Race to replace Pompeo is likely limited to two candidates

When you get to vote for a new member of Congress to replace Rep. Mike Pompeo, it’s almost certain you’ll have only two choices, Republican or Democrat.

State law on special congressional elections sets up daunting, perhaps insurmountable, obstacles to a third-party or independent bid, leaving only the red and blue teams a clear path to the ballot.

Pompeo, President-elect Trump’s pick for director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is expected to resign the seat as soon as his appointment is confirmed by the Senate in late January or early February. That will set up a special election to replace him in the House.

The two major parties’ nominees will be chosen by committees made up of party activists in the 4th Congressional District, which Pompeo represents. The district covers south-central Kansas, including Sedgwick and Butler counties.

Miranda Allen, who pulled 7 percent of the vote running as an independent in the 4th District race in the Nov. 8 election, said she’d like to give it another go.

But she said she can’t run unless it’s somehow possible for election officials to waive a requirement that an independent candidate get 4 percent of the voters in the district to sign a nominating petition. Meeting that would mean gathering approximately 17,000 signatures in roughly 25 days, according to election officials.

Allen said that would be impossible without using paid signature gatherers. “The cost of doing that would be $80,000 to $90,000,” she said.

And even then, the time frame is probably too short to verify the signatures before turning the petition in, she said. To qualify for the Nov. 8 election, her team gathered 9,000 signatures to ensure they had about 5,000 valid ones. That took about three months, she said.

Allen said she has called and e-mailed the secretary of state’s office to see whether the signature requirement could be waived in light of the 18,000 votes she got two weeks ago. But she said election officials haven’t returned her messages and she’s not expecting that to happen.

“They don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

The Libertarian Party, a fixture in Kansas politics, also will have to sit this one out, party officials said.

“I don’t think we’ll be fielding a candidate,” said Steve Rosile, district deputy coordinator for the Libertarian Party in the 4th Congressional District. “I don’t believe they’re going to include us in that. ... We haven’t quite gotten to major party status.”

Dillon Albin, recently selected as the party’s 4th District deputy, said he didn’t know of any Libertarians interested in running in the special election.

The state statute doesn’t give third parties an automatic ballot line in special elections to fill a congressional seat. Only parties that got 5 percent of the votes in the most recent gubernatorial election can nominate a candidate through a special convention.

Keen Umbehr, the Libertarian who ran for governor in 2014, got 4 percent of the vote.

The U.S. Constitution specifies that only voters in an election can fill a vacancy in the House of Representatives. But states do have latitude in how and when the election can be held.

Allen said that while the election to replace Pompeo may be a lost cause for independents, “we need to look at changing the legislation so there are opportunities in the future.”

She said if only Republicans and Democrats can run, those parties and not the taxpayers ought to have to pay for the election.

“People shouldn’t just be forced into a two-party system,” she said. “If only candidates from both parties can run, why are we paying for a public election?”

This story was originally published November 24, 2016 at 11:25 AM with the headline "Race to replace Pompeo is likely limited to two candidates."