By Kate Stockrahm

With days left before April’s filing deadline, the field of Flint City Council candidates is already thinning.

According to the Genesee County Clerk’s unofficial candidate list, three potential Flint City Council candidates – Skeetter D. Holmes of the First Ward, Beverly Biggs-Leavy of the Third Ward, and incumbent Fourth Ward Councilwoman Judy Priestley – have been disqualified from appearing on the Aug. 4 primary ballot.

County Clerk-Register Domonique Clemons confirmed to East Village Magazine (EVM) on Friday that Mr. Holmes was disqualified for not being registered to vote in Flint for at least a year prior to the coming filing deadline — a requirement of Flint’s city charter. But both Ms. Biggs-Leavy and Councilwoman Priestley were disqualified for a different reason: providing a false statement regarding their campaign finance compliance.

Clemons told EVM that the candidate’s filing process is more involved than simply picking up a petition and gathering some signatures, and in the cases of both Ms. Biggs-Leavy and Councilwoman Priestley “they got their process swapped around.”

Clemons explained that candidates need to file their petitions with at least 75 valid signatures along with something called an “Affidavit of Identity,” a document that includes a section of attestations around prior candidacy, campaign finances, and citizenship.

Both the candidate’s petitions and affidavit are submitted to the Flint City Clerk’s Office at once, and the City Clerk then sends the affidavit to the County Clerk for review and filing.

Importantly, that affidavit includes an attestation noting that “…all statements, reports, late filing fees and fines required of me or any candidate committee organized to support my election under the Michigan Campaign Finance Act have been filed or paid” at the date of signature.

“So both Judy Priestley and Beverly Biggs-Leavy were removed because when they submitted everything and signed and dated the affidavit … they both still owed outstanding campaign finance fines and reports,” Clemons said.

The County Clerk confirmed that both women did end up paying their outstanding fines within days or weeks of filing their initial affidavits, but the disqualifying action was already done.

According to Flint City Clerk Davina Donahue’s notice to the candidates following county review of the affidavits, “your certification was inaccurate,” and therefore she “must disqualify any candidate who provides a false statement regarding campaign finance compliance” per Michigan Administrative Code.

Councilwoman Priestley told EVM she was “heartbroken” over her misstep, as she “loves serving the Fourth Ward” and wants to continue to do so. 

Priestley told EVM that she’d thought she just had to ensure her campaign finances were in order by the upcoming April 21 filing deadline. She spoke candidly about avoiding dealing with that piece of her filing because she finds the campaign finance reporting process less straightforward than her normal accounting work, and she knew it would take time and energy to sort out atop her regular council obligations.

“It was everything else in my life that was getting to me, and all I could think of is ‘get that one thing off my head, get one thing off my plate,’” she explained of turning in her petitions and affidavit before filing and paying her campaign finances. 

“I’m very confident in my signatures. If I had waited, I would have been fine,” she said. “But, I didn’t. My mistake, my error. I buy it, I pay for it.”

Priestley said that while there seemed to be some legal gray area around withdrawing and filing everything again – new petitions, new affidavit – to try to get her name back on the ballot in August, she isn’t going to pursue that route without certainty that it will be viewed as valid.

“So, I’m running a write-in campaign,” she said. “I’m not going to be on the ballot. I’m okay with that.”

Priestley said she planned on making a formal announcement of her write-in campaign in the coming days, and she believes her track record for Fourth Ward residents will help her get re-elected despite her disqualification – which she says she’s learned from.

“I think I have served this city and the Fourth Ward very well,” she said. “I understand that not all and everybody likes what I do, and I understand that sometimes I don’t like what I do. Sometimes you have to go along with something to get something you want, and that’s just politics. That’s not only politics, but it’s life, you know?”

Biggs-Leavy did not respond to EVM’s request for comment by press time, nor did Flint City Clerk Davina Donahue.

Given the recent disqualifications, the remaining candidates currently on the County Clerk’s unofficial list in the affected wards are: Debra J. Coleman, Dione M. Freeman, Cynthia Haynes, Arthur Woodson in the First Ward; current First Ward Councilman Leon El-Alamin and Paradise Williams in the Third Ward; and Ramie Yelle in the Fourth Ward.

The filing deadline for Flint City Council and mayoral candidates is Tuesday, April 21 at 4 p.m.