Is the Secretary of State Brunner Doing it Again?

The following email was received from Tom Zawistowski who is the executive director of the Portage County Tea Party. Steve Christopher who is running for the Attorney General for the State of Ohio had sent in approximately 2750 signatures were submitted and certified turned in, however the Secretary of States office said only 788 signatures were turned in. Could the Secretary of State once again be playing shenanigans and trying to keep people out of the race?

The Ohio Free Press is also investigating the possibility of the same voter disqualifications with other candidates and the same possible situation…stay tuned.

Download the Smoking Gun PDF here.

My fellow conservative leaders, I write to you today to ask you and your membership to join me and my members in defending our movement against the most serious assault on our rights that we have seen to date.  What is happening with the Steve Christopher Campaign for Attorney General demands IMMEDIATE action by all of us.  We need our members to start calling newspapers, radio stations and TV stations around the state and demand that they start investigating this story.  Our members need to do what we did for Scott Brown in Massachusetts and go to Steve website (www.SteveChristopher.org) TODAY and donate to help his campaign. Here is why:

On Thursday, February 18, 2010, Steve Christopher hand delivered 2,700 signatures to the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office, that were gathered by our members in 40 different counties to get him on the ballot against Mike DeWine in the Republican Primary. Attached you will find a PDF copy of the signed, dated and time stamped “Candidate Financial Disclosure Form Acknowledgement” which clearly states that a Brian Shinn, Chief Elections Counsel, received the filing of approximately 2,750 signatures. Last Friday, March 5th, 2010, Christopher’s campaign started receiving phone calls and emails requesting comment that the Secretary of State’s Office disqualified his petitions for failure to obtain enough valid signatures. Apparently, the Secretary of State’s Office issued a press release containing work logs which showed that Steve Christopher had only submitted 788 total signatures, of which 638 were found to be valid.  Since a total of 1,000 signatures were required to be placed on the ballot, Christopher’s petitions were disqualified. On Monday, March 8, 2010, confirmation was made with the Secretary of State’s Office that they released the information and that they claim to have only 788 total signatures for Steve Christopher. They are implying that Steve Christopher submitted 788 signatures for a position that required 1,000 total signatures. Obviously, no one would take the time to drive to Columbus and submit less signatures than they needed to get on the ballot.

We have copies of ALL the signature petitions. We have a signed receipt. Volunteers from all over Ohio spent the weekend going over every signature one-by-one and confirmed that 80%+ of the signatures are valid. By that yardstick, Steve Christopher turned in at least DOUBLE the number of signatures needed!!!  The people of of Ohio have followed the law and done what is required to put Steve Christopher on the ballot in the primary election and we are being denied the right to vote for the candidate we chose.  We can not allow this to happen.

This is not the first time that Jennifer Brunner, the Ohio Secretary of State, has had problems running her office.  Clearly, the petitions were delivered and they either lost them, or for political reasons someone in her office destroyed or otherwise got rid of 1,962 petitions signed by the citizens of Ohio.  State Senator Tim Grendell is calling for an investigation, which we think is appropriate.  Brunner is either simply incompetent or, worse yet, is allowing someone in her office to break the law.  Either way, we need to get to the bottom of this. What is unbelievable is that Brunner wants to be our next US Senator.

Let me make clear about what is happening and why we need to act TODAY.  On a conference call with Steve Christopher this morning, Steve pointed out that groups were starting to cancel speaking engagements because “he was no longer a candidate”, people who were going to endorse his candidacy are not holding back those endorsements.  Steve then told us that the lawyer he had to hire in Columbus with the expertise in these matters is going to cost a minimum of $10,000.

So the question we have to ask ourselves and our members, is will we allow this to happen in our state?  Will we allow this to happen to US?  Steve Christopher stepped up and agreed to run against Mike DeWine because we were all angry about how Kevin DeWine got David Yost to move to the Auditors race so Mike DeWine could run unopposed.  We, our members, got 3,000 signatures for Steve in less than seven days!! Now we are going to let the incompetence of the Secretary of State take him out of the election and just let it default to DeWine??  I don’t think so.  That is not what Patriots do when faced with adversity. It is our Constitutional Right to put the people we want on the ballot and that RIGHT shall not be denied.

TODAY, we need to get this travesty on the radar of our local and state media. We are also trying to get Fox News and other national and regional talk shows to cover it.  I am asking you to put out the word to have your members call all the media outlets in your area today. Then have them go to Steve’s website and donate.  If we don’t fund the legal fight, we lose.  If we fight the fight I assure you we will win, because we are right and we have the law on our side.  Our goal is to raise a minimum of $10,000 by Friday.  I will keep you posted on how we are doing.  It is time to get to work.  We will win this fight and I promise you that we will put the fear of God into the Ohio Republican Party when Steve Christopher defeats Mike DeWine in the Primary.

Best Regards,

Tom Zawistowski
Executive Director
Portage County TEA Party
4682 State Route 4
Kent, OH 44240