Mom will run for state House in place of disqualified candidate

12/20/2005

Conrad deFiebre,
Star Tribune
Last update: December 20, 2005 at 1:49 PM

The mother of a state House candidate who was disqualified from a special election next week in St. Cloud stepped forward today to replace her daughter, but questions remained over whether she would be put on the ballot.

Mary Catherine (Kay) Ek, 71, longtime director of the Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Cloud’s Office of Natural Family Planning, has Republican backing in the election next Tuesday, state GOP chair Ron Carey said in a morning news conference.

She takes the place of Republican nominee Sue Ek, whom the state Supreme Court ordered off the ballot on Monday on grounds that she had not established residency in St. Cloud by a constitutional deadline. The only other candidate to succeed former Rep. Joe Opatz, DFL-St. Cloud, is DFLer Larry Haws.

Early today, Carey delivered election filing papers for Kay Ek to the office of Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer.

Early in the afternoon, the office of Attorney General Mike Hatch gave an opinion to Kiffmeyer that no replacement candidate could be put on the ballot. Kiffmeyer’s office was studying the opinion but did not make an immediate comment.

State law makes no provision for replacing a candidate ordered off an election ballot by court action. It says only that a replacement can be named when a vacancy is caused by the death or serious illness of a nominee, or by a candidate’s withdrawal during a period that has passed for this election.

If Kay Ek’s name is not placed on the ballot, she still could run a write-in campaign.

Like her daughter, she has not previously sought election, although both have been active in Republican politics and Catholic reproductive issues. Kay Ek said she was a GOP state convention delegate in the 1980s and has previously declined requests that she run for office.

A Republican Party news release described her as “pro-life, pro-marriage amendment, fiscal conservative.”