To apply to the 2004 elections, the plan must be approved before the Jan 21 candidate filing deadline.
A Republican consultant who has worked for both Mr. Schwarzenegger and Mr. Riordan (and who thus demanded anonymity) likened the past week, since state elections officials certified the recall election and set the Aug. 9 candidate filing deadline, to baseball spring training.
The candidate filing deadline isn't until March 9.
Parks was a registered Republican until shortly before the candidate filing deadline in March.
On the day of the candidate filing deadline, when her papers to run for the seat were submitted, Sanchez was on a trip in Hawaii, according to her Facebook page.
While the DCCC had recruited her early on, she agreed to run in April, just days before the candidate filing deadline ― a time when the local Democratic Party committees had already coalesced behind Balter, 41.
The candidates' filing deadline for the primary is May 10.
"My staff and I were standing in my kitchen and afraid to open a bottle of Champagne because we were afraid someone made a mistake," Ms. Tauscher said of the day the candidates' filing deadline passed.
But then, as if in a scene from a movie, a messenger arrived this week at the Democratic Party headquarters in Austin less than an hour before the candidates' filing deadline and delivered a political stunner: Dan Morales, the former state attorney general who had long talked of running for the United States Senate, was instead filing for governor.
Democrats say they hope the excitement surrounding the presidential primaries will help them enlist capable candidates, but filing deadlines have passed in some states and are fast approaching in others.
But the judges stopped short of selecting a new date, asking lawyers with the state Democratic and Republican Parties to outline new candidate filing periods and other deadlines using May 29 as a tentative date.
