Candidates dropping already

Tomorrow (June 10) is the last day to file challenges to try to remove candidates from the August ballot, but candidates are already being knocked off or simply withdrawing to avoid the embarrassment of being removed.

In Maricopa County -

- Democrat Israel Correa has withdrawn from the race for Justice of the Peace in the Downtown Justice Precinct, leaving Democrats Jeff Farias and Armando Gandarilla (incumbent) as the only two candidates.

- Democrat Bruce McDougall has withdrawn from the Manistee JP race, leaving incumbent Republican Gary Handley as the sole candidate on either side of the ballot.

- Democrat Jeffrey Brown has been removed from the ballot due to a challenge in the race for Encanto Constable, leaving Democrat Maria Ligocki-Russell as the only candidate on the ballot.

In state-level offices -

- Republican candidate for governor John Munger (he of the low single digit support in recent polling) withdrew a week ago because he said that he felt that he couldn't outspend Clean Elections candidates who would receive matching funds. Funny, but he didn't jump back in after the Roberts Supreme Court stopped payment of matching funds for this cycle.

- Democrat Martha Garcia withdrew as a candidate for the LD13 State Senate seat because her petitions weren't going to stand up to a challenge. That leaves former State Rep. Steve Gallardo as the only candidate.

- Republican Wyatt Brooks has withdrawn as a candidate for LD3 House. I couldn't find a reason listed anywhere, but it could be related to the fact that while his campaign organized with a Kingman address (in LD3), the SOS' website now has shows an address of a P.O. box in Hualapai (in LD2, or maybe LD1, but almost definitely not LD3). His withdrawal leaves three candidates in the race, all Republicans - Ray Cullison II, Doris Goodale, and Nancy McLain. Goodale and McLain are incumbents.

In "getting into the race, sort of" news, a few folks have declared their write-in candidacies (primary here, general election here) -

- William Koller of Tucson filed for the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate

- Richard Grayson of Apache Junction has filed as a Green for the Congressional seat currently held by Republican Jeff Flake in CD6. As no other Green candidates have yet filed for the seat, Grayson needs 221 votes in August's primary to qualify for the general election ballot (221 is the number of sigs he would have needed to appear on the primary ballot)

- Sydney Dudikoff of Tucson has filed as a general election candidate for U.S. Senate

As of this writing, the only non-legislative originated ballot question to qualify is the Medical Marijuana Act. Other citizen-originated questions have until July 1 to submit their petitions, so that list may grow (though that seems unlikely at this point.)

Later...