The birther ploy failed Donald Trump in 2011, and it’s hitting a few snags in 2015, too. When Ted Cruz showed early promise in the Iowa polls in January, Trump wondered aloud whether Cruz was a viable presidential candidate in the first place, seeing as he was born in Canada and all. “I’d hate to see something like that get in his way,” Trump told the Washington Post at the time. “But a lot of people are talking about it and I know that even some states are looking at it very strongly, the fact that he was born in Canada and he has had a double passport.” Thanks to Trump’s sporting concern, cases were filed against Cruz in several states claiming he was ineligible to appear on the ballot. But now at least one of those cases — a petition filed to the Albany Supreme Court by New York residents Barry Korman and William Gallo — has been thrown out.
Korman and Gallo filed a suit against Cruz and the State Board of Elections in mid-February. They argued that, as Cruz was born in Calgary to an American mother and Cuban father, he’s not a “natural-born” citizen and should be stricken from the ballot for New York’s presidential primary on April 19. But the Board of Elections reportedly argued the suit was filed well after the deadline to raise objections, and acting state Supreme Court Justice David Weinstein agreed. “Despite the many arguments proffered by petitioners, none can get them around the immovable object standing in the way of this petition: their failure to have filed objections within the statutory deadline,” he wrote.
He went on to stress the lack of precedent in the Cruz birther case: “Moreover, were I to address the substantive question underlying this case and rest jurisdiction on a series of exceedingly thin legal reeds that have never been adopted by any court in this state, it would as likely create chaos and uncertainty as provide clarity.”
Most of the other cases against Cruz have been dismissed, but there’s always the chance Trump will sue Cruz himself, “just for fun.”
