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Meek campaign: Petition drive on track, but may pay fee anyway

Posted Mar 15, 2010 by William March

Updated Mar 15, 2010 at 02:40 PM

The Kendrick Meek U.S. Senate campaign said Monday its drive to make Meek the first candidate for statewide office in Florida ever to qualify by petition, rather than by paying a fee, is nearing completion.

Campaign manager Abe Dyk Meek said the campaign expects no problem reaching the necessary 112,476 petitions signed by registered voters—1 percent of the state total—plus a cushion of 18,000 extra in case some are rejected. The petitions have to be turned into local elections supervisors by March 29, then verified and sent to the state Division of Elections by April 19.

Dyk left open the possibility that the campaign would pay the qualifying fee anyway, however, if there was what he called “some kind of bogus legal challenge” to the petitions.

Meek undertook the petition drive last year, even though his campaign could have paid the $10,440 fee, in hope that assembling a mass of volunteers to gather petitions would also build a statewide, grass-roots organization.

It’s become a point of pride on the campaign trail. In his stump speech, Meek recruits volunteers by telling them they could be part of an historic first.

“When we win in November, I’ll be holding one of these petitions up over my head and I’ll be saying, this is how we got here,” he told a small group of petition volunteers in a meeting in Orlando Saturday.

The question of paying the fee has been the subject of some internal debate within the campaign.

The campaign doesn’t expect any legal challenge, but debate among the staff has centered on the risk that a challenge could become an expensive court case. On the other hand, paying the fee could put a damper on the volunteers’ feeling of accomplishment, and Meek’s claim of a first.

The fee would be due April 30, the end of the qualifying period.