Mayor Jones now has an opponent on November ballot

After months of legal challenging, a judge has ruled that Michael K. Ryan Jr. has earned enough signatures to put him on the November ballot.

September 13, 2012; 1:32 PM • by Nathan Cushing

Mayor Dwight Jones will not run unopposed after all. On Monday, a Richmond Circuit Court Judge ordered the city’s voter registrar to place Michael K. Ryan, Jr. on the ballot. The decision comes after Ryan’s legal representatives spent three months arguing in court that their client had accumulated the necessary 500 signatures of registered voters needed to run.

City registrar J. Kirk Showalter had previously deemed several of Ryan’s signatures as inadequate. Showalter argued that voter addresses did not match his office’s verification, signatories had not updated their voter registration after being requested to do so, among other concerns, voiding his ability to run for mayor. However, Richmond Circuit Court Judge Melvin R. Hughes, Jr. has ruled that those signatures cannot be discounted by the registrar, allowing Ryan’s name to appear on the ballot in November.