Finkenauer’s attorney asks Iowa Supreme Court to return her to primary ballot in fight for signatures

CNN
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An attorney for Iowa Senate hopeful Abby Finkenauer on Wednesday urged the state Supreme Court to put her back on the ballot in this year’s Democratic primary after a judge ruled she had not met the requirements. signature of the state to qualify as a candidate.

The court’s decision, expected by the end of the week, will determine the fate of the campaign of the former congresswoman, whom most Democrats see as her biggest rival to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley. The veteran senator is seeking an eighth term this fall.

A pair of Republicans contested Finkenauer’s candidacy, arguing that he had not met the state’s signature requirements (3,500 valid signatures, including at least 100 signatures from at least 19 counties) because three signatures were undated.

The Iowa Objection Panel, a three-member board that includes the state attorney general and auditor, both Democrats, and the secretary of state, a Republican, voted 2-1 along party lines to keep Finkenauer in office. electoral ticket. But on Sunday night, Judge Scott Beattie, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, ruled that he had not met the state’s requirements and could not appear on the primary ballot.

The seven-member state Supreme Court, while hearing oral arguments in the case on Wednesday, did not bow. Several judges appeared to accept the legal arguments presented by Finkenauer’s attorney and the state attorney general’s office. Others appeared to side with the Republican plaintiffs.

Finkenauer’s attorney, Gary Dickey, argued that the two Republicans who challenged Finkenauer’s petition signatures lacked standing, as they are not running against her and would not be allowed to vote in the Iowa Democratic primary unless they converted. in registered Democrats.

He said the state legislature has given the Iowa Objections Panel leeway for decades to allow some undated signatures and noted that the dates of the signatures in question can be determined by other signatures on the same page, gathered on the same page. day.

Sam Langholz, a lawyer for the Iowa attorney general’s office who represented the state’s Objections Panel, which sided with Finkenauer, argued that while state law mandates candidates collect dates as part of the petition, the law does not directly require the missing signatures. dates to be discarded.

He pointed to election law changes passed by state lawmakers in recent decades, including listing other reasons petition signatures were scrapped, and said the legislature would have made it explicitly clear if it had intended to scrap signatures with missing dates.

Alan Ostergren, a lawyer representing Republicans seeking to remove Finkenauer from the ballot, argued that anyone who can vote in a general election has the right to challenge the signatures. He said he couldn’t think of other scenarios under Iowa law where something is required, but there are no consequences for not meeting that requirement.

Several justices pressed Ostergren on whether there is a difference between a mandate, which the Objections Panel could not ignore, and a directive. One asked him to consider a scenario in which a candidate submitted documents that were missing a clip or staple and therefore did not comply with the directive to join them.

Ostergren also pointed to the Iowa secretary of state’s guidance for candidates that they must gather a large number of signatures, knowing that some will not be counted.

The state Supreme Court is expected to rule later this week, in time for election officials to start printing ballots to be sent to overseas voters ahead of the June 7 primary.

If Finkenauer’s challenge is unsuccessful, she could run as a write-in candidate in the primary. This could be complicated by the fact that although Finkenauer, who represented northeast Iowa in the US House of Representatives in Minden, Iowa, and Mike Franken, a retired Navy admiral who ran for the other Senate seat of the state in 2020.

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