{"id":1664,"date":"2004-04-28T12:31:24","date_gmt":"2004-04-28T17:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1664.html"},"modified":"2004-04-28T12:31:24","modified_gmt":"2004-04-28T17:31:24","slug":"judge-orders-alabama-gop-to-put-radio-host-on-primary-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/judge-orders-alabama-gop-to-put-radio-host-on-primary-ballot\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge orders Alabama GOP to put radio host on primary ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those of you who were interested in my post<\/a> on Monday about Kelly McGinley’s lawsuit against the Alabama GOP, the judge has ruled. As expected, she won<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To briefly review, McGinley, a Christian radio talk-show host, wanted to run as a Republican for the state school board. The state party, angry about McGinley’s criticism (she had complained Republicans weren’t right-wing enough), took her name off the ballot. McGinley sued<\/a>; the state GOP said it should have some discretion over who runs on under its banner.<\/p>\n

The judge in the case said the party needed to establish a clear line for disqualification and it hadn’t done so.<\/p>\n

Montgomery County Circuit Judge William Shashy…acknowledged McGinley had made “strong criticisms” of the GOP, but said the party had not set any rules that would disqualify a candidate for such criticisms.<\/p>\n

“Without a clear standard by which a candidate’s allegedly disloyal conduct can be measured, the candidate cannot reasonably know what conduct is prohibited, and the party cannot determine an alleged violation of its qualifying oath in a fair and evenhanded fashion,” Shashy wrote.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\nOne area of the process that wasn’t emphasized, but could have been, is the public’s role in financing primary elections.<\/p>\n

I argued the other day that I’d like to see parties have more power over who runs in their name. If the party is organizing, hosting, and conducting the primary, it’s not unreasonable to give it some authority over who can and cannot participate as a candidate.<\/p>\n

But Carpetbagger regular Joe Fitzpatrick wrote in with a compelling point on the subject — money.<\/p>\n

[I]f Alabama, like my own state, helps pick up the tab for primary elections, I think that parties that choose to participate should be obligated to actually apply democratic (little d) principles. Rubber stamping a backroom decision to give an illusion of member representation and candidate selection legitimacy is not something that should be done at the public’s expense.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a good point. I don’t know which states use public funds to subsidize primaries, or if all do to varying extents, but parties certainly shouldn’t be able to discriminate arbitrarily if taxpayers are helping to finance the process. The problem isn’t with party bosses picking candidates in the proverbial smoke-filled room; it’s when this happens on the public’s dime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those of you who were interested in my post on Monday about Kelly McGinley’s lawsuit against the Alabama GOP, the judge has ruled. As expected, she won. To briefly review, McGinley, a Christian radio talk-show host, wanted to run as a Republican for the state school board. The state party, angry about McGinley’s criticism […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}