A ruling
from a District Court in Ohio significantly diminishes the
chances of getting a Libertarian Party candidate on the ballot for
the 2014 governor’s race. Interestingly, however, District Judge
Michael H. Watson found it credible that both of the state’s
ruling parties had a hand in either propping up or bringing down
Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Charlie Earl. In his
decision, Watson wrote that it was “obvious” that the “dupe”
who challenged Earl’s petitions had been used by “operatives or
supporters of the Ohio Republican Party.” Unfortunately, that had
no bearing on the legal issue at hand.
If Earl gains ballot access, he will run against current
Republican Gov. John Kasich and Democrat Ed Fitzgerald in
November—a situation which many find likely to work out in
Fitzgerald’s favor. A situation which seems to have Ohio Democrats
working to get Earl on the ballot and Ohio Republicans
working to keep him off it.
As of now, he’s off: Ohio Secretary of State John Husted ruled
in early March that Earl was ineligible due to invalid collection
of petition sigantures (for more about the particulars,
see my post here yesterday). The Libertarian Party of Ohio
(LPO) responded by seeking a stay of Husted’s ruling in District
Court. District Judge Watson
denied the LPO’s request late Wednesday.
Requiring petition circulators to either be of the same party as
a candidate or disclose their employer places “only a minimal
burden on political speech,” wrote Watson. Yet the disclosures “are
substantially related to Ohio’s significant interest in deterring
and detecting fraud in the candidate petition process.”
Though Judge Watson found Earl’s dismissal from the ballot
legally sound, he didn’t buy that the state GOP had nothing to do
with it. Confirming what LPO Communication Director Aaron
Harris told me about Gregory Felsoci, the “clueless” Akron
man challenging Earl’s petition, Judge Watson called him a
“guileless dupe” whose testimony showed he had no idea what he was
doing.
“His testimony demonstrates that he lacks even a basic
understanding of the nature of the protest he agreed to sign.
Felsoci repeatedly referred to the misdeed that motivated him to
protest (Earl’s) petitions as the LPO’s gathering of “votes”
without disclosing those who gathered them were being paid to do
so. His decision to act as a protester came about after a
Republican friend, John Musca, showed him an unidentified document
which Musca claimed to have found at a local coffee shop. Felsoci
could not as much as accurately describe the nature of the document
Musca showed him and was at an utter loss to explain why he
believed the truth of the assertions the document contained. He
said he believed it because he read it.”
Judge Watson also noted that “the Ohio Democratic Party, or its
operatives or supporters, provided assistance to (the LPO) in their
efforts to gather petition signatures.”
The LPO is making an emergency appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court
of Appeals for the temporary injunction. “While we respect Judge
Watson’s decision to deny our request for a temporary restraining
order against Husted’s decision, we feel that he may be wrong in
this instance,” said
LPO attorney Mark Brown in a statement.
Earl himself, however, has a different (and kind of awesome)
take on it. From The Columbus
Dispatch:
“On the common sense issues I think we should have won,” Earl
said tonight. “But, in another sense as a Libertarian, I would
rather have the judge strictly follow the law now and forever more
so we know exactly what the playing field is going on.”
The LPO is pursing a separate case concerning Libertarian
attorney general candidate Steve Linnabary, whose petitions were
also disqualified by the Secretary of State. The LPO is challenging
the judgement
in the Ohio Supreme Court on the grounds that the person who
filed the protest to Linnabary’s petition was not a member of the
Libertarian Party, as required.
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