Salon: Tamyra d'Ippolito will not qualify for Indiana senate race

Despite her claim to the contrary, War Room at Salon.com is reporting that Tamyra d'Ippolito has failed to obtain the required signatures to qualify to run for the U.S. Senate in Indiana:

It looks like the Democratic establishment finally caught a bit of a break Tuesday: Tamyra d'Ippolito has, apparently, not qualified for the ballot for the party's nomination for Senate in Indiana.

Petitions were due at noon Tuesday to qualify for the election for the Senate seat that Evan Bayh has suddenly decided he doesn't want anymore. d'Ippolito, who had been the only other Democrat running against Bayh, presented a potentially serious problem for the party: she had very few resources, very little experience and was unlikely to pose much of an obstacle to whichever Republican wins the GOP nomination. But if she had managed to qualify for the ballot, she would have been the Democratic nominee, since no one else would have made it into the primary.

In order to qualify, though, d'Ippolito needed to turn in petitions with valid signatures from 500 voters in each of the state's nine congressional districts. And in Marion County, the home of Indianapolis, which encompasses the entire 7th Congressional District, she turned in a grand total of two signatures.

"She fell 498 signatures short in the 7th Congressional District," Terry Burns, the Democratic member for the Marion County Board of Voter Registration, told Salon. "Since we have the entire 7th within our county, it's fair to say she fell way short." The county Board of Elections, where petitions could also have been turned in, received nothing from d'Ippolito at all Tuesday, according to Alex Bowscher, a clerk there.

If this is accurate, the Democratic party establishment will select the candidate to run in November.  The names of Rep. Brad Ellsworth and Rep. Baron Hill have emerged as possible choices.