Bill Scheurer Files for Congress in the 8th Congressional Distric; Green, Constitution and Indepence Parties File against Blagojevich & Topinka

Whether he had 14,000 signatures or not is unknown at this point, but Moderate Party candidate Bill Scheurer is listed as having filed for congress in the 8th congressional district on the State Board of Elections web site.

Scheurer can be accurately described as a "peace candidate."

Scheurer was the victim of a dirty trick last week in which a political consultant impersonator did not deliver the 18,000 signatures that he had promised.

Reached in his car, McHenry County Blog asked how many signatures he filed. His enigmatic answer:

The official public answer is, "We filed 10-12,000 less than the number we would have filed had we not been the victim of criminal fraud. We filed 10-12,000 more signatures than either of the corporate party candidates filed to get on the ballot themselves."

(Republican David McSweeney just emailed me that he filed "2,500-3,000 signatures." Do the math and you will see that Scheurer has precious few signatures over the 14,000 required or he is a bit short.)

A copy of our filing was pulled with three minutes after it was filed.

We are pursuing several avenues of criminal investigation I have filed to be on the ballot to be on the ballot as a third party candidate. I have also filed with all three of the counties a declaration of candidacy for a write-in candidate.

We believe that the Democratic Party is involved in a fraud against democracy itself. And the way they can wipe their hands clean of that is to welcome me into the race like the other party.

Scheuer said he had

4 or 5-dozen volunteers in the streets

this past weekend.

I have previously suggested that the Democrats have the most to lose if Sheurer is on the ballot. Substantiating that opinion was David McSweeney's announcement that he would not challenge Scheurer's petitions.

It will be interesting to see who challenges Scheurer's petitions. A good clue is that House Speaker and Democratic Party Chairman Mike Madigan's former parliamentarian Mike Kasper is the person who picked up copies of Scheurer's petitions.

For more information on Scheurer, click here.

Also filing were the following gubernatorial candidates:

· Randall Stufflebeam of the Constitution Party
· Rich Whitney of the Green Party and
· James Blaine of the Independence Party

Stufflebeam won the game of “chicken” and will be last on the ballot, if he withstands an expected ballot challenge from supporters of Judy Topinka. Stufflebeam is a social conservative who would not have participated in the Gay Pride Parade yesterday, as Topinka did.

Stufflebean told McHenry County Blog:

"We ended up filing 4,382."

The answer to the question about whom he expected to challenge his petitions:

"The Republicans."

Stufflebeam said that the Democrats were there ready to contest (Green Party Whitney's petitions), but

"Apparently, the Republicans ran out of time because it was five o’clock."

The Green Party seems most confident in its having gathered the 25,000 necessary signatures, which, I hasten to add is 5 times the number required by the power party candidates.

As Green campaign manager Jennifer Rose told McHenry County Blog,

"We exceeded the legal requirement by several thousand."

The Independence Party candidate did not file a full slate of candidates, so will be disqualified, if anyone cares to challenge its petitions’ sufficiency.