I just got off the phone with Mike Signer and his campaign manager, Christian Rickers. We talked for a while, but here's the gist of what they had to say about today's petition signature brouhaha.1. The Signer campaign had never heard anything from the state party (or anyone else) about a petition signature collector's address being a potential - let alone actual - problem.
2. The only issue that had been raised with the Signer campaign regarding their petition signatures is that the signatures weren't sorted by congressional district. That's not a requirement, however.
3. Mike was 100% confident, and remains 100% confident, that his campaign turned in more than enough valid signatures to get on the ballot.
4. This has nothing to do with petition signature circulators, this has to do with a notary public who failed to put his address at the bottom.
5. Mike said that he's "flattered by all the attention" and noted that "it shows the strength of our campaign."
6. Mike said he's now getting back to his campaign, including the Shad Planking tomorrow and other upcoming events, such as LG debates.
So there you have the Signer campaign's story. Hopefully, we'll have an official statement from the DPVA and then we can all move forward with the goal of nominating the strongest Democrat to face Bill Bolling in the general election.
UPDATE: The Signer campaign writes:
In response to the recent post on Blue Virginia, We regret that the notary public's error was not identified by campaign staffers and we regret the inconvenience the error caused to DPVA staffers and officials, and furthermore we greatly appreciate the reasonable manner in which the DPVA came to the conclusion that we were in compliance with regard to ballot access.
