View From a Height

Marc Holtzman is preparing to challenge the Secretary of State's ruling that he failed to get enough signatures to make it onto the ballot, and it sounds as though he may have a case.

The Rocky also seemed to miss (or perhaps misunderstand) this piece of information from the Holtzman campaign:

Though we had thousands of signatures collected by volunteers, later in the process, we also had professional petitioners assisting us in certain congressional districts.

That firm has assured us that all of their petitioners were registered Republican voters, however, if those folks were newly registered, that voter information would not yet be registered with the Secretary of State.

This is different from claiming that the signatures weren't valid, so either the Holtzman campaign misunderstood the Secretary of State, or the Rocky did.

In any case, the Beauprez and state Republican officials need to shut up and let Holtzman pursue his cross-checking of names and his challenge. That's what the rules are there for. Claiming victory and calling on Holtzman to back out are somewhat understandable from the standpoint of the campaign. Coming from the party establishment, it just looks like bullying.