Tomorrow Is The Qualifying Deadline

Tomorrow, March 1, is the qualifying deadline for 2011 elected offices excluding legislative races (which had their deadlines pushed backed to June 1 because of redistricting).

Included in tomorrow’s deadline is the eight statewide races along with the regional PSC and transportation offices (among others).

As we stand today, the story so far is the lack of candidates on the Democratic side. Even before candidates announced their intentions, I think most would have liked the Republicans chances to hold the seven statewide offices they currently occupy but I don’t know many who thought Democrats would fail to field candidates for five of those spots.

As of right now, there is not a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer, insurance commissioner and auditor.

Also, Democrats have candidates in two of the three PSC match ups (Brandon Presley in the north being an incumbent) and zero of the three transportation commissioner races. Interestingly, Presley doesn’t look to have a general election opponent in what is the only one of these 14 races where Republicans failed to come up with a candidate.

Should we expect a last minute surprise qualifier? I haven’t heard any serious names and it’s hard to take someone too serious getting in at this point.

Here’s our big board with confirmed and possible candidates. We will update this with a final list tomorrow.