Cong. OH-15th: GOP Seeks to Remove Morrison (I) From Ballot
Trying to prevent incumbent Rep. Deborah Pryce (R) from losing votes to a challenger on the right, GOP officials from three counties are trying to have ultra-conservative independent candidate Charles Morrison II (pictured) removed from the ballot, as reported in the Columbus Dispatch here: Charles R. Morrison II, who ran unsuccessfully against Pryce in GOP primaries in 2002 and 2004, filed to run as an independent this year against the incumbent and Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy.Morrison filed plenty of valid signatures by the May 1 deadline, but the GOP contends that he has affirmed his GOP party affiliation by circulating petitions to run for the GOP state central committee and for a county GOP central committee at the same time that he was collecting signatures for his independent candidacy.
He can’t do it, Republicans contend, because he’s one of them.
Ohio law defines independent candidates as those who claim no party affiliation, and Morrison voted in the Republican primary one day after filing his nomination papers on May 1.
"Charles Morrison was, is and remains a Republican," said Franklin County GOP Chairman Doug Preisse, who filed the protest along with his counterparts in Madison and Union counties.
The campaign of Franklin County Commissioner Mary Jo Kilroy (D) has issued a statement calling this a sign that Pryce is running scared:
This is a desperate attempt by Deborah Pryce and Ohio Republicans to shield voters from Deborah Pryce's record of fiscal irresponsibility and record spending. It looks like the 'little deficit hole' has turned into a big political problem for Deborah Pryce with her conservative base, and she knows it.
posted by Jeff @ 4:17 PM
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3 Comments:
Well, that's just ridiculous. That would be the same as saying that Jennifer Martinez Atzberger, had she garnered enough signatures to run as an Independent, would, by that action, disqualify herself from voting as a Democrat in the Democratic primary. That's ludicrous, yes?
The R's are probably right about this, and I'd do the same thing if I was them. The circualting of the petitions is irrelevant if they werent filed, voting in the R primary makes him an R, end of story. I mean how stupid can he be, file as an I then turn around and vote as an r the next day.
Well- I'd like to push this a bit further - it's a great topic for an MTB roundtable btw ;).
Why does this bother us? I mean, it really says more about the candidate than anything else. So long as such shenanigans is transparent (and with bloggers around, it's getting harder all the time to hide stuff like that), voters can know and be left to make of it what they want. Do they think he's just making a ploy? Do they CARE if it's just a ploy? Or is there something actually wrong with what he's done? If you say it's wrong, why - what about it is really "wrong"? The lines around the parties and being an Independent are all fabricated anyway and less and less meaningful. I just don't know if it's such a crisis for him to have done this. Stupid? Nonsensical? Sure, maybe. But wrong? I don't know. Says who?
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