By Zachary Gorchow
Executive Editor and Publisher
Posted: April 22, 2014 10:47 AM

4 p.m. today is the deadline for partisan candidates seeking nomination in August and election in November to file to run for office, and it is always a banner day on the political calendar, especially because there is usually a surprise of some sort.

Sometimes, the surprise is startling, but ultimately not that big a deal. In 2002, a knife-making business owner named Jim Moody unexpectedly emerged from nowhere and filed what he said were 17,000 signatures to run for governor as a Republican. His short-lived long-shot bid ended weeks later when the Department of State determined he failed to gather the minimum 15,000 valid signatures.

One of my favorite filing day gambits occurred in 2004. That year, former Rep. Lamar Lemmons III sought a House seat in Detroit. In a neighboring district, so did his father, Lamar Lemmons Jr. And in another neighboring district, so did his son, Lamar K. Lemmons. The two elder Lemmons both won, but the youngest lost in the Democratic primary.

Then there are the name game tricks. In 2010, someone named Zack Brandenburg filed to run as a Republican in a Macomb County Senate race where Jack Brandenburg already was running. Zack Brandenburg shockingly (sarcasm alert) went into hiding and could not be found to determine who put him up to the trick before finally withdrawing after the controversy built.

Had he remained on the ballot, possibly it would have helped Jack Brandenburg, who could have been given a ballot designation. Or possibly it would have hurt him if voters were confused and cast some votes for the interloper.

Sadly, Zack Brandenburg never returned my messages to find out why he filed. Thanks to the wonders of Facebook, I can tell you he remains in the music business as a guitarist for a band called Short on Shame.

But the biggest surprise of all I have seen by far was the 2012 bombshell in which then-Democratic Rep. Roy Schmidt, who had filed many weeks before the filing deadline for re-election, at the last minute filed as a Republican and withdrew his Democratic candidacy.

For the purposes of this blog, I won’t rehash in detail the aftermath that followed other than to recall how a family friend of Mr. Schmidt’s named Matt Mojzak filed as a Democrat about the same time in a bid to thwart Democrats from unseating Mr. Schmidt later that year, a gambit that turned into one of the biggest blunders in modern Michigan politics.

T-minus five hours and change to go. Grab yourself a bucket of popcorn, keep an eye on the filings and enjoy the fun.