{"id":238426,"date":"2026-03-27T01:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T01:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/238426\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T01:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T01:23:07","slug":"green-party-candidate-wont-be-on-the-ballot-for-california-governor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/238426\/","title":{"rendered":"Green Party candidate won\u2019t be on the ballot for California governor"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Yue Stella Yu<\/a>, CalMatters<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"""\"
\n\t\t\t\tElection workers sort through ballots at the Sacramento County Registrar of Voters in Sacramento on June 7, 2022. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

A Sacramento judge on Thursday rejected a Green Party candidate\u2019s lawsuit against California Secretary of State Shirley Weber\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Rudolph \u201cButch\u201d Ware, an associate professor of history at UC Santa Barbara who wants to be governor, argued that Weber\u2019s office inappropriately disqualified him even after he filed the necessary tax documents. He also claimed the 2019 state law requiring gubernatorial candidates\u00a0 to submit five years of tax returns to qualify for the ballot is unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

Ware said that while he tried to meet the March 6 filing deadline, he received \u201ccontradictory and confusing messages\u201d from Weber\u2019s office asking him repeatedly to correct \u201cdeficiencies,\u201d such as mismatched returns and inappropriately redacted names. That, he said, led him to believe that Weber was \u201carbitrarily establishing thresholds \u2026 to meet and hurdles to jump\u201d to disqualify him.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Weber\u2019s office refuted his claims, arguing Ware\u2019s 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\u2019s claim Thursday, saying the secretary of state clearly demonstrated its attempt to work with Ware to correct his filings.<\/p>\n

Ware deemed the ruling a conspiracy by the \u201cDemocratic establishment\u201d to keep him off the ballot. He said he would appeal the ruling and file a separate federal suit against Weber.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will be on that ballot,\u201d he said. \u201cIf 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201cdoes not have authority to add additional qualification requirements\u201d as it did in 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Weber\u2019s office argues that state lawmakers have the power to apply \u201creasonable\u201d 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\u2019s argument and said the law is presumed to be constitutional unless unconstitutionality is \u201cclearly\u201d and \u201cunmistakenly\u201d present.<\/p>\n

The California Supreme Court in 2019 struck down<\/a> a previous part of the law that would have compelled presidential candidates \u2014 including President Donald Trump \u2014 to release tax returns, which Democrats contended would help inform voters. <\/p>\n

But judges ruled that requirement unconstitutional due to concerns that it could allow state lawmakers to mandate other disclosures the California Constitution doesn\u2019t explicitly require.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Yue Stella Yu, CalMatters Election workers sort through ballots at the Sacramento County Registrar of Voters in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,76068,97876],"class_list":["post-238426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-governor-race-2026","tag-votingmatters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}