Petition signatures questioned in mayoral race

It will be up to Pinal County Superior Court Judge Gilberto Figueroa whether Maricopa Councilman Carl Diedrich gets to run for mayor after all.

Opponent Christian Price filed a lawsuit Dec. 28 to have Diedrich’s name removed from the ballot, claiming he doesn’t have enough valid signatures on his petitions.

It might not matter.

First, the county recorder took another look at the signatures after the lawsuit was filed and threw out six of the 15 questioned signatures even before a court hearing Tuesday, confirmed both Diedrich and Price’s attorney Anthony Tsontakis.

That would mean Diedrich would not have the required 143 signatures to run for mayor. He had collected 148 signatures.

But then, in what even Tsontakis said Wednesday was “a little bit quirky,” it turns out the number of signatures required is in question.

When the Maricopa city clerk and city attorney got the lawsuit they revisited the election statute outlining the number of signatures needed and found the number to be 132, which means even if all 15 were invalidated, Diedrich would have met the minimum requirement to be on the ballot.

City Attorney Denis Fitzgibbons said the election statutes outline the percentage of signatures needed by candidates based on the number of votes cast in the last election. In the case of a mayoral race, that percentage – 5 percent – is based on the number of votes cast for mayor in the last election, but originally the city put the number at 5 percent of the total votes cast in the election.