Gary Smith (Courtesy photo)
Eight GOP voters are challenging the candidacy of Republican 1st Congressional District hopeful Gary Smith, alleging he didn’t turn in enough valid signatures to appear on the June 5 primary ballot.
If successful, the petition, filed Friday in district court in Albuquerque, would result in Smith’s removal from the ballot. That would automatically make Janice Arnold-Jones the GOP’s nominee for the seat.
As it stands, Arnold-Jones is overwhelmingly the favorite to win. Smith is in this position because he won the support of only 4 percent of delegates at the recent GOP preprimary nominating convention – you need 20 percent to qualify for the ballot – and had to collect additional signatures to stay on the ballot.
Arnold-Jones won the support of 63 at that convention. Dan Lewis, who later dropped out, won the support of 34 percent of delegates.
The petition to disqualify Smith, which you can read here, alleges that he gathered an additional 1,823 signatures to qualify for the ballot after falling short of 20 percent at the preprimary. He needed 1,579 valid signatures, but the voters allege that 492 signatures he submitted weren’t valid, leaving him with 1,331 valid signatures.
“Upon quick review of Smith’s nominating petitions, it was clear that some voters who had signed Arnold-Jones’ petitions long ago had also more recently signed Smith’s petitions. That led to a closer examination of all of Smith’s petitions,” said Paul M. Kienzle III, attorney for the challengers.
In addition to some duplicate signatures, those that are invalid include signatures of people who aren’t Republicans and even some who aren’t registered to vote, the challengers allege.
Smith hasn’t yet responded.