The Minnesota Supreme Court could decide in the next couple of weeks that Congressman Gil Gutknecht made a major blunder in filing for re-election, a mistake that could keep his name off the ballot Nov. 7.

Or the justices could decide a Democratic attorney is wrongly confusing two separate provisions of state election law, and that Gutknecht’s name rightfully belongs on the ballot as it has been the previous six elections.

The case results from a lawsuit filed late last week by a township supervisor from Olmsted County. Louis Reiter, an Elgin resident and Farmington Township Board chairman, isn’t commenting on his party affiliation or motivation for filing the suit.

His attorney in the case — Alan Weinblatt of St. Paul — regularly represents the DFL Party and successfully argued to remove a Republican state Senate candidate from the ballot in St. Cloud last year because she was actually a resident of St. Paul.

In the Gutknecht case, the justices will be facing numerous political wrinkles as they look at the law. The defendant in the case is Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, a Republican running for re-election, who is accused of improperly accepting an invalid petition circulated by Gutknecht, a fellow Republican seeking his seventh term in Congress.

Kiffmeyer will be represented by the Office of the Attorney General, headed by Democrat Mike Hatch, who is the DFL’s endorsed candidate for governor.

If the Supreme Court agrees with Weinblatt, Lake Crystal farmer Greg Mikkelson — the only other Republican to file for the 1st District seat in Congress — would be the GOP candidate against Mankato Democrat Tim Walz on the general election ballot. Mikkelson is a former candidate for the Green Party and the Independence Party who surprised many people when he filed as a Republican against Gutknecht in July.

Legal arguments

The case centers on Gutknecht’s unique practice of filing for office by submitting a petition of more than 1,000 eligible voters in the 1st Congressional District, rather than paying the $300 filing fee.

Gutknecht, who portrays the approach as proof of his fiscal conservatism, has done it that way since his first run in 1994 when the secretary of state was Democrat Joan Growe.

State election law allows that, but Weinblatt said the law also requires the signatures be collected during the two-week filing period from July 4 to July 18.

Gutknecht gathered a large percentage of his signatures at Republican Party caucuses March 7, something his campaign says is perfectly acceptable.

State law clearly requires that third-party candidates and independent candidates collect their petition signatures only during the filing period. But Gutknecht maintains that major party candidates filing for office through the petition process don’t face the same requirement.

“Democrats are co-mingling statutes in an attempt to confuse the electorate, which has overwhelmingly supported the congressman for 12 years,” according to a statement issued by the Gutknecht campaign.

Weinblatt said both types of petitions are referred to as “nominating petitions,” that the secretary of state requires every petition-signer to list the date they signed, and that both provisions were passed by the same Legislature in 1975. He also said it doesn’t make sense the state would require some candidates to get signatures in a specific time frame and others to have no time limit whatsoever.