Jacque Patterson, one of the leading contenders for a District of Columbia’s Board of Education race, recently dropped out. He was unable to continue because of the number of invalid signatures on his candidate petitions.
Jacque Patterson was ruled ineligible in the race for the D.C. Board of Education. (Courtesy Photo)
Patterson, the advisory neighborhood commissioner for district 8B07 in Ward 8 and the co-founder of the Rocketship Charter School located in the ward’s Woodland Terrace neighborhood, suspended his campaign for the at-large seat on the D.C. State Board of Education. “I am no longer a candidate,” Patterson told the AFRO.
Patterson was challenging incumbent Mary Lord. In turn, Lord used the D.C. Board of Elections process for challenging Patterson’s petition signatures. “The process is pretty clear,” Lord told the AFRO. “You need 1,000 valid signatures to get on the ballot. Any candidate should really get double that number to make sure that you get on the ballot.”
Lord said she pulled all of her competitors’ petitions and had her team go over the signatures thoroughly. She said her team noted that Patterson turned in 66 sheets of signatures and knew right then that Patterson had problems.
“He had about 1,200 signatures and that is nowhere what he needed,” she said, saying that Patterson had a thin cushion or margin of error in terms of valid signatures. Lord said her team discovered hundreds of invalid signatures with incorrect addresses and residents from Maryland, Connecticut and Pennsylvania signing the Patterson petition.
“After we discovered Jacque’s invalid signatures, we followed the process,” Lord said.
As a result of the challenge and the elections board investigation, Patterson was ruled off the ballot by the board because of questionable signatures. Lord said she was merely following the process.
While Patterson won’t be on the general election ballot, he has other options. “It is true that Mr. Patterson will not be on the ballot but he is free to run as a write-in candidate,” a spokeswoman for the board of elections told the AFRO. There are no general requirements to be a write-in candidate from the elections board but if a candidate wages a campaign with a staff and engages in fundraising, they must register with the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance.
The most successful write-in candidacy in the District’s history was D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams’s re-election effort in 2002. Williams was disqualified for the Democratic primary ballot by the elections board that year because of irregularities in his petitions. As a result, the Williams re-election team initiated the write-in effort that had him win the Democratic and Republican primaries.
However, Patterson has decided not to pursue that route.”I will not wage a write-in candidacy,” he said.
Patterson, a former president of the Ward 8 Democrats and a former candidate for the Ward 8 council seat in 2012, didn’t disclose whom he will support in the at-large Board of Education race but inferred it won’t be Lord. However, one former opponent is actively seeking Patterson’s support. “We will reach out to him for his support,” Tony Donaldson Jr., told the AFRO. “We haven’t scheduled a meeting with him at this time but we will do so.”