Senate hopeful Keyser goes to court
The Republican sues after falling 86 signatures short of primary ballot.
U.S. Senate candidate Jon Keyser is asking a Denver judge to put him on the Republican primary ballot, a day after his campaign came abruptly to a halt by failing to qualify for the race.
The Keyser campaign filed a lawsuit Tuesday that argued that Secretary of State Wayne Williams “wrongfully deprived” Keyser of a ballot slot by rejecting 186 signatures collected in the 3rd Congressional District — where Keyser fell 86 short of the total needed.
The legal challenge is an extraordinary measure for a candidate once considered the front-runner but now beset with questions about his ability to raise money and rise to the top in a crowded race.
District Judge Elizabeth Starrs is expected to make a decision by Friday, when the ballot is certified. Two other candidates who submitted signatures, Robert Blaha and Ryan Frazier, are awaiting word on whether they qualified.
In the Keyser case, the dispute is focused on the petitions collected by one campaign aide in the one congressional district where Keyser didn’t meet the 1,500-signature threshold.
Under Colorado law, the person collecting signatures must be a registered voter in the same party as the candidate.
Tyler Gonzalez, a Republican, collected hundreds of signatures for the Keyser campaign, but his address listed on the petition affidavits didn’t match the official voter list — meaning the secretary of state’s office was unable to confirm his registration.
“These signatures are signatures of real voters, real people who want to put Jon Keyser on the ballot,” Keyser attorney Chris Murray told the judge. He added, “If the signatures gathered by Mr. Gonzalez are not counted, these voters’ voices will be taken away on a technicality.”
Gonzalez testified that he moved to his new address in Colorado Springs the day he accepted the job. Asked why he didn’t update his voter registration, he said: “I forgot. I was busy at work collecting signatures.”
Murray, an attorney at the Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck law firm in Denver, presented evidence that Gonzalez is a registered voter and argued that case law gives the judge the ability to overturn the state’s decision and place Keyser on the ballot.
Colorado Deputy Solicitor General Matthew Grove, representing the secretary of state, did not dispute the Keyser campaign’s case, arguing only that the office followed the strict guidelines in the law. The judge, he acknowledged, can apply a more lenient “substantial” compliance standard.