Missouri Republican Party seeks to remove four candidates from primary elections, saying they are not ‘Republican candidates’

By Benjamin Peters on April 25, 2018

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The Missouri Republican Party is looking to have several candidates removed from the ballot.

In letters sent by Lowell Pearson of the Husch Blackwell law firm to the Secretary of State’s office and four candidates, the MRP requested that the candidates be removed from the ballot by the Secretary of State, while also informing the candidates that the MRP was refunding their filing fees.

The four candidates in question are Scott Van Meter (SD 34), Jim Evans (7th Congressional District), Leonard Jonas Hughes IV (SD 8), and Noga Sachs (2nd Congressional District).

The letter cited a ruling from the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri back in 2006, when Frazier Glenn Miller filed suit against then-Secretary of State Robin Carnahan after he attempted to have his name put on the Democratic primary election and was denied by Carnahan because his filing fee and candidacy had been rejected by the Democratic Party.

(That’s the same Frazier Glenn Miller who was convicted of murder in the shooting in Overland Park at a Jewish Community Center in 2014, resulting in the deaths of three people. Miller was formally sentenced to death in November 2015.)

The ruling states that the “Court cannot find and Plaintiff does not cite any authority that a political party cannot refuse membership to persons who do not share its ideology.”

“The Missouri Republican Party has discovered evidence that you are not, in fact, a Republican candidate,” the letters read.

Read the letters below: