US Senate candidate Abby Finkenauer will appear on primary ballot, Iowa Supreme Court rules

U.S. Senate candidate Abby Finkenauer will appear on the June Democratic primary ballot, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday, reversing a district court decision that found she failed to qualify.

The ruling ends a tense week for Finkenauer, a former U.S. representative who is vying for the Democratic nomination to take on Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley.

On Sunday, a district court judge ruled Finkenauer failed to qualify for the June 7 primary ballot because three signatures submitted as part of her nominating petitions lacked a correct date.

The Supreme Court overturned that lower court decision Friday, allowing Finkenauer to appear on the ballot.

In a call with reporters Friday afternoon, Finkenauer thanked her supporters and said the Republican-backed challenge shows the GOP is scared to run against her in November.

"Today is a good day for Iowa and democracy," Finkenauer said. "The reality is with this unanimous decision by the Iowa Supreme Court affirming that we met the requirements to be on the ballot for United States Senate that this is something, again, that is important not just for Democrats but for Republicans and independents and anybody who cares about the direction of our state and our country."

More:Iowa Supreme Court weighs whether U.S. Senate candidate Abby Finkenauer can appear on primary ballot

Finkenauer was saved by a Republican-supported election law enacted last year that provided specific instructions about when objections to candidates' nominating petitions will be upheld.

Mistakes that would disqualify signatures include if the signature is missing, the signer leaves off their residential address, if any information is crossed out or if the petitions are missing information about the candidate. But the disqualifying mistakes do not include the part of the law that requires the signature to include a date.

"We therefore believe it is reasonable to treat this language as determinative of the Legislature’s views as to when an objection to a signature based on incorrect or incomplete information should be sustained," the court wrote.

One signature on Finkenauer's  had an incorrect date. Another had no date. And with the third, the signer wrote their ZIP code, rather than the date.

More:Read the Iowa Supreme Court ruling keeping Abby Finkenauer on the 2022 primary ballot

U.S. Senate candidates were required to submit a total of 3,500 signatures, including at least 100 signatures from 19 different counties. Finkenauer submitted about 5,000 signatures overall, but without the three disputed signatures, she would have failed to meet the 19-county requirement.

Alan Ostergren, an attorney for the two Republicans who brought the challenge against Finkenauer, said the decision shows the Iowa Legislature needs to try again to amend the law so it's consistent.

"The Legislature needs to go back and comprehensively reenact all the statutes in one section as to what a nominating petition has to have in it and what does and does not count," he said. "And then this problem will be resolved."

The court said "neither side's position is without flaws." The opinion noted that Finkenauer's attorneys had difficulty explaining the purpose of the law's requirement that "each signer shall add … the date of signing."

"Statutory interpretation is not like proving math theorems, and it is sometimes difficult to come up with a neat answer that is intellectually satisfying," the court wrote in its opinion. "In the end, we believe we must be guided by the Legislature’s last word on the subject."

The court's unsigned opinion was unanimous, with two justices, Christopher McDonald and Dana Oxley, saying they agreed only with the result and not the reasoning behind the opinion.

The Republican challengers were Kim Schmett, a former chair of the Polk County Republicans, and Leanne Pellett, co-chair of the Cass County Republicans.

Finkenauer's campaign had argued the Republicans did not have standing to challenge Finkenauer's petitions because they aren't Democrats and won't be voting in the Democratic primary. The Supreme Court said in a footnote that for the purposes of its decision, it assumed the challengers have standing.

Finkenauer is seen as the front-runner in the three-candidate Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate race. She is competing against Mike Franken, a retired Navy admiral, and Glenn Hurst, a doctor and Minden City Council member. Finkenauer has led in fundraising and has secured a range of endorsements.

Still, if she prevails in the primary, she’ll face steep odds against Grassley. A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll in September found Grassley led Finkenauer 55% to 37% among likely voters in a hypothetical matchup.

Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann said in a statement Friday that "Finkenauer will never be a U.S. Senator from Iowa."

"Iowans saw everything they needed to see in Finkenauer’s effort to get on the ballot," he said. "For someone who claims to have a strong campaign, she could barely reach the minimum requirement for petition signatures."

The court’s decision comes ahead of a tight deadline for election administrators to begin printing ballots so they can be mailed to overseas and military voters, who must be sent their ballots by April 23 under federal law.

The Supreme Court opinion took care to commend Polk County District Judge Scott Beattie, who ruled last Sunday that Finkenauer failed to qualify for the ballot because the three signatures lacked the date.

"The district court worked through the weekend and issued a thorough eighteen-page decision on Sunday evening, April 10," the Supreme Court opinion states. "The court did so to ensure that there would be adequate time and opportunity for review by this court. We appreciate the district court’s courtesy and we trust that the parties do as well."

Finkenauer had attacked Beattie's decision as "deeply partisan" and "a massive gift to Washington Republicans."

Republicans have criticized her comments as an attack on the courts, and Ostergren said Friday that Finkenauer should apologize to Beattie

In an interview with the Des Moines Register Wednesday after the Iowa Supreme Court heard arguments in the case, Finkenauer rejected the criticism of her comments and criticized Beattie for overturning the decision of the three-member State Objection Panel, which originally dismissed the objection to her candidacy.

"I’m not at all undermining anything," she said. "What I am doing is making sure that people know that this is a judge who ignored 30 years of precedent, who overturned a bipartisan panel’s decision who is in charge of making these decisions in the first place of whether somebody qualifies or not and they can make their own decisions of how they feel. That judge decided to pick and choose who was going to be on that ballot."

Stephen Gruber-Miller covers the Iowa Statehouse and politics for the Register. He can be reached by email at sgrubermil@registermedia.com or by phone at 515-284-8169. Follow him on Twitter at @sgrubermiller.