The Minnesota Supreme Court has upheld an earlier district court ruling that incumbent State Rep. Bob Barrett (R, is there any doubt) is not eligible to run for re-election on Nov. 8, because he doesn’t live where he claims to live.
According to a story in the Twin Cities Pioneer Press:
That makes Barrett an ineligible candidate for this November’s election — and pre-emptively nullifies the vote in Barrett’s District 32B. ...
Barrett lists his formal address as a rental home in Taylors Falls, which is in District 32B. But he also owns a home in Shafer, just outside his district. Activists visited his Taylor Falls house 30 times over 15 days this summer and set up a trail camera to try to prove Barrett doesn’t actually live in the home.
The story adds that because Barrett was found to be ineligible less than 80 days before the election, there will be a special election in February to fill the seat.
The Supreme Court did, however, reject an argument from the plaintiffs that the November election should go forward without Barrett’s name on the ballot. That would have left just DFL candidate Laurie Warner and a write-in spot for voters in the northeast suburban district. …
While both Barrett and Warner’s names will appear on November ballots, the results from that race will not be certified and voters in District 32B will actually pick their state representative on Feb. 14, 2017, according to the Supreme Court’s decision. The seat will remain vacant until February, with potentially major implications since control over the House of Representatives is being fiercely contested in November’s elections. The next session of the Legislature will begin on January 3, 2017.
There’s no information as to whether Barrett will try to claim another fake residence in the district between now and February. Apparently this fight has been brewing for two years, with activists from Minnesota’s DFL, or Democratic Farm Labor Party, working to prove that Barrett doesn’t live in the district.
Here’s the response from Minnesota’s DFL from an online story in the Uptake.
DFL party chair Ken Martin used today’s ruling to criticize the Minnesota Republican party. “Today’s Supreme Court ruling declaring Rep. Bob Barrett ineligible to run in House District 32B is just another example of Republican dysfunction as we head into the final weeks of this critical election,” said Martin in a press release. “You’d think that after Democrats filed a challenge on this very issue in 2014 Rep. Barrett and the GOP would have cleaned this up, but clearly they decided it was just too much of a bother. You add this to their inability to get their presidential nominee on the ballot in a timely manner and you have to wonder what the heck is going on with the Minnesota Republican Party.”