North Dakota Democrats Short 40 Legislative Candidates With A Week To Go
The candidate filing deadline for the June primary ballot is April 7th. All party-endorsed candidates must have their certificate of endorsements to the Secretary of State by then.
Both parties will have a full slate of statewide candidates – Democrats endorsed theirs this weekend, and Republicans will endorse theirs this coming weekend – but on the legislative side things are looking pretty sparse for Democrats.
As of this morning, according to our running tally of legislative candidates based on media announcements and the Secretary of State’s online list of filed candidates, North Dakota Democrats have just 32 candidates for 72 legislative races on the ballot this year including 10 incumbents. That leaves more than half – 40 legislative races – unchallenged so far.
Republicans, on the other hand, have candidates for 61 of the 72 legislative races including 49 incumbents, leaving just 11 races unchallenged so far.
(In District 1 there are three candidates for two House seats; TJ Corcoran is filed to run on the primary ballot after losing the local convention endorsement to Gary Sukkut and Patrick Hattlestad.)
Update: Originally this post said Republicans have 48 incumbents. That was off by one. I had inadvertently marked Rep. Bill Devlin as a newcomer not an incumbent. I’ve fixed that and the NDGOP has 49 incumbents. Also, I originally referred to District 2 instead of District 1 in writing about the primary challenge there. Also corrected that.
Here’s the most recently updated list of legislative candidates:
