April 12, 2012 05:53 PM UTC

Marc Holtzman Can Sympathize

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Longmont Times-Call’s John Fryar:

Eric Weissmann, a Republican candidate for Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District seat, was notified Tuesday that he did not submit enough valid petition signatures to qualify for the June 26 GOP primary election ballot.

Weissmann, however, intends to appeal the Secretary of State’s Office’s determination that his petitions were insufficient, said Mario Nicolais, an attorney for the candidate…

On April 2, he turned in petitions with 1,456 signatures, according to a count by Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s Elections Division staff. But the Secretary of State’s staff accepted only 842 of those signatures, 158 fewer than Weissmann needed to qualify for the primary.

Nicolais said the rejected signatures included many that stemmed from what he called “clerical errors” in the notarization of some of the petitions before they were submitted to the Secretary of State’s Office – something he said were “small but systematic errors.”

We’re inclined to think that upstart CD-2 GOP candidate Eric Weissmann will be able to solve this problem as top-shelf GOP attorney Mario Nicolais suggests, but it really doesn’t look good for the unknown rich-guy candidate bypassing the party assembly process to miss the mark on petition signatures to make the ballot, a la 2006’s Marc Holtzman–even temporarily. There seems to be a desire to anoint Mr. Weissmann as the CD-2 nominee by GOP brass, presumably convinced of his stomach for self-funding in a longshot run against Rep. Jared Polis.

Well folks, this officially makes for an inauspicious start on the road to glory.