Denied candidate to take case to court

LIMA — A Hardin County man will go to court to try and get his name placed on the statewide Republican primary for attorney general.

Steve Christopher, founder of the Hardin County Tea Party and a Findlay attorney, wants to run against Ohio Republican Party-endorsed candidate Mike DeWine this May. This week the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office denied his candidacy because of a lack of required signatures.

Christopher contends he submitted 2,750 signatures and the Secretary of State’s Office lost nearly 2,000 of them. Office spokesman Jeff Ortega said Christopher submitted 788 signatures, of which 638 were valid; 1,000 valid signatures are required to be on the ballot.

The Christopher campaign is far from folded. It has secured an elections law attorney and will soon file in court an action to have his name added to the primary ballot while it makes its case, campaign spokesman Mark Lucas said Wednesday.

Responding to Christopher in a news release, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner denied that any parts of his petition were lost or mishandled and asked Christopher to produce copies of his petitions.

Lucas said now that the campaign has retained an attorney, it can no longer communicate with Brunner and her staff and will file the copies in court.

Christopher filed his petitions in Columbus Feb. 18 and included on a receipt given back to him 2,750 signatures filed.

That number is a “purported” number, Ortega said. While office employees number each page of a petition, they don’t count signatures at the counter in front of someone filing.

“We rely on candidates to have a good idea of the number of signatures they are filing, and out of respect for their busy schedule, we don’t delay them with our own count at filing, especially when the filing is made near the deadline, and there are a number of candidates who may yet have to file,” said David Farrell, director of elections for the secretary of state.

Lucas said employees should count signatures at the time of filing and if they did, Christopher would have no issue now.