Voters push to toss Summer Lee challenger Laurie MacDonald from primary ballot

The region’s most contentious primary election race just got spicier.

Laurie MacDonald, one of two Democratic challengers trying to unseat a surging U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, is now facing a threat to her place on the ballot.

This week four Democratic voters in the 12th Congressional District went to Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court to challenge MacDonald’s petition signatures. They claim she does not have the 1,000 valid signatures required to be on the ballot.

MacDonald filed over 2,200 signatures.

The court challenge, however, argues that none of them is valid.

Objectors are alleging that MacDonald’s petitions include “defects, other irregularities, and (an) outright pattern of impropriety.”

MacDonald’s campaign said it is confident there are more than enough valid signatures to ensure the candidate remains on the ballot.

“Challenging petitions is a sign of weakness on the part of my opponent — let the voters decide,” the campaign said in a statement. “The others in this race need to address the issues facing our district. Not spend time and money on disenfranchising district voters.”

Most candidates tend to gather well over the required amount of signatures as a cushion because it’s common to have large numbers of invalid signatures thrown out due to a variety of errors.

Legal challenges to candidate petitions are commonplace in Pennsylvania, and are typically initiated by rival campaigns.

One of MacDonald’s petition challengers has a link to a rival candidate, Edgewood Councilwoman Bhavini Patel, who is also seeking to topple Lee.

The Lee and Patel campaigns did not respond to requests for comment.

A call to James Walsh, the lawyer representing the voters mounting the challenge, was not returned Thursday.

MacDonald, CEO of advocacy group Center for Victims and a resident of Pittsburgh’s Mount Washington neighborhood, is running in a primary race that has already gotten messy.

The three-way contest to represent the 12th District has already hosted a turbulent candidate forum and generated mudslinging around a canceled event at Pitt. Political experts expect the race to get nastier through attack ads funded by outside groups.

The district includes Pittsburgh, parts of southern and eastern Allegheny County, the Mon Valley, and Westmoreland County communities such as Murrysville, North Huntingdon, Penn Township, Sewickley, Jeannette and parts of Hempfield.

Adam Bonin, a lawyer and Pennsylvania election expert from Philadelphia, said the challenge to MacDonald’s petitions has some peculiarities.

He said it is typical to see line-by-line challenges to signatures to check if each person who signed is a registered voter or lives within the candidate’s district.

What is unique about the MacDonald challenge, he said, is the blanket assertion that none of the signatures is valid.

“I have to say, I have never seen someone say that every single line is invalid, that is rare,” Bonin said.

The challengers claim that the signatures are not valid because they were collected by three people known as circulators who are not registered as voters at the address they used in the petition paperwork.

For instance, one circulator lists a Pittsburgh address on paperwork, but the challengers claim that address is not home to a registered voter.

Bonin said that the challenge will be hard to win. State election law is clear that signers have to be registered at the address they include in the petition, but it does not make the same requirements of circulators, according to Bonin.

MacDonald’s petitions contain several other irregularities, according to a review by TribLive.

Some signers drew lines through the signature space instead of penning their names.

In some cases, check marks were placed where address information should be.

Some pages are simply photocopies of other pages, with folded-over areas covering parts of signatures. Other pages have no signatures at all.

Successfully booting MacDonald off the ballot would likely benefit Patel, said Bonin.

Candidates challenging incumbents want one-on-one matchups to avoid splitting the opposition vote, he said.

Records show that one of the voters challenging MacDonald’s petitions, Judith Bardack, donated to the Patel campaign last financial quarter.

Bardack, of Squirrel Hill, gave Patel $400, according to campaign filings.

MacDonald has been using fairly conservative rhetoric for a Democratic primary, a sign she may be angling for the district’s moderate voters.

Patel likely wants to gain those voters, too, as Lee is one of the more progressive lawmakers in Congress and has been consolidating more support from establishment liberals.

“I may be on the other end of the state, but still see it pretty clearly, this would be advantageous for Patel,” Bonin said.