As I pointed out a few days ago, it's been interesting to watch the Republican presidential campaigns struggle to get their petition signatures in to qualify for the ballot in Virginia. Newt Gingrich had to make appearances in the state at a time when most candidates are in the early primary states and Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachmann, and Jon Huntsman didn't even make the ballot.
In my opinion, the fact that three major candidates didn't make it onto the ballot is a huge failure of the Virginia GOP. This is especially the case for Ken Cuccinelli because he's gearing up to run for the governor's mansion, but he couldn't even help get his candidate -- Rick Santorum -- onto the ballot. Compare this to how back in the 2008 election, both sides were able to get all of their candidates on the ballot -- even some of the candidates that everybody knew probably wouldn't last past Iowa. In the end, this really helped the eventually nominees in Virginia because the parties had built a strong field presence early on in the campaign.
Part of the reason why the GOP should be worried about this is because most folks will pretty much sign for any candidate who asks. Activists will also sign for their candidate's competition because it's just the acceptable thing to do. The key is just getting the people out there to make the ask.
A prime example of this happened to me back in 2007. I was an early support of Morris Meyer when he ran in a primary for the House of Delegates against Rex Simmons and even briefly served as his adviser on new media. Not only did I sign the petition for Rex, but I know that Rex himself actually signed one for Morris. This all happened because both sides had put together a ground game that had plenty of volunteers who could go out and ask people to sign -- something the GOP apparently weren't able to do for several of their candidates.
While the Republicans apparently couldn't get a ground game together to help their candidates, President Obama had no problem getting enough volunteers to collect signatures (perhaps partly because his campaign structure morphed into Organizing for America after he was elected and, thus, has maintained a strong presence in Virginia over the years). The chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, Brian Moran, had the following to say about that in a statement released earlier today.
"I am pleased to announce that President Obama is the only candidate to qualify for the Democratic primary in Virginia," said DPVA Chairman Brian Moran. "As such we expect that the State Board of Elections will cancel the scheduled presidential primary and we will devote all of our energy to turning Virginia blue for Barack Obama, Tim Kaine and our congressional candidates next year.
"Over the next year Virginians will have a choice to make between President Obama, who is fighting to restore economic security for middle-class families, and Republicans who are determined to only cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires, let Wall Street write their own rules and put the economic burden on the middle class. I want to congratulate the President and his campaign for officially qualifying to become our nominee and urge every Virginian to do whatever they can to make sure we send him back to the White House next November."
UPDATE: Rick Perry also won't be on the ballot in Virginia. He had turned in almost 12,000 signatures, but over 2,000 of them were deemed invalid and he therefore didn't qualify for the ballot.
UPDATE: Newt Gingrich also didn't qualify for the ballot. He submitted 11,050 signatures, but at least 1,051 of those were declared invalid because the RPV ruled that he didn't have enough valid signatures. Virginia is Gingrich's home state and he spent a lot of time here in the final days before the petitions were due, so it really says something about his campaign that they weren't able to get enough valid signatures.
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