UPDATE: 2017 VIRGINIA ATTORNEY GENERAL RACE WILL BE REPUBLICAN JOHN ADAMS AGAINST DEMOCRAT MARK HERRING
It appears that no primary will be necessary for Republicans to pick their 2017 challenger to AG Mark Herring — Richmond lawyer John Adams will be the Republican nominee for Virginia Attorney General in 2017.
As reported a few weeks ago in the Richmond Times Dispatch, Chuck Smith failed to collect the necessary number of signatures to qualify. As I said before, Chuck Smith seemed to be a promising candidate and, of course, democracy itself benefits from a hard-fought primary. Republican John Adams, on the other hand, turned in an impressive 15,573 signatures—far exceeding the minimum requirement.
By the way, I’m not sure if Virginia’s qualification system is more complicated than other states, but the process of collecting signatures is a bit more complicated than you might think. Candidates needed 10,000 signatures from registered voters, including 400 from each of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts. And there is only a very limited window of time in which to collect the signatures. Smith didn’t meet the requirements and so there will not be a primary.
Stay tuned readers, we here at vaquitamlaw.com will be asking the Attorney General candidates for comment on their approaches toward the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act and whether they would support vigorous enforcement of the law….
