Herbert Hoffman

Justice Souter: U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter has jurisdiction over the Hoffman case.Herb Hoffman, an independent hoping to run for U.S. Senate, claims his First Amendment rights were violated when the Maine Supreme Court ruled against him last month, removing him from the November ballot.

It’s not certain if the Court will hear the case, however Justice David Souter has acknowledged the petition and has requested several briefs in response to the petition that were filed today.

Souter oversees emergency petitions from this region.

The Hoffman petition could be considered in two stages, one contingent on the other.

The Maine Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the Democratic Party and will take Herb Hoffman, an independent Senate candidate, off the November ballot.

The Democrats, who are hoping to knock off Republican Sen. Susan Collins with Rep. Tom Allen, argued unsuccessfully that Hoffman's campaign did not gather enough valid signatures to make the ballot.

The court wrote in its decision:

We conclude that the plain language of the statute requires that each of the three petitions be stricken in their entirety, and, thus, we must vacate the judgment of the Superior Court affirming the Secretary's determination that the three petitions were valid.

A.J. Higgins of MPBN has this scoop about two Maine Democratic Party State Committee members were ousted from their posts earlier this week for supporting independent candidate Herb Hoffman.

Executive Director Arden Manning told Higgins that it was a conflict of interest for David Bright and Lu Bauer to sit on the committee while supporting an opposition candidate. Issues may arise, he said, while sitting in on leadership meetings where strategy could be discussed.

Bright disagreed about his access to information about private strategies.

“This is not an isolated incident,” Bright said. Bright is a delegate to the Democratic National Convention for Barack Obama.

For more information, including a quote from the Republican Party, check out the MPBN story here.

Independent U.S. Senate candidate Herb Hoffman would have gladly attended the town hall meetings proposed by Democratic candidate Tom Allen, his campaign said today.

Allen had proposed four meetings in Maine’s smaller communities to talk about issues in this election. Collins declined, citing a full campaign schedule.

When asked about Hoffman, Allen’s Spokeswoman Carol Andrews told PolitickerME Tuesday, “We are running against Susan Collins so we invited her.”

An e-mail from the Hoffman campaign read:

The Maine Democratic Party will appeal to the state Supreme Court in its case against the Secretary of State's office over the inclusion of Herbert Hoffman on the November ballot in the U.S. Senate race.

A group of activists in Southern Maine is threatening legal action after they say they were kept out of a district water trustee’s board meeting Wednesday.

About 100 people gathered in Kennebunk to protest a contract that would allow Nestle Waters to purchase 432,000 gallons of water in a number of Southern Maine communities. The contract would last 30 years with an option to renew for 25 years.

The trustees were supposed to discuss a contract Wednesday afternoon that would have allowed Nestle access to resources in Kennebunk, Kennebunkport, Ogunquit and Wells. Kennebunk town officials suggested they hold the meeting at town hall – a larger facility – but instead the trustees remained in their usual meeting place down the street with seating for about 20.

With activists banging on the windows shouting “let us in” and “this is not what democracy looks like,” the trustees voted to table the issue for a month.

According to a press release from the Hoffman campaign, the Democrats have filed a last minute challenge to the signatures turned in by Mr. Hoffman.  A successful challenge would prevent him from obtaining ballot status for the US Senate race in Maine.

Mr. Hoffman describes the charges as frivolous and is confident that he will be on the ballot. Mr. Hoffman notes that, "Among the petitions Knutson wants voided, for instance, were those with 157 signatures collected one day from individuals who lived in 20 different towns."    While that might sound odd, it's called "standing in front of Shaw's" and I have no doubt that Mr. Hoffman is standing on solid ground with that one.

2008 is proving to be a whacky election year in Maine, and it doesn’t look like things are going to change. 

Apparently, Ms. Dobson and her peasant skirt posse have taken a liking to the confines of the lobby of the Portland office of Senator Collins