A state panel will meet later this morning to review challenges to the nominating forms for eight candidates for primary elections in June, including an incumbent who’s seeking an 11th term in office.
Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller and five other candidates face challenges based on the signatures on their nominating petitions. The State Objection Panel is being asked to decide whether some of the people who signed the documents actually live in the areas where candidates had to collect signatures.
The attorney general is one of the three members of the review panel, so it’s likely the lieutenant governor will take his place when Miller’s case is reviewed.
In 2018, a Republican running for governor was booted from the ballot after several duplicate signatures were found. That left the final tally of nominating signatures short of what was required.
The nominating papers Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Abby Finkenauer and Mike Franken submitted are being challenged, plus an objection has been filed over the forms submitted by a Republican candidate who hopes to run against Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks in the June Primary.
A Democrat from the Ankeny area has filed a challenge of Senate Republican Leader Jack Whitver’s paperwork for the primary, saying Whitver hasn’t listed the address of the home he intends to move into. A spokesman for Whitver says there are no legal grounds for the complaint. He pointed to Iowa law, which requires candidates to establish a residence in the district they intend to represent 60 days before the General Election, not the June Primary.
State Representative Jeff Shipley of Fairfield, a Republican, had the signatures of 53 people on his nominating petitions. Fifty signatures are required and a prominent Republican attorney has filed a challenge to some of those signatures. Shipley is planning to run for reelection in a new district — where he’d face another GOP incumbent.
Finally, the State Objection Panel has been asked to decide whether a Democrat in northwest Iowa has lived in Iowa long enough to run for office.