Local to run as write-in candidate

Molly Shore

Matt Lemcke’s run for governor appeared to end Wednesday when he

learned that he had been disqualified from appearing on the ballot in

the Oct. 7 recall election.

But the 22-year-old Burbank resident isn’t quite ready to give up

yet. Lemcke said Thursday that he will continue to campaign and ask

his friends and followers to vote for him as a write-in candidate.

“I don’t want to give up so easily,” Lemcke said. “A lot of people

were saying, ‘Get out there and give it your best,’ and I don’t want

to let them down.”

During a conference with his campaign team, Lemcke, a Cal State

Northridge film student, said several options were discussed,

including going to court or just giving up.

“I said, ‘All joking aside, maybe I should just try to run as a

write-in,’ ” he said.

With mere weeks to conduct a campaign, Lemcke is not wasting time.

He plans to stump on the Venice Beach boardwalk, where he hopes to

encourage young people to vote.

On Wednesday, the Secretary of State’s office qualified 135

candidates for the Oct. 7 ballot in the historic election to recall

Gov. Gray Davis. Of the 247 candidates who filed papers by Aug. 9

with county clerks around the state, Lemcke was one of the 112 who

were disqualified because of incomplete documentation or insufficient

nominating signatures.

Lemcke said he was disqualified because several of the signatures

the Democrat obtained were from registered Republicans. Liz Kanter, a

spokeswoman with the Secretary of State’s office, said Lemcke didn’t

have “enough nominating signatures.”

Since pulling papers to run for governor in the recall election,

Lemcke had been swept up into a whirlwind of activity. He was

interviewed Tuesday by ABC network correspondent Brian Rooney, and

made a brief appearance the day before on “NBC Nightly News with Tom

Brokaw.”

“I just happened to be on the [“NBC Nightly News”] when I showed

up at the Registrar’s office,” Lemcke said.

When he appeared on the NBC newscast, his grandfather, who lives

in the Eastern time zone, called to say that he saw his grandson.

That gave Lemcke’s mother time to tape the segment when it aired

three hours later on the West Coast. In addition to taping his TV

appearances, Linda Lemcke said she is saving all of her son’s press

clippings.

“Matt is a very unique person,” she said. “He’s such an incredibly

passionate person, a young man of convictions. That makes me proud as

his mother.”

Meanwhile, Chad Pennington, a second Burbank resident who pulled

papers for the recall election, said he failed to turn in his papers

by the Aug. 9 deadline.