This morning on Trumpster Radio (aka, the “John Fredericks Show – note the misspelling as “Fredricks” in the following video – lol), far-right Del. Nick Freitas (R-HD30) discussed why he didn’t make it on the general election ballot in the first place, how he believes he *will* end up being on the ballot, but if for some reason he isn’t on the ballot, he’ll run as a write-in candidate.
In short, Freitas is not on the ballot because his campaign and legislative district chair screwed up, sending required forms to an email that’s no longer “good anymore” (as Freitas put it), and with nobody calling to make sure the State Board of Elections had received these required forms. Brilliant, huh? So for now, only Democrat Ann Ridgeway is on the ballot in HD30. But, according to Freitas:
“…now all the paperwork is being submitted this morning to go with the [Legislative District Committee – LDC]’s decision last night unanimously select me as the Republican candidate for the 30th district so at this point we’re confident that everything all the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed and we should be able to move forward in November on the ballot.”
Of course, it’s possible the State Board of Elections won’t buy the reasoning that the same candidate, in this case Nick Freitas, who was never a properly filed candidate, can be renominated by his district committee and placed on the ballot anyway. [UPDATE: Note that in the Code of Virginia, it says “A candidate who has been disqualified for failing to meet the filing requirements of Article 1 (§ 24.2-500 et seq.) of this chapter shall not be renominated.”] If so, then the question will be whether Freitas drops out in favor of a different Republican candidate or runs a write-in campaign. In the John “Fredricks” Show interview, Freitas said:
“If we’re in a situation where we could put somebody on the ballot, but it just couldn’t be me, well then we’re going to consider that…because the most important thing to me is that we maintain the majority and make sure that a Republican is representing the 30th district…so that’s something we’ll look at there. If they come back and they essentially say that no Republican can be on the ballot, we will absolutely run a write-in campaign and we will win a write-in campaign.”
Finally, Freitas claims that he’s raised about $500k, which would be extraordinary, given that Freitas had only raised a total of $15,750 in the first six months of 2019, and had a puny $4,211 “on hand” as of June 30. So we’ll see about the $500k, but of course this is Virginia, which means that someone – in this case, let’s say a wealthy right wingnut – can legally give unlimited amounts of money to a Virginia political candidate. Ah, democracy!
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