DENVER | Colorado U.S. Senate hopeful Jon Keyser has a spot on the state GOP’s primary after all.
A Denver judge ruled Friday, April 29, that Keyser collected enough votes to qualify for the June 28 ballot.
Keyser is an Air Force Reserve officer, former state representative and one-time favorite to challenge Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, who is seeking re-election in November.
He argued that Colorado’s top elections official erroneously rejected voter signatures Keyser needed to make the primary. District Court Judge Elizabeth Starrs agreed.
The Secretary of State’s office claimed Keyser was 86 valid signatures short of the 1,500 needed in Congressional District 3, which covers most of western Colorado. Senate candidates seeking to make the primary ballot were required to obtain 1,500 signatures from registered Republican voters in each of the state’s seven congressional districts.
In a court filing provided by Secretary of State spokeswoman Lynn Bartels, attorneys for Keyser claimed that one of the candidate’s petition gatherers in the 3rd Congressional District, Tyler Gonzalez, had his signatures unfairly disqualified from the overall tally.
Gonzalez collected a total of approximately 429 signatures, nearly half of which were from the 3rd Congressional District — for the Keyser campaign in February and March, according to an affidavit signed by Gonzalez. However, a court filing claimed that because Gonzalez failed to change his address when he officially registered as a Republican last year, the Secretary of State’s Office was unable to confirm if he was in fact a registered Republican, disqualifying his collected signatures. Under state law, petitioners must be affiliated with the political party of their respective candidate.
Gonzalez had collected a total of 186 valid signatures from CD3, according to the court filing. His affidavit was signed and notarized by Ryley Johnson and Jason Cogzell, who supervised Gonzalez during the signature-gathering process, according to the affidavit.
In a court order issued Friday morning, Judge Starrs maintained that the issue with Gonzalez’s address was inconsequential and did not qualify as election fraud under state law.
“The Court finds that Mr. Gonzalez did not have an improper motive in failing to update his voter registration address,” Starrs wrote.
Keyser will face businessman Jack Graham and El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn in the primary. The Secretary of State’s office approved Graham’s valid signatures April 20, and Glenn made the ballot after a surprise victory at the Republican state assembly earlier this month.
The ruling on Keyser’s petition signatures comes one day after the Secretary of State’s office announced that both Robert Blaha, a Colorado Springs businessman, and former Aurora city councilman Ryan Frazier did not submit enough valid signatures to make the Republican primary ballot in the race for U.S. Senate. Blaha failed to hit the the necessary signature threshold in the 1st, 3rd and 6th congressional districts. Frazier came up short in CD1, CD2, CD3 and CD6.
In social media posts, both candidates said that they plan to re-evaluate their signatures and could pursue legal action against the Secretary of State’s office. However, the time frame for such recourse appears to be waning as state law requires the Secretary of State to finalize the primary ballot by the end of Friday, April 29.