Santorum will make Illinois primary ballot, says state co-chairman

Rick Santorum will make it on Illinois’s March 20 primary ballot, according to Al Salvi, the honorary co-chairman of his Illinois campaign.

Santorum’s supporters have been scrambling to gather the number of signatures necessary to make the ballot — a minimum of 3,000 is required, and they plan to file the maximum 5,000.

{mosads}There had been some question about whether Santorum would be able to get enough signatures in every congressional district, but Salvi said they had more than enough and would submit them before Friday’s 5 p.m. Central Time deadline.

“Everyone worked really hard this week, and we have way over the maximum — it turned out to be a tremendous success,” said Salvi, who attended the same Chicago-area Catholic high school as Santorum and became friends with him when Santorum helped on Salvi’s 1996 Senate run, which he lost to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). “We also have a full slate of delegates in 15 of 18 congressional districts; the only three we don’t are in the inner city of Chicago.”

Santorum will not have a full delegate slate in three inner-city congressional districts, meaning he’s limited in the number of delegates he can win in the state. Illinois’s primary is a two-step process that involves a non-binding vote for a candidate and then a binding vote for that candidate’s delegates, which Salvi described as the “beauty contest and the delegate vote.”

“In three of the districts nobody knew Santorum back a few months ago when we had to file the delegate slates, but I think all the candidates except Romney aren’t going file in all 18,” said Salvi.

Rick Perry and Mitt Romney have already submitted the necessary signatures, while Newt Gingrich was still scrambling to get enough.