DATE: Wednesday, June 11, 1997              TAG: 9706110427

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   70 lines

PETITIONS SNAFU ENDS EX-JUDGE'S CANDIDACY AFTER ONLY 3 HOURS

It may be the briefest candidacy in history.

At 2 p.m. Tuesday, former judge Luther C. Edmonds became a candidate for the state House of Delegates. That's when he filed candidate petitions.

By 5 p.m., Edmonds was off the ballot because of fatal flaws in those petitions.

The reason: Edmonds moved into the 90th House District too late to circulate his own petitions.

That means the expected grudge match between veteran Del. William P. Robinson Jr., Norfolk's local judge-maker, and Edmonds, the Norfolk judge who resigned last year while under investigation for misconduct, is off.

It happened like this:

On April 24, Edmonds announced he would run against Robinson, a former friend and patron who had become Edmonds' biggest critic.

But Edmonds didn't live in Robinson's district.

For years, Edmonds has lived in Larrymore Lawns, off Little Creek Road. He listed his residence there as his home address just last year in a form he filed in Richmond when he was still a judge. That address is in the 87th House District, represented by Del. Thelma Drake.

To challenge Robinson, Edmonds had to move into Robinson's district.

On May 29, Edmonds filed a change of address with the Norfolk election office. He said he had moved on May 25 to a new address on Poplar Hall Drive in the Poplar Halls neighborhood, near Military Circle shopping center. It is in Robinson's 90th House District.

Trouble is, the voter registration books had closed on May 12 - two weeks before Edmonds' move.

Meanwhile, Edmonds was circulating petitions to become a candidate. He got 193 signatures, far more than the 125 signatures of registered voters in the district that are needed to become a candidate.

Edmonds filed his petitions in the Norfolk election office at 2 p.m. Tuesday.

The problem was not the length of Edmonds' residency in the district. No law requires a candidate to live in a district for a certain time before he is eligible to run. It is enough to be a registered voter in the district on Election Day.

Rather, the problem was in the petitions. By law, they must be circulated by a registered voter in the district. And Edmonds was not a registered voter in the 90th House District when he circulated his petitions.

Edmonds had personally circulated most of the petitions. He signed them at the bottom. A few others were circulated by someone else, a woman who is a registered voter in the 90th House District.

On Tuesday afternoon, the state Board of Elections was consulted. It ruled that the petitions circulated by Edmonds personally were invalid. That was around 5 p.m.

``Right now he is not qualified to be a candidate,'' Norfolk Registrar Ann Washington said at 6 p.m. Edmonds still had until 7 p.m. to find someone else - a registered voter in the district - to circulate new petitions for him and file them in the Norfolk office.

When 7 p.m. came and went, Edmonds was off the ballot.

``Mr. Edmonds has not appeared, and it's three minutes after 7, so he will not be certified as a candidate,'' Washington said.

That means Robinson will be unopposed for his fifth straight re-election. In fact, Robinson has never faced a serious challenge in nine elections. He has held his House of Delegates seat since 1981, and his father held it for 11 years before that.

Edmonds could not be reached for comment Tuesday night. He did not return calls that were placed to either his new residence or his old one. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

Luther Edmonds KEYWORDS: HOUSE OF DELEGATES RACE ELECTION NORFOLK

PRIMARY ELECTIONS PETITIONS

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