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A Republican state House candidate filed a motion to make sure the GOP primary isnt invalidated if the only Democrat in the race should be disqualified.

The motion, filed Thursday in Tallahassee by John Newstreet, president of the Kissimmee/Osceola Chamber of Commerce, and his attorney Wade Vose, seeks to make sure no substantive action is taken before Tuesdays Republican primary on a lawsuit claiming Democrat Paul Chandler cant legally run for office.

Newstreet is one of four Republican candidates, including Usha Jain, Bobby Olszewski and Bruno Portigliatti, facing off in a closed Republican primary for state House District 44. More than 3,000 people have already voted through early voting and vote by mail.

Only Republican voters can vote in the primary due to the presence of Chandler as a Democratic candidate. If there was no Democratic candidate, the Republican primary would have been open to all voters, Democratic, Republican and and independent.

But a lawsuit filed Tuesday by Charles Hart claims Chandler voted in Missouri in 2016 and does not fulfill the two-year residency requirement to run for office in Florida.

Wes Hodge, the Orange County Democratic chair, said he believed Chandler has been a resident since 2015 and would win the lawsuit. He also cited a state statute that would allow Democrats to replace Chandler on the ballot if there was a vacancy.

Newstreet, however, cited another section of the statute that states there is no vacancy and no way of naming a new candidate if a court finds a nominee did not properly qualify or did not meet the necessary qualifications to hold the office for which he or she sought to qualify.

He wrote he had concerns a sore loser in the GOP primary may try to argue that if Chandler is disqualified, and Democrats are not able to name a replacement, the closed primary results should be thrown out and an open primary held in its place.

Newstreet stated he welcomes confirmation by Hart, a longtime and well-recognized Republican activist, that he does not support, and affirmatively opposes any future attempts to retroactively invalidate the validly conducted Republican primary election scheduled to be concluded in only 5 days.

He also asked the court not to disenfranchise thousands of Central Florida Republican voters.

slemongello@orlandosentinel.com, 407-418-5920 or @stevelemongello

Lawsuit seeks to disqualify Democrat candidate in House race

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State House candidate: Don't invalidate GOP primary if Democrat is disqualified - Orlando Sentinel