Candidate for governor Katie McGinty will officially be on the ballot for the May Democratic primary.
The former DEP Secretary amassed 5,272 signatures — 3,000 more than what was required to get on the ballot. She also received 100 or more signatures from 14 different counties, although she only needed 10 counties to do so.
“This is another milestone in our campaign to return Pennsylvania to a position of national leadership,” McGinty said. “Our ability to collect signatures in counties across the state shows that we are building a strong organization in every corner of the commonwealth. I believe it’s Pennsylvania’s time to shine, and I’m so grateful for the broad support our campaign has received across the state.”
Although McGinty’s total is significantly less than Allyson Schwartz’s daunting 22,000 signatures, McGinty was still certainly able to secure a broad support base.
“I’ve been doing for this a lot of years,” said McGinty’s Campaign Chairman T.J. Rooney. “But I’ve been incredibly impressed by the ground game Katie has put together and by the network she has built across this commonwealth — all as a first-time candidate. It’s clear she has the energy to win and the vision to lead, and it’s even clearer by the responses she’s received to her petitions that Pennsylvanians are ready for change.”
With Representative Allyson Schwartz and former DEP Secretary John Hanger already having submitted their petitions and provided estimates of their counts, the Democrats who still need to confirm include State Treasurer Rob McCord, former Revenue Secretary Tom Wolf, former Auditor General Jack Wagner and Lebanon County Commissioner Jo Ellen Litz.
4 Responses
@Adam,
Thanks for the information. I thought it was 100 from 10 counties.
Jeremy, everyone has until 5pm today to complete their filings and add onto what’s already there. LT-GOV candidates only need 1000, and 100+ from each of five counties.
According to Keystone Politics, Mike Stack filed a petition with 4,000 signatures but only 7 counties. It says he will file a supplemental.
What is a supplemental? How does it work? How long does he have?
I don’t think Schwartz will not receive 4 times as many votes as McGinty.
Anything much beyond double the number of signatures is overkill once you are safe from a petition challenge.
In a race this heated, and with so much money, McGinty and Hanger have protected themselves from a petition challenge, without wasting precious campaign resources.
The other candidates could have just set a target of 5,000, submitted after the first week, and spent the final two weeks on other campaign activities.
The biggest benefit seems to be testing their field operations.
Once all the petitions are in, it will be interesting to see how their operations are distributed by county. Philly petition page counts for some campaigns may be greatly disproportionate to expected Philly turnout.
Philly will produce about 1/6th of the Dem primary turnout.