The South Dakota Republican Party filed suit against South Dakota Secretary of State Shantel Krebs today, and is seeking a Writ of Prohibition against allowing the Constitution Party’s dueling conventions to proceed forward on August 14th.
The lawsuit follows a recent demand made to the Secretary of State from the South Dakota GOP (as included as Exhibit J in the filing) dated July 24th.
The crux of the reason why the SDGOP is seeking relief from the court seems to be explained by their 7/24 letter, which notes :
Your letter dated July 17 seems to indicate this could be resolved if the Constitution Party certifies to the Secretary of State’s Office who holds the office of state chairperson prior to, or simultaneous with, the Party’s presentation of the certification of nominations. However, that does not solve the underlying problem that neither Lori Stacey or Lora Hubbel has the authority to send notice the Secretary of State, rending the Notice invalid, and therefore the convention as invalid. Even if the central committee of the Constitution Party now gave your office notice of either Lora Hubbel or Lori Stacey being chairman, such would not render the prior invalid notice as valid.
I spoke to SDGOP Chairman Dan Lederman about it this afteroon, and Lederman reiterated what was noted in the letter, that the basic problems with the Constitution party’s efforts are that they’re being led by people who have not been certified as legitimate party representatives.
Lederman stated to me, “After the Constitution Party’s earlier convention descended into chaos, warring factions of the Constitution party announced they were each holding a convention on August 14th. The problem is that under South Dakota law, neither person calling the competing conventions had any legal standing to do so.”
We’re waiting more information as to when the court hearing will be, and whether one or both factions of the Constitution party will be represented in court.
In case you want to read for yourself, here’s the full filing:
Amend.petition.krebs (1) by Pat Powers on Scribd
Stay tuned!
Republicans = organized, effective, growing.
Everyone else: third (world) parties. scatter brained and ineffectual.
Running a Convention and elections is not that hard.
Will the real Slim Shady please stand up
on one hand we are doing the constitution party a solid by forcing them to sort themselves out.
though dan stopped short. he should have demanded the decertification and dissolution of the constitution party for a) failing to hold meetings and elect officers and b) failing to certify a candidate for governor, or certify any candidates, thusly defaulting their ballot access.
Is he going to try and keep the Dems and Libertarians off the ballot too?
Interesting you want to place blame on a citizen who follows the law. Is the SDGOP at fault for the Constitution party being clueless and in utter chaos? How ignorant of you.
You are right, Tara. Your party needs you! The Democratic party is falling apart, you should return to them.
But it is much easier for Lora, Trerry laFleaur, Tara Volesky, Janette Mcintyre, Gordon Howie to just jump around from party to party seeking office anyway they can without any loyalty to anyone but their own ambitions!
Tara is a Republican and a Conservative
Lies.
just follow the law. have meetings, elect officers, run a convention. these idiots f up every thing they touch. they are the ones that caused this. they are responsible for disenfranchising their party, not the gop.
btw how’s that legal matter of yours going in Mitchell
Billy Sutton belongs to a party that can’t even run a convention. Their employees are unable to honor the US on the 4th of July.
Why does he think anyone would let him in power for these reasons?
Remember last fall when this appeared in the Argus:
“Hubbel, who rejoined the GOP last year after a two-month stint in the state’s Constitution Party, said the record demonstrates the state’s Republican Party has been “highjacked by political opportunists.”
So, Lora Hubbel switches from GOP to Chair the Constitution Party and then resigns and goes back to GOP to run for Governor (but can’t get enough signatures) and now back to Constitution Party to take the Chair seat back that she abandoned. You cannot make this stuff up.
This just shows that grudznick’s claims of being the head of the Constitution Party are at least as valid as Ms. Hubbel’s claims are.
Go Shad!
Troy, your party is the one that had reps in Russia on July 4th so that may not be a good criticism.
What’s your point? The USA has an Embassy in Russia which means American reps are in Russia throughout the year.
How cute you are still hoping, after nearly 2yrs of investigations, Russia-Trump collusion will appear. Maybe you have some information, please fill us in or better yet apply to the FBI or CIA, you could help them.
Russia, Russia, Russia.
Don’t worry about equity. Let’s just destroy the other political parties to guarantee our dominance by challenging SOS certifications…. Gee, I wonder which ALEC meeting covered this tactic?
JKC,
Done. If the Democrats and CP can’t do basic administrative tasks, I continue not have the GOP equal with the incompetent crazy people. You and Lora can occupy the idiot space all by yourself.
By the way, if we wanted to destroy the SDDP, I concede we couldn’t be as effective as you have been. You deserve all the credit.
There are fewer than 500 people registered with the Constitution Party and it seems only about 30 of them even knew they were having a convention, or that they are planning to have two more.
Aren’t there some notification requirements?
Yes- Lora calls Terry and he calls his friend to let him know which phone booth to meet and who to vote for.
I am so confused. According to SDCL 12-1-3, they aren’t even a real political party unless one of their candidates for a statewide office received at least 2.5% of the total votes cast for that office in either of the two preceding elections. Did they pull that off? Has anybody checked that?
