Judge rejects Green Party candidate’s bid to appear on California governor ballots

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A Sacramento judge on Thursday rejected a Green Party candidate’s lawsuit against California Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s office seeking to get on the June primary ballot for governor, concluding that he did not file the correct tax returns in time to qualify.

Rudolph “Butch” Ware, an associate professor of history at UC Santa Barbara who wants to be governor, argued that Weber’s office inappropriately disqualified him even after he filed the necessary tax documents. He also claimed the 2019 state law requiring gubernatorial candidates to submit five years of tax returns to qualify for the ballot is unconstitutional.

Ware said that while he tried to meet the March 6 filing deadline, he received “contradictory and confusing messages” from Weber’s office asking him repeatedly to correct “deficiencies,” such as mismatched returns and inappropriately redacted names. That, he said, led him to believe that Weber was “arbitrarily establishing thresholds … to meet and hurdles to jump” to disqualify him.

His attorneys argued in court Thursday that he fixed those errors, and there was a complete set of correct, matching tax returns for all five years among the various filings he submitted.

Weber’s office refuted his claims, arguing Ware’s paperwork contained multiple inconsistencies, including a missing business name, a partial date and missing values in certain fields. Sacramento Superior Court Judge James Arguelles denied Ware’s claim Thursday, saying the secretary of state clearly demonstrated its attempt to work with Ware to correct his filings.

Ware deemed the ruling a conspiracy by the “Democratic establishment” to keep him off the ballot. He said he would appeal the ruling and file a separate federal suit against Weber.

“We will be on that ballot,” he said. “If they continue the fraudulent, dirty tricks running cover and carrying water for a Democrat administration that is running scared, then we will beat them in a write-in vote.”

Ware is one of at least two candidates for governor this year challenging the tax requirement law. He argued in his court filing that the Legislature “does not have authority to add additional qualification requirements” as it did in 2019. 

Weber’s office argues that state lawmakers have the power to apply “reasonable” requirements for candidates to safeguard the electoral process. While Arguelles did not rule on the constitutionality of the law, he echoed the secretary of state’s argument and said the law is presumed to be constitutional unless unconstitutionality is “clearly” and “unmistakenly” present.

The California Supreme Court in 2019 struck down a previous part of the law that would have compelled presidential candidates — including President Donald Trump — to release tax returns, which Democrats contended would help inform voters.

But judges ruled that requirement unconstitutional due to concerns that it could allow state lawmakers to mandate other disclosures the California Constitution doesn’t explicitly require.