Richmond mayoral hopeful Alan Schintzius filed a lawsuit Tuesday asking a judge to overturn the Richmond Electoral Board’s decision to disqualify him from the ballot after ruling he was seven signatures short of the petition requirements.
Aiding Schintzius in the case is one of his would-be opponents in the race, Joseph D. Morrissey, whose law firm is providing pro bono legal representation.
Both parties recognize the partnership might seem peculiar, but Schintzius said he is glad for the assistance, noting that Morrissey has represented a number of political candidates in the city on ballot access issues.
“The bottom line is that whatever qualms I have about Morrissey as a candidate, I do not have about Morrissey as a lawyer or a law firm,” Schintzius said. “The qualms I have about him as a candidate, I set them aside because there was something much more important than me.”
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Morrissey, meanwhile, stressed that he viewed the right to run for office as “sacrosanct” and that he would push to protect it even if it means aiding an opponent.
“There’s no hidden agenda, no deals, no sidebars — there’s nothing other than my core belief that you’ve got to be fair,” he said.
To appear on the ballot, mayoral candidates were required to collect 500 signatures from qualified voters. Of those, 50 must be collected in each of the city’s nine voter districts.
Schintzius collected more than 600 valid signatures, but he was seven short in the 8th District, prompting the electoral board to disqualify him.
He appealed the decision at the end of June, providing additional information about 10 voters who signed his petition in the district, but the board accepted only three additional signatures, still leaving him short.
The lawsuit names six voters as plaintiffs whose signatures Schintzius alleges were improperly disqualified by the city voter registrar’s office because they had moved recently and had not yet updated their address with the office.
“Under the law, you’re just supposed to have to put down your signature and address,” said Morrissey’s law partner, Paul Goldman, who helped prepare the suit. State law, he said, makes no mention of matching addresses on petitions with addresses on file.
In instances where the validity of a signature could not be confirmed by comparing addresses, Goldman said the registrar’s office can simply compare the signature with the one a voter provided on a recent registration form.
In addition to the lawsuit, Schintzius filed an injunction that asks a judge to stop the registrar’s office from printing ballots until the issue is resolved.
Richmond Voter Registrar Kirk Showalter was not reachable for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Levar Stoney, one of Morrissey’s opponents in the race, called the partnership between Morrissey and Schintzius “a little odd” when asked about the situation at a campaign event in the Fan District on Tuesday afternoon.
“I think these are efforts by one opponent to try their best to divide the rest of the votes amongst seven or eight other candidates,” said Stoney, going on to refer to the situation as “political gimmicks and shenanigans.”
Political commentator Bob Holsworth offered several theories on Morrissey’s possible motivation.
“The first reason, of course, is that this would be one more instance where he’s fighting for the little guy who has been excluded by the powerful,” Holsworth said. “So it in some ways reinforces the basic message of his campaign, and that he’s doing it for someone who’s potentially an opponent in his mind makes it even more valuable.”
Holsworth floated two potential secondary considerations: It’s possible Morrissey hopes Schintzius’ candidacy would dilute the vote in certain strategic districts, or Morrissey might hope to win over Schintzius’ supporters in the event of a runoff.
Schintzius acknowledged Morrissey might well have an unspoken motives, but he said he’s comfortable with the situation if it means he can get back in the race as an advocate for social justice issues — a topic he said has been lacking from debates so far.
“While his firm has a long and historic record of defending candidates’ rights to have access to the ballot, I have no doubt that Joe is Joe and in the back of his mind this is part of an overall strategy to burnish his image,” Schintzius said.