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Partisanship or Protecting the Public Interest?

By Sibley Arnebeck
Posted on Thu Apr 05, 2007 at 01:04:31 PM EST

Intrigue builds as the latest in the Brunner vs Bennett story unfolds.  After the third member of the Cuyahoga Board of Elections, Sally Florkiewicz, a Republican, resigned last week, Robert Bennett, chairman of the BOE, and also chair of the Ohio Republican Party, is the lone holdout, refusing to step down as Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has requested.

In further defiance Bennett filed suit against Brunner for violating his constitutional rights and saying that her accusations against the board are vague.  Friday's Cleveland Plain Dealer further states that the suit argues the definition of misfeasance and nonfeasance are not clear in Ohio law, that Brunner cannot remove Bennett for actions that happened before she took office, and that she wanted to remove him because he supported her opponent in the 2006 election.

Monday, SOS Brunner placed the Cuyahoga County BOE under administrative oversight "because it is without enough members to muster a quorum required to conduct business."

Tuesday, in another bold move, Brunner suspended Bennett, saying that he violated board policy recently by requesting that the board extend a contract with public-relations executive David Hopcraft, and that Bennett was going around board policy and other board member's objections.  Wednesday's Plain Dealer article also states, "Bennett charged that Brunner `is ratcheting up this war pretty good - stayed tuned'."

Wednesday's Columbus Dispatch reports, "Responding to Bennett's accusation that she trying to take over the Cuyahoga County board, Brunner said she is motivated by a desire to improve trust in Ohio elections, not politics."

Breaking News!! In a hearing this morning, Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge John A. Connor denied Bennett's request for a restraining order to stop Monday's hearing in Cuyahoga County on Brunner's original complaint.
"`It looks constitutional to me,' the judge said of the law in question." According to Attorney General Marc Dann, who represented the SOS, the law "allows a secretary of state to `summarily' remove elections board members for just cause."

Bennett still holds that Brunner is trying to control the heavily Democratic county to influence the 2008 presidential election.  

Is SOS Brunner acting as a partisan, or does she just want to do her job to protect the public interest from the many irregularities that existed in the previous two elections under former SOS Blackwell's control?


Tags: Ohio, In the States, Jennifer Brunner, Robert Bennett, Cuyahoga County Board of Elections (all tags)


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Partisanship or Protecting the Public Interest? :: 2 Comments

Common Cause on the attack against Republicans

It always amazes me, to see how biased CC is. The far majority of attacks, are against Republicans. Yet, they continue to call themselves unbiased even when people are aware of the bias. For example in the book: The Facts On File Dictionary of American Politics, author Kathleen Thompson Hill says on page 53, under the section on Common Cause:

Common Cause: a liberal public and political watchdog organization founded in 1970 by John Gardner......Common Cause has had great influence on legislation and cabinet appointments during Democratic administrations...

by OldPuebloKid on Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 02:33:55 AM EST


There's only one thing we care about

And that's the public interest.  We support issues, not parties - the party or politician in agreement with us on the issue is our ally, whether they're Democrat or Republican.  If more Democrats support our issues than Republicans, that's not our fault.

And I wish people would look back to history a little before accusing us of only attacking Republicans - when Democrats are in power, historically Common Cause has been hard on Democrats, just as we're hard on Republicans when they're in power.  During the Clinton administration, we were quite unliked among many Democratic politicians.

by Kirstin Ellison on Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 09:39:02 AM EST
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