By Mark Fischenich
The Free Press
August 15, 2006 12:57 am
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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.
“Why should they be at a disadvantage compared to Gutknecht?” he asked.
Weinblatt also said it defies reason to have no time limit on the signatures, saying Gutknecht could use extra signatures collected in previous elections if that was the case. He wouldn’t predict the outcome of the suit but said he believes it has strong merit.
“I’d far rather have my side of the argument than the other side’s,” he said, “because it’s the common sense side — not the gamesmanship side.”
Ruling likely soon
Kiffmeyer said state law makes numerous distinctions between major party candidates and those from minor parties or with no party affiliation at all. The process set up for getting minor candidates on the ballot involves collecting signatures during the brief filing period.
Major party candidates automatically get a place on the ballot by paying the filing fee. The petition in lieu of a filing fee is distinct from the one involving minor candidates, she said.
“There is no deadline as far as when they get those signatures,” Kiffmeyer said of major party candidates. “... There’s no ambiguity in my mind.”
She said a staff member made a mistake in referring to Gutknecht’s petition as a nominating petition on one piece of paperwork and said Weinblatt was using that mistake as a way to connect the two provisions of law.
Weinblatt expects the Supreme Court to schedule oral arguments on the case as early as next week and to make a decision as soon as the following week.
If he proves successful, Gutknecht’s options would be limited. Write-in campaigns aren’t allowed in primary elections, so Mikkelson would win the Republican nomination Sept. 12 and would be listed as the party’s candidate on the Nov. 7 ballot. Gutknecht could run a write-in campaign for the general election.
Kiffmeyer doesn’t think Gutknecht has much to worry about.
“I think there is no basis in the law for removing him from the ballot,” she said.
Weinblatt said he thinks he has a legitimate case, but he wouldn’t make a prediction.
“Either one’s going to play by the rules or not,” he said. “The Supreme Court is going to tell us.”
Mikkelson, Walz say they didn’t initiate lawsuit
The two men who could benefit most from a lawsuit filed against Congressman Gil Gutknecht each say they had nothing to do with it.
But both Republican Greg Mikkelson and Democrat Tim Walz, Gutknecht’s opponents in the 1st District race, said they read state election law the same way as a lawsuit filed on behalf of an Olmsted County resident last week.
Greg Mikkelson, a Lake Crystal farmer and owner of a grain business, was asking questions last month about whether Gutknecht had properly filed for re-election.
Mikkelson, a surprise competitor to Gutknecht in the Republican Party primary election, said he couldn’t believe his opponent could collect the required 1,000 signatures so early in the filing period.
“I had checked into it,” Mikkelson said. “I was surprised that he was able to file on the 5th of July. I was curious how that could be possible.”
Mikkelson, who has made third-party runs for Congress in the past, said he believes the petition process — an alternative to paying a filing fee — requires signatures be obtained during the two-week filing period in July. Gutknecht collected his signatures as early as February and March.
But Mikkelson said he had nothing to do with the lawsuit attempting to remove Gutknecht from the primary election ballot — something that could send Mikkelson automatically to the Nov. 7 general election.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit, Elgin resident Louis Reiter, refused to comment and isn’t on record making contributions to any of the candidates in the 1st District congressional race.
His attorney Alan Weinblatt, long affiliated with the Democratic Party, wouldn’t talk about how the case came about.
Walz’s campaign was not involved in the lawsuit, said a spokewoman for the Mankato West High School geography teacher, although she noted that Weinblatt has made a political contribution to Walz.
Walz also issued a statement saying he couldn’t comment on the legal merits of the case but that he received election rules from Secretary of State Kiffmeyer that “clearly stated that petitions must be signed between July 4th and July 18th. ... I don’t know if my opponent failed to follow the rules or if he received a different set of rules from the Secretary of State, but in either case I believe it is important that the problem be addressed.”
Mikkelson will become involved in the case later this week. The Supreme Court ordered that both he and Gutknecht be given a copy of the lawsuit and offers them an opportunity to respond in writing until Thursday.
Mikkelson, still deciding on what he will submit to the court, said he was convinced by the legal arguments in the lawsuit.
“They made an excellent case,” he said. “I think it’s a well-thought-out and thorough argument.”
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