Fun and games at the CuyCo Board of Elections
I’ve been an occasionally interested onlooker at some of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections meetings this year. In the beginning of the year we had the issue of the former Board’s removal (and subsequent replacement) at the behest of Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, and more recently we had the convoluted appointment of Jane Platten as the new Director (replacing the much-maligned, but vastly better qualified Michael Vu).
And now…
A try to railroad candidates who filed non-partisan petitions to be removed from the Rocky River Court’s ballot. A few weeks back it was the attempt engineered by county Republican job accumulator Rob Frost through a “ghost” protester to have long-serving Democrat (though due to the usually non-partisan nature of judicial races) Judge Maureen Gravens removed from the ballot (because as is customary she filed as a non-partisan candidate) - fortunately for Gravens the protest was thrown out. Then today an attempt on the part of another “ghost” protester to have numerous non-partisan filers removed from the Clerk’s race in the same district. As in the case of Gravens, these candidates filed as non-partisans and were being challenged because of their usual party affiliations, and as with the Gravens’ protest, it failed.
The underlying cause of all of this relates back to the aforementioned job accumulator sending a letter in mid-January to then Director Vu advising him that Frost’s interpretation of election law indcated that the Courts’ races should be administered in a party primary fashion after always having been done in a General Election, non-partisan fashion in the past. Frost’s obvious intentions were to limit the field of competitors for GOP nominees, but instead following a ruling of the former board allowed anyone who filed 50 signatures to qualify for the fall ballot (hence the reason there are now six people on the ballot for Clerk).
Oops.
Who are the other candidates? I checked the BOE’s website, and all it had was a link to last fall’s general election candidates. Thanks.
Isn’t nice how the BOE’s site is so up to date?
Clerk’s Race:
Debbie Comery
Jeanne Gallagher
John Sweeney
Kristine George
Sheila McGinty Delay
Maureen Sweeney
Judge’s Race:
Brian Hagen
Maureen Gravens
[…] So said Phil Collins back in the day when Sussudio was something that we thought made sense. But just like Sussudio was just gibberish leading nowhere, so is the current state of the local CuyCo GOP leadership and today Ralph King has hit it on the head. Here’s an excerpt from today’s worthy post talking about a fundraising appeal sent out for Bay Village tax raiser Debbie Sutherland by local finance chair Dick Pogue (insert “guy who covers payroll when the job accumulator can’t raise the dough”) and his comments that the party wants her to seek higher office: If Mr. Pogue feels the need to publicly speak for our party he should have written a letter to the PD stating how many in our party also wanted us to take a stance against the forced sales tax increase. […]
Kristine George has informed the Board of Elections she has withdrawn from the Clerk of Courts race.
Maureen Sweeney has put out her first fall feel good about her family mailer. It mentions no issues or no problems with the Court funding or operations. A tsunamai wave of damages may be building from a class action lawsuit alleging that the Rocky River Municipal Court double or triple or quadruple charged defendants for court costs in criminal and traffic cases. They were charged per violation rather than per case for the same incident. The Lingo case when it is decided could be a big burden on the tax payer.