Iowa Libertarian candidates’ names will not appear on the ballot for the Iowa gubernatorial and 3rd District elections, a Polk County judge decided Thursday.
Polk County District Court Judge Joseph Seidlin ruled the Libertarian Party of Iowa did not correctly conduct their replacement nomination process as outlined by Iowa law when the party nominated Charles Aldrich as lieutenant governor candidate and Jake Heard as 3rd Congressional District candidate at a party meeting earlier in August. In order for the Libertarian candidate for governor, Nicholas Gluba, to appear on the ballot, the party must also have a candidate for lieutenant governor on the ballot.
Aldrich and Heard were filling the spots of former lieutenant governor candidate Jules Cutler and 3rd District candidate Marco Battaglia. Both of those original candidates were removed by the State Objections Panel in June.
The panel found Battaglia did not qualify for the ballot because the name he used for the ballot differed too much from his legal name, Mark T. Anderson; Cutler, who was on the ticket alongside Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Gluba, did not qualify because she did not submit an affidavit of candidacy for lieutenant governor by the June 2 deadline. Both candidates challenged these decisions, but in a July ruling, a Polk County District Court judge upheld the panel’s decision.
After this court decision, Battaglia ended his campaign due to a medical emergency, and Cutler announced she was withdrawing as a lieutenant governor candidate. The Libertarian Party of Iowa’s State Central Committee went on to nominate Heard and Aldrich as their replacements — but Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate said Libertarians did not meet the time limit laid out in the Code of Iowa to file their vacancy protocol in order to make substitutions.
Libertarians argued the party did not need to follow this protocol because the vacancy filling process outlined in Iowa Code automatically applies if there is not enough time before an election to hold a party convention. Pate said this process does not automatically apply for Libertarian candidates because they were nominated by petition, not by convention, to appear on the 2026 ballot.
Seidlin wrote in the ruling that Pate’s interpretation of the Code of Iowa was correct.
“The court takes no joy in this holding as it concerns the LPI [Libertarian Party of Iowa] or the voters of Iowa,” Seidlin wrote. “The Iowa Supreme Court has made clear, however, that election laws governing candidate qualification for the ballot require strict compliance … Iowa election law, specifically chapter 44, provided both the opportunity and the roadmap for the LPI and these Petitioners to be on the ballot. They had to follow that roadmap. They failed to do so.”
The Libertarian Party of Iowa did not reply to a request for comment on the ruling. The Des Moines Register reported that Chair Stephanie Berlin said the party is reviewing the decision with their attorneys to “determine the next step.”
Robin Opsahl is a reporter covering the state Legislature and politics for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.
