and ran a bad campaign; iv) groups like Freedomworks were actually spending real money on candidates rather than on themselves; v) Cruz can put three sentences together … IN A ROW! None of the SC challengers have any of those advantages except 1/2 of iii): Lindsey is boring. Plus, no one thinks the Tea Party fervor is anything now like it was 2 years ago; just look at Bevin’s shitty numbers against McConnell in KY, even though he’s raised millions. #FAIL
That’s what Dick Lugar thought.
Obama’s cronies want Fag Boy to win. Thus, the NSA is helping and the electronic software for voting machines will be tampered with once again.
“We’re losing to little Lindsey, not fair.Not fair!!! We can’t lose to a light loafer. We want to change the rules. Yeah, let’s change the rules. We can’t win fair and square, let’s change the rules.” So adult.
Are there any updates to this? I can’t find any further information beyond this initial announcement. Is this dead and the current runoff window is in place, or is this still pending?