The Trib provides an update.
Rep. Blake Farenthold
So how did the Texas Republican Party manage to remove Farenthold from the primary ballot?
The short answer is that they violated the election code, according to state officials. But the Texas Secretary of State’s office has no authority to force someone to include a name on a primary ballot.
The day after Farenthold announced his intention to retire, the Texas GOP sued the secretary of state to keep him off the ballot, citing its constitutional right to freedom of association. Dickey said the party has contended it has a right to not be forced to associate with a candidate who no longer wants to run.
Days later, a lawyer for the state, Esteban Soto, emphasized that the secretary of state has no authority to force the party to turn over Farenthold’s name as part of its list of all primary candidates. That argument led Texas GOP attorney Chris Gober to move to drop the lawsuit which opened an avenue for the party — in Gober’s telling — “not to submit Blake Farenthold’s name and the secretary of state not to do anything about it.”
[…]
“At this point, [Farenthold’s] name is off the ballot, but after all the litigation went through, it’s important to understand there are situations in which another voter or a potential candidate could file suit to put his name back on the ballot, or force his name back on the ballot,” Sam Taylor, a spokesman for the Texas Secretary of State’s office, said.
Taylor said the state GOP party’s decision doesn’t set a legal precedent, however, because a judge hasn’t ruled to change the state’s election law.
“They can choose to violate the election code, but that doesn’t mean they’re absolved of any type of potential legal challenges,” Taylor said.
Gober also acknowledged the party’s decision could draw additional legal scrutiny.
“It’s certainly a possibility, but those are legal proceedings that would play out in time with presumably a plaintiff, a defendant and people with the ability to enforce that, whereas the secretary of state’s office has made the assertion they do not,” Gober said.
Taylor said that if no one with legal standing challenges it before Jan. 19, then Farenthold’s name will remain off the ballot.
See here and here for the background. Someone with standing would be one of the other candidates or a voter in CD27. The strategic reason for a Democrat to force the issue is that if Farenthold winds up winning the primary, he either has to commit to running in November or withdraw from the ballot and cede the seat to the Democratic nominee (modulo a write-in campaign effort for a different Republican). The practical reason is simply that the Republican Party violated the law when it removed Farenthold from the primary ballot, and the only mechanism to enforce it is via lawsuit. That as I said should be something for the Lege to address in 2019, but it’s moot for these purposes. It sends a bad message to let the Republican Party get away with this – and let’s be clear, it could be the Democratic Party next time; if it’s this easy to deal with a problem candidate, why not make it standard practice? – so I hope someone with standing comes forward to be the plaintiff. There’s less than two weeks to get this resolved, so let’s get a move on.
A voter almost certainly would not have standing to sue in this situation. I’m not sure even a candidate would in this situation, actually.