A leading Democratic congressional candidate in a crucial swing district could see her campaign come to an abrupt end because of deficient paperwork.
Yesterday, relying on a rarely invoked state law, the Iowa Democratic Party’s 3rd District Central Committee voted to try to add to the Democratic primary ballot Theresa Greenfield, a successful business executive with strong labor union support for her candidacy. The reason the committee had to vote to add her to the ballot is because of a colossal filing error: Greenfield failed to gather the 1,790 nomination signatures required by state law to appear on the June ballot.
The central committee’s decision to try to get her on the ballot anyway represents the opening volley in a rapidly escalating legal and political controversy. The first legal hearing comes later today when an administrative panel composed of Iowa’s attorney general, secretary of state, and state auditor must decide whether state law permits the Democrats to add Greenfield’s name to the primary ballot. The panel's ruling will turn on an arcane issue of state law, but it will have national implications. Iowa’s 3rd Congressional district is exactly the type of highly competitive district Democrats must win to capture a House majority in the November 6 midterm elections. Moreover, Greenfield is a strong and well-funded candidate who would pose a serious challenge to Congressman David Young, a genial but potentially vulnerable Republican incumbent in a deeply purple district.
The 3rd District controversy illustrates a vital lesson for every law student: you must get the little things right before you can get the big things right. The Greenfield campaign’s failure to get the little things right threatens to make it harder for her party to retake the House in November.
The whole controversy stems from a failure to comply with a basic legal requirement. For the 2018 primary election, Iowa law directed that all candidates for the 3rd Congressional District (which encompasses most of the Des Moines metropolitan area) file with the secretary of state a nomination petition signed by at least 1,790 district voters by 5 p.m. on March 16. The law also required that the filing include signatures from voters in at least 8 counties within the district. Greenfield originally filed her nomination petition on March 14, and she had more signatures than required. But the next day, in an astounding development, Greenfield's campaign manager confessed to her that he had forged some of the signatures. It seems he had procrastinated in getting the signatures from 8 different counties and then panicked when the filing deadline arrived.
In response to the dismaying news, Greenfield desperately tried to start over and get 1,790 new signatures from eight counties by the 5 p.m. deadline. She came close. With the clock running out, she raced to the state capitol, withdrew her original petition, and then submitted a new nomination petition at 4:59 p.m., one minute before the deadline. But the following Monday, after reviewing Greenfield’s new filing, the Secretary of State’s office rejected her second nomination petition because it fell about 300 signatures short of the 1,790 required by state law.
The matter is now in the hands of the administrative panel. It must decide whether Iowa's statute for replacing “deceased or withdrawn" candidates enables the Democrats to get Greenfield’s name on the June 5 primary ballot. Iowa Code Chapter 43.23 authorizes the state’s political parties to “designate one additional primary election candidate” if a “candidate who has filed nomination papers as a candidate in a primary election dies or withdraws . . . before the primary election.” Republicans argue that the statute doesn't cover Greenfield's situation.
The central question is this: Does the statute permit a party to replace a withdrawn candidate with . . . the withdrawn candidate? A related question is whether Greenfield even constitutes a “withdrawn” candidate since her original filing turns out to have been fatally flawed and her second filing was rejected. The Democrats contend that Greenfield's situation meets the textual requirements of the withdrawal statute. She filed her original nomination papers on March 14, withdrew them and refiled on March 16, following which the secretary of state rejected the second filing on March 19, and then on March 26 the Democrats’ central committee designated Greenfield as an “additional primary election candidate” under Chapter 43.23. The Democrats thus argue that Greenfield's March 16 withdrawal complied with the statute's text, and furthermore that she qualifies as a candidate “additional” to the Democratic candidates already on the ballot. In response, the Republicans argue that the statute was not intended to be used by the same candidate who withdrew in the first place.
In light of the national implications of the Greenfield controversy, it is virtually certain that the dispute will not end with Tuesday's administrative hearing. Whichever side loses will undoubtedly appeal to state district court, which will serve as a brief pit stop before the case ultimately arrives at the Iowa Supreme Court. But once the case gets to the high court, a final ruling will come quickly. In 2014, when a somewhat similar challenge was brought to the ballot eligibility of a state legislative candidate convicted of drunk driving, the state supreme court ruled within 13 days of the district court’s ruling and 26 days of the administrative panel’s decision. So a final ruling on the Greenfield case is likely by mid-to-late April.
However this all plays out in the end, the 3rd District controversy is a case study for law students in why “boring” work—like getting 1,790 nomination signatures—is so important.
It’s certainly an example I’m going to bring to the attention of my own students. One of the courses I teach is Election Law, and every time I teach it I assign each student in the course to a fictional congressional candidate (using the names of past presidents and historical figures). With imaginary campaign finance data and other information that I provide to them, I have the students fill out and file (with me, the course’s election commissioner) the basic paperwork congressional candidates must submit to the Iowa Secretary of State and the Federal Election Commission.
Somewhat prophetically it now turns out, I also require each student to fill out at least one sheet of the nomination petition with signatures from classmates who aren’t enrolled in the course. The purpose of the exercise is to illustrate how time consuming the otherwise simple task actually is. I never thought I would have a real world example to show the students, but I certainly will now when I teach the course again in the fall.
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