District 11 Democrat Switch Resolved

At a meeting of the Canyon County Republican Central Committee (CCRCC) on Tuesday night, Secretary of State Phil McGrane announced that his office had reached a resolution on the matter of Democrat candidates Toni Ferro and Anthony Porto switching races in district 11.

As readers of the Gem State Chronicle know, on June 18, those two candidates withdrew from their races — Ferro had won the Democratic primary for State Senate unopposed, while Porto was unopposed for House seat A. At the same time, the Legislative District 11 Democratic Central Committee appointed both candidates to each other’s now-vacant races. The point was for Ferro and her $40,000 war chest to run against GOP House primary winner Kent Marmon while Porto would challenge GOP Senate primary winner Camille Blaylock.

After taking full responsibility for the error and apologizing to the Republican volunteers and activists, McGrane said after talking with numerous lawyers, they agreed that the most legally defensible action would be to simply undo the withdrawals and appointments and go back to the post primary status quo. He indicated that it was likely that Democrats would sue should the candidates be removed from the ballot entirely. The fact that someone in the Secretary of State’s office had given them the go-ahead would surely be brought up during litigation.

As of yesterday, the candidate list on the Secretary of State’s website had been updated, and the switch was erased as if it never happened.

McGrane’s appearance before the CCRCC seemed to blunt some of the criticism he has received from Republicans, as a resolution condemning the affair and calling for his resignation failed later that evening.

During his talk, McGrane suggested that the Legislature should take action to tighten up rules around candidate withdrawals in the next session.