Is Perry's Roger going to "play games" with Kinky's campaign ?

Thwarting Perry foes ? Absurd, official says
Secretary of state says petition count will take weeks, not months
02:48 PM CDT on Sunday, April 30, 2006
By WAYNE SLATER / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – Secretary of State Roger Williams says it will take only a few weeks, not the two months his critics charge, to certify the candidacy of two independents seeking to challenge Gov. Rick Perry.
Mr. Williams denied that he is trying to keep the governor's political challengers, Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman, off the ballot.
And he said that his office has created a new computer program and hired an outside company to speed the process of verifying thousands of signatures the independents must collect and submit by May 11.
"We're working hard to do it as quickly as we can, but the main thing is to do it right," said Mr. Williams, outlining his agency's plans in detail for the first time.
The Strayhorn campaign has accused Mr. Williams, a Perry appointee, of delaying the certification process to help the governor win re-election.
"He's throwing up roadblocks all over the place, no question about it," said Strayhorn campaign manager Brad McClellan. "He's basically putting toll roads on the democratic process."
The campaign has filed suit in federal court challenging Mr. Williams' refusal to accept petitions as they are being collected, instead of all at once after the deadline. They also want him to sample signatures rather than verify each one.
A hearing is set for Monday in Austin.
Independent candidates for governor must collect 45,540 signatures from registered voters who didn't vote in the primary.
Mr. Williams defended his decision to validate every signature on the petitions rather than conduct a statistical sampling, as past secretaries of state have done.
"Maybe I'm leaning on my business background, but whenever I've taken an inventory, whenever I've counted things, I've always done it to get it exact," he said in an interview last week. "And we have an opportunity to get it exact."
Mrs. Strayhorn's campaign said Mr. Williams is departing from the quicker method in order to drag out the process and damage her campaign.
The clash underscores an increasingly acrimonious feud between the Republican governor and Mrs. Strayhorn, the Republican comptroller who is running for governor as an independent.
Break with precedent
Mr. Williams' predecessors have used statistical sampling to certify candidates for the ballot. Democrat John Hannah used sampling for Kay Bailey Hutchison in her 1993 Senate race, and Republican Tony Garza followed the same procedure to certify Ross Perot for the 1996 presidential ballot.
But Mr. Williams said this year's race is different because there might be two or more independent candidates on the ballot, in addition to Mr. Perry and Democrat Chris Bell.
Under state law, voters can't sign petitions if they've voted in the primary. If a voter signed more than one petition, the one signed first counts.
Faced with that prospect, Mr. Williams said, his office has created a computer program with the names of all registered voters who did not vote in the primary or runoff elections. That list will be compared with an electronic database of the collected signatures.
A private firm, Tela Technologies of Houston, has been hired to enter the names from the petitions into a computer database. It has four weeks to complete the task.
"Once we get that back, it shouldn't take long," Mr. Williams said. "Say, 48 hours."
Financial worries
The Strayhorn and Friedman camps say the secretary of state's plans harm their efforts.
"Financially, it hurts more than anything," said Mr. Friedman's campaign manager, Dean Barkley. "People do not want to invest in Kinky until they know he's actually going to be on the ballot."
Mr. McClellan said the Republican governor wants to sustain doubt as long as possible among voters and fundraisers about whether his challengers are legitimate.
"Rick Perry and his hand-picked political appointee know that when we're on the ballot, Rick Perry is in trouble," said Mr. McClellan.
Clay Mulford, a ballot-access expert and Dallas attorney who served as general counsel for Mr. Perot's presidential campaigns, said it appears the secretary of state "is changing the rules midway through the game."
Mr. Williams denied that and said he is acting on his own, not on instructions from Mr. Perry.
"The governor and I have not exchanged any dialogue at all about this," he said. "He hasn't asked and – what do they say – don't ask, don't tell."
Meanwhile, both independent gubernatorial campaigns say petition-gathering is going well.
The Strayhorn camp has contracted with two firms to gather signatures using paid workers. Their assignment is to produce more than enough valid signatures by doing their own computer cross-check. Volunteers will supplement that effort.
Although campaign officials won't say how many names they intend to turn in by May 11, those familiar with the effort predict the total number of signatures delivered to the secretary of state could exceed 150,000.
The Friedman campaign is relying mostly on volunteers, Mr. Barkley said. A program to pay signature-gatherers has been largely shelved because volunteer efforts have proved successful.
He said volunteers collected signatures at the weekend Fiesta celebration in San Antonio and an international film festival in Houston. Petition-gatherers were at recent Bob Dylan concerts in Grand Prairie and San Antonio.
"We're on target," Mr. Barkley said. "We firmly believe we'll be on the ballot, but we need more than just the 45,000 in case Roger is going to play games with us."
E-mail wslater@dallasnews.com
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-petitions_30tex.ART.State.Edition1.90a486f.html