And then all this flapdoodle about which one is going to be the candidate for governor; they aren’t allowed to nominate a gubernatorial candidate at a convention. They have to have a primary, just like the Democrats and Republicans. They can nominate the other constitutional office candidates at their convention, but not the governor. Says so in SDCL 12-5-21.
But I am not a lawyer. So can somebody explain this?
Anne,
They sued and a federal court let them do a convention (well they authorized them to do one—if they can pul it off a different matter, but I digress)
Also I think if you get some 6000 signatures or so they could be recognized as a party which I think is how they did it
Sutton and Noem are polling within the margin of error.
Polls are showing Hillary Clinton to win in a landslide… haha!
Let’s decide who wins governor by how many Facebook likes they each have, yeah, what do you think?
Governor Sutton sure is going to sound good next year. Time for a change and a good one.
You are good for some laughs!
If Sutton is elected, can you specify what will change? He’s a white male, just like Daugaard. And, even though he’s running as a Democrat, the complaints from his party are that he’s basically a Republican. If you haven’t seen the left eat their own, take a look at how angry the socialists are at Sutton’s voting record and remind us again who he chose as his Lt. Gov.
Socialists are angry at Sutton? Would the Socialists be German or one of our other NATO allies? Why will they be angry with Governor Sutton? There is no Socialist Party registered in South Dakota.
Too funny! You just don’t get it. The “Democratic” party is just as lost as the Constitutional party currently is.
The admins? Maybe. Individual candidates for major slots? They are definitely not lost and are doing well. You would be better off focusing your time cleansing the Trump/Putin Russian infiltrators and agents in your own party Comrade.
candidates doing well…Sutton is non -existent…is he still running?
Bjorkman rails against corporate America like Bernie Sanders
Seiler is anti-gun and promoting gay pride and drag queen contests
all the others are doing nothing….
A federal court didn’t “let” them do a convention. The judge decided the old law was unconstitutional. Some good legislators then decided that it wasn’t a good idea to have the state of South Dakota get taken to court again over denying the people their right to have more options on the ballot. The governor signed a bill into law, protecting their right to have a convention and elect certain people for certain offices. Codified law 12-5-26
Now, the debacle with them having competing conventions, meeting the deadline, and multiple state chairs… those are the issues at hand.
Anne,
In regards to them having just under 500 registered voters but only a few show up to the convention…. To compare, as of today, the GOP has 252,288 registered voters in the state of South Dakota. How many people showed up to the GOP state convention? I highly doubt it was anywhere close to the total number of registered voters. Didn’t the GOP notify people that they were having a convention? Is that the kind of logic that you’re using?
The only person I have talked to who is a registered member of the Constitution Party knew nothing about any of this. Is it that their press releases are not published? Aren’t there notification requirements?
And I understand the convention they had fell apart because the real squabble is between Lora & Terry over who would be the gubernatorial nominee. But the convention can’t nominate a candidate for that particular office, they have to have a primary. So the whole thing is pointless. If one of the upcoming conventions nominated Lora and the other nominated Terry, so what? That’s not how it works.
Responding to multiple comments from Anne:
(1) The Constitution Party regained its official party status by petition in 2016. A federal judge denied ballot access to the party’s 2016 nominees based on laws that were subsequently found to be unconstitutional, but the party retains official status at least through the 2018 election cycle.
(2) The controversy surrounding the party’s July 14 gathering stems from the fact that Lori Stacey hadn’t submitted the proper filing to resume her duties as chair after Lora Hubbel resigned from that position in February 2017. This came to light just before the party was set to convene and left members scrambling to determine who was legally the chair.
(3) The party has filed the required notice of its August 14 convention, and the secretary of state’s office has published it.
(4) Under SDCL 12-5-25, the party may nominate a candidate for United States Senate, United States House of Representatives, governor, and any legislative seat by convention.
WHICH required notice–there are 2…BOTH in violation of the by laws of the constitution party
Which convention if any did the central committee authorize?
Who is the legal chair?
All good questions for the upcoming trial and/or a deposition
Just before they were set to convene three weeks ago, Constitution Party members were informed by the secretary of state’s office that Lori Stacey had never legally resumed her duties as chair after Lora Hubbel resigned from that position in February of 2017.
At that point party bylaws calling for a convention within 60 days of the primary were inconsistent with the laws of the state requiring 30 days’ notice before convention. Under those circumstances the laws of the state take precedence.
The central committee authorized a 9 a.m. convention on August 14. The legal chair at that time was apparently former vice-chair Joel Bergan. While the party was working with the secretary of state’s office to determine the legal chair, Lora Hubbel submitted the convention notice as pro-tem chair.
Bergan has since resigned from the central committee and supports Gordon Howie as the current chair.
Abusing the legal system and clogging up the courts to harass perceived enemies seems to be standard operating procedure for Dan Lederman.
Ahh, thanks!
Still doesn’t explain why one person, much less two, would want to be the chairwoman of the organization. Are they really Crazy Cat Ladies at heart, who would rather herd cats, but they are somehow prevented from assembling herds of cats?
Perhaps this whole situation could have been prevented if their families had just let them collect cats.
Other than a brief stint as pro-tem chair last month, Lora Hubbel hasn’t sought to be Constitution Party chair since February of 2017.
Lori Stacey seems to have developed some fairly serious mental health issues.