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Melissa Gilbert's withdrawal as political candidate has no recent precedent

Paul Egan
Detroit Free Press

LANSING — There aren’t many election subjects he can say this about, but longtime Michigan Elections Director Chris Thomas says he has no experience handling a situation in which a candidate withdrew from an election because he or she reported being “physically unfit” to run, as former TV star Melissa Gilbert has indicated she wishes to do.

In fact, even former Attorney General Frank Kelley, the longest-serving attorney general in the nation's history, never opined on such a case. And those opinions on the books in Michigan that do touch on the issue date to the 1950s.

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Those opinions — one from 1950 and one from 1957 — are not particularly helpful in defining what the former "Little House on the Prairie" star candidate would have to show to satisfy Michigan Bureau of Elections officials that she is "physically unfit" to run for office.

Whether Gilbert, who cites complications from head and neck injuries, will be allowed to withdraw from the race in Michigan's 8th Congressional District— where she had planned to challenge incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike Bishop, R-Rochester — will likely be critical in determining whether Democrats have any hope of winning the seat. Republicans have made it clear they are skeptical of Gilbert's claims and will fight her efforts to get removed from the general election ballot.

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On Thursday, the Board of State Canvassers disqualified the only other Democrat on the primary ballot, Lansing resident and former Windsor Township clerk Linda Keefe, because her nominating petition had fewer than the required 1,000 valid signatures.

It's too late for Gilbert to get her name off the ballot for the Aug. 2 primary. So, in order to have an engaged general election candidate, Democrats would have to either organize a write-in candidate who can get more votes than Gilbert in the primary, or count on Gilbert being allowed to withdraw and get her name off the Nov. 8 general election ballot.

If Gilbert is allowed to withdraw, Democratic party committees could choose a replacement candidate, and that nominee need not be someone who participated in the primary election, said Fred Woodhams, a spokesman for the Michigan secretary of state.

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Thomas, who has served as state elections director since 1981, said Thursday the question of a candidate withdrawing as "physically unfit" has never come up during his time in office. He said it is more straightforward and clear cut for congressional candidates to withdraw from elections if they can certify they have left the state, which, aside from dying or being deemed ineligible, is the only other way to withdraw from a race.

In 1950, then-Attorney General Stephen Roth wrote an opinion related to the election for Marquette County treasurer that expanded the definition of "physically unfit" to cover a candidate who had been judged insane by the county probate court, saying that while the criteria makes no mention of being mentally unfit, "it appears that mental illness of such a nature as to render the victim thereof unable to perform the duties of the office, should be held to come within the meaning of physical unfitness as used in this statute."

But the opinion sheds no light on what types of physical incapacities would render a candidate "physically unfit."

The 1957 opinion is even less helpful. In it, then Attorney General Thomas Kavanagh says a candidate would not be able to withdraw as a candidate for one office as "physically unfit" in order to run for another office.

Thomas said the Bureau of Elections has still heard nothing official from Gilbert since news of her plans to withdraw broke on Tuesday.

At Thursday's Board of Canvassers meeting, Keefe tried to cite the Gilbert withdrawal as a reason any deficiencies in her nominating petition should be overlooked and viewed as a moot issue.

But the four-member board, which is made up of equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, was unmoved and voted unanimously to disqualify Keefe, whose petition featured incomplete and inaccurate addresses and addresses from outside the district.

Julie Matuzak, a Democratic board member, told Keefe that anything her primary opponent does or doesn't do has no bearing on the validity of her own nominating petition.

"We are sworn to uphold the law," added Colleen Pero, a Republican board member. "We don't count invalid signatures."

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4.