Jennifer Brunner

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Jennifer Brunner
Ohio Secretary of State
Incumbent
Assumed office
2006
Current term ends
2010
Political party Democrat
Website Official Ohio Secretary of State website

Contents

Jennifer Lee Brunner (born February 5, 1957) is the current Democratic Secretary of State of Ohio. She announced in February 2009 that she was officially entering the race for the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by retiring Republican Senator George Voinovich[1]. Brunner is challenging Ohio Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher for the Democratic nomination[2].

Education

  • Graduated from Whetstone High School in Clintonville, Ohio
  • Bachelor's degree, Miami University (1978) in sociology-gerontology, cum laude
  • Juris Doctorate degree, Capital University Law School (1982) with honors

Professional experience

Shortly after graduation, Brunner worked in the office of Ohio Secretary of State under Sherrod Brown as a deputy director and legislative counsel to the Ohio General Assembly from 1983 to 1987. Within this role, she was responsible for working with state legislators on finance-reporting laws for campaign committees and laws for election procedures.

She started her own private practice, specializing in election law and campaign finance, operating it from 1988 to 2000.

Ballot Issues

  • In 1988, she represented Pamela L. Yako who filed a complaint fearing "her husband, Richard, maintenance director of Blossom Music Center, and other Blossom employees might lose their jobs if neighbors opposing liquor sales at Blossom are successful."[3]
  • In 1989, Brunner represented Daniel Slane who bought property converted from residential to commercial zoning. He was fighting neighborhood residents, outraged at the city council's action, who organized a referendum drive and collected enough valid signatures to put the issue to a citywide vote that November.[4]
  • In 1990, she represented a group called Ohioans Against Casino Gambling who disputed the wording of a ballot measure on 'games of chances'.

Officials and organizations

Brunner's law firm did not cater to ballot issues exclusively, however. During her tenure as an attorney, she represented a variety of governmental officials and political organizations throughout the state of Ohio, including:

  • The Ohio Pesticide Applicators for Responsible Regulation when in 1988 the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency [OEPA] held hearings about testing Ohio water supplies for pesticides that were not against federal regulations. On the behalf of the defense, Brunner argued “they [the OEPA] support water testing, but oppose enforcement until more is known about the health hazards.”[5]
  • Bar owners in both Hamilton and Franklin counties who took on legislation that infringed on the rights of bars to serve alcohol in glass containers. The case in Franklin County, which challenged petition signatures, was dismissed, but the defendants in the Hamilton County case were granted a stay that allowed their case to be heard before the certified results were received by the state’s liquor control commission.
  • Ohio House of Representatives member C.J. Prentiss whose position on the ballot in the May 1994 primary was challenged due to what some claimed to be fraudulent nominating petitions.[6]
  • House Rep. Charleta Tavares when her petition signatures were challenged during her candidacy to replace J. Kenneth Blackwell as Ohio Secretary of State.[7],
  • Representatives of the United Auto Workers, Ohio AFL-CIO and Ohio Education Association who argued that "some of the 42 proposed rules" in Senate Bill 8, championed and implemented under Secretary of State Bob Taft, "overstep the intent of the legislation while others leave huge loopholes."[8]
  • Franklin County Democratic Party Chairman Dennis White who in 1996 was accused by former party treasurer Henry J. Schutte of issuing a false statement during Schutte's unsuccessful campaign for re-election to the Reynoldsburg Ward 4 central committee seat.[9]
  • The Save the Doves Committee, an animal rights group that attempted to ban the hunting of mourning doves in Ohio via a ballot initiative. They were fighting a challenge mounted by the pro-hunting group Ohioans for Wildlife Conservation that claimed the petition was not valid because signers were not provided with the proper information before adding their names to the list.[10] Even though the issue was allowed to appear on the ballot, it was roundly defeated by a ratio of 3:2 on election night.
  • Pro-gambling interests in an off-track betting ballot issue who appealed to the Stark County Board of Elections to allow the voters the chance to decide whether or not to allow a county-wide referendum against off-track betting[11]
  • Two judges, Deborah P. O’Neill and Elizabeth Burick, who were charged with misconduct during the 1998 elections.

Political career

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In 2000, Brunner was elected to an unexpired term on the Franklin County Common Pleas Court and was re-elected to the position two years later.

She resigned from the Court in September 2005 in order to run for Secretary of State of Ohio. The race between Brunner and her Republican opponent, Greg Hartmann, involved a lot of frivolous mudslinging. An anonymous packet of documents was sent out to all of the Ohio state media outlets alleging ‘misconduct’ on the part of Hartmann, citing that while attending Washington and Lee University he received tickets for speeding and for carrying an open container of alcohol in addition to a noise violation in 1987 for blaring music on his record player. Later, Brunner’s attorney and husband, Rick Brunner, alleged that Hartmann's campaign commissioned a poll that asked how voters felt if should it be revealed that while Brunner was working in the Secretary of State's office in the 1980s, LSD was being sold out of the office. Hartmann disputed the claim and Jennifer Brunner denied the story.[12] In the end, it didn’t affect the race, as Brunner was able to beat Hartmann by fifteen percent. She officially took office in January 2007.

During both the 2000 and 2004 presidential election cycles, the state of Ohio was marred in Election Day problems. In an effort to bolster public confidence, Brunner ordered a $1.8 million study to be conducted by SysTest Labs of Denver, in conjunction with professors and graduate students from Cleveland State; Pennsylvania State; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and the University of Pennsylvania, to focus on short-term corrections and safeguards during the March 2008 primaries.[13] Brunner reported that study discovered major flaws in all five voting systems used throughout the state. As a result, she called for replacing all of the state’s voting machines, including the controversial touch-screen ones used in more than fifty of Ohio’s eighty-eight counties, with optical scan machines that would read and electronically record paper ballots filled out manually by voters.[14]

In January, Brunner proposed a plan that would allow counties to recruit poll workers by mail, who would then undertake two paid training days, and work a paid eight-hour shift at the polls on election day.[15] Brunner explained the plan in an interview:
"In terms of Ohio and what happened in the 2004 presidential election, there has been a crisis in confidence in our election system in Ohio, both nationally and in our state. One of the quickest ways to repair that is to make sure that we have adequate numbers of poll workers. ... We suggested this as one tool that the boards of elections would have available to them for recruiting poll workers. We would be looking to do this similar to how we recruit jurors, only jurors are recruited for two weeks of service whereas we'd only be asking for three days. It would also allow us to offer split shifts to poll workers. In Ohio the polling places are open for thirteen hours, so essentially a poll worker works at least fourteen hours; with the average age of our poll workers at 72, that's a tough day for anyone, no matter what their age is. ... It's an option, and we can even include a trigger, so that a county has to be deficient by a certain percentage of poll workers to even be able to use this."[16]
In the initial proposal it was not yet decided what wages would be paid, and whether refusing recruitment would result in penalties. The proposal will be decided by the Ohio General Assembly.[15]

Controversies

Court of Common Pleas

Two controversies occurred during Brunner’s tenure on the Court of Common Pleas:

  • The first came after Brunner approved a $22 million settlement between Georgia-Pacific LLC and the six thousand residents of the county who suffered health problems or property damage resulting from the Sept. 10, 1997, explosion of an 8,500-gallon resin kettle at the company's Watkins Road plant. One thousand five hundred residents remained uncompensated a little over a year after the agreement was approved.[17]
  • The other stemmed from Brunner’s order to jail a lawyer named John W. Vogel, Jr., who was hired to represent a nineteen-year-old client charged with robbery and kidnