SOUTH COUNTY : Democrat Ineligible to Run for Congress
The only Democratic candidate who filed to run against Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad) was declared ineligible Tuesday because he did not submit enough signatures with his application.
George E. Hollis, an optical engineer, submitted the $1,207 filing fee by the deadline last Friday, but he was nine signatures short of the number required to qualify for the race.
The registrar’s office said Hollis had 31 valid signatures and the application requires 40. To be valid, the signatures must be from voters registered within the district and in the same party as the candidate.
On Tuesday, the Orange County registrar’s office completed an audit of the applications it received on the Friday deadline. There were no other applications for county, state or federal office that were invalidated.
Hollis was unavailable for comment Tuesday.
Packard’s district includes San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente in Orange County as well as most of northern San Diego County. Besides Packard, there are two minor party candidates in the race.
Packard, 59, was first elected in 1982 as a write-in. In 1988, he beat Democrat Howard Greenebaum 72% to 26%.
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