Clearing the field

Thanks to Above Average Jane for pointing this out.

GOP disputes candidacy of Santorum challenger:

Initially, John Featherman appeared to make the cut, with 2,207 signatures. Then the Pennsylvania Department of State tossed 185 signatures.

Featherman, who has faced U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, R-Pa., in a general election before, is awaiting the results of a GOP leadership effort to get him off the ballot.
Scott Migli, executive director of the Republican State Committee, filed a petition in Commonwealth Court yesterday asking that 1,073 more signatures on Featherman's papers be ruled invalid. That would leave Featherman far short of the 2,000 he needs to run against Santorum.

The rules on nominating petitions are picky. For instance if your name is John Q. Public, jr. on the voter rolls and you sign the petition leaving off the Q or jr. the signature can be challenged.

Petitions can also be challenged in Commonwealth Court for a number of reasons, including signers who didn't include an address or wrote a postal address instead of a home town address, signers who aren't registered voters, those who represent a different political party from the candidate, or signers who don't live in the district.

The All Spin Zone has this take:

This comes just days after Rick Santorum so magnanimously invited Mr. Featherman to debate. My bet is that they knew all along that this challenge was coming, as Republican State Committee spokesman Jeff Mannion suggests, and that they also knew the Featherman campaign did not have much cushion. Think, think, think. The Santorum campaign has been consistent with these words, that Mr. Santorum "stands by his pledge to debate any primary opponent who qualifies to be on the ballot."...... As I mentioned just a few days ago, Santorum's magnanimous challenge to debate Featherman is simply cynical politics as usual.

Featherman is not the only one being challenged.

HARRISBURG — A total of 76 candidates in this year's state legislative races are being challenged in Commonwealth Court for faulty petition signatures, according to the state elections agency.