BROOKINGS – District 7 Democratic candidates for the state House of Representatives Dwight “Bill” Adamson and Zachary Kovach will continue to campaign as normal until told otherwise, following a challenge being filed in court regarding their petitions.

Independent District 7 House candidate Cory Ann Ellis filed an affidavit in Sixth Circuit Court in Hughes County at the start of May. A court date has yet to be set.

Ellis said that she filed the affidavit because she believes the petitions of Adamson and Kovach to be invalid. One of the chief issues at play is that Spence Hawley, the same notary whose license was found invalid in the successful challenge to District 7 Senate candidate Mary Perpich’s petition, also served as the notary for Adamson and Kovach.

Ellis also alleges that enough of the signatures on Adamson’s and Kovach’s petitions were invalid to disqualify them from the ballot.

Given that Ellis wanted to take action beyond five days of the petitions’ submission, she said her only available option was to file suit in the Sixth Circuit Court in Hughes County against the South Dakota Secretary of State’s office.

Deputy Secretary of State Kea Warne confirmed that they’ve been served the papers but has declined to comment on an ongoing lawsuit.

“I’m simply going through the process that is allotted to me through our South Dakota Codified Law, and that’s what we’re working on right now,” Ellis said. “I just want to make sure we have valid candidates on our ballot. … It’s no offense to anybody. This isn’t anything against any of the candidates or the secretary of state. The secretary of state has followed their rules according to SDCL, and they have followed their rules. This just happens to be the only way for me to challenge it or anybody else for that matter. Any citizen could have gone through this process.”

Current House Minority Leader Hawley confirmed that he was the notary for Perpich, Adamson and Kovach. Notaries are issued a notary bond from a bonding company every six years, which have to be filed with the secretary of state’s office to obtain their notary license. Hawley believes he’s been a notary for as long as 40 years.

“I thought it had been renewed,” Hawley explained. “I had the notary bond, and I thought it had been filed for the notary license, and, evidently, it hadn’t.”

He said that it was as much a surprise to him as the candidates and was apologetic for the situation.

“It’s terrible,” Hawley said. “It’s an unfortunate incident that shouldn’t have happened.”

Perpich, the chairwoman of the Brookings County Democratic Party and now an Independent candidate for the District 7 Senate race after she filed new petitions, said that the current plan for Adamson’s and Kovach’s campaigns is to continue as normal until they hear otherwise.

“If the challenge is successful, at this point, I’m not sure what our options are because we’ve just been focusing on getting through this and it not being successful. So, we haven’t thought about what options we might have,” Perpich said, adding that since it is a circuit court case, results could be a ways away yet.

“We have no reason to believe that we’re not going to be in the race, and we’re just campaigning as we would have without this,” she added, with the candidates planning to attend the state convention scheduled in the middle of June. 

“I don’t think the supporters should be overly concerned with this,” Perpich added. “These things happen all the time, and I expect that we will find that our candidates will be OK in the end after the decision is made. They will survive this challenge and as a result, we are just going to go ahead and campaign as usual.”

Also competing for the two District 7 seats in the state House of Representatives are Republicans Tim Reed and Doug Post.

Contact Eric Sandbulte at esandbulte@brookingsregister.com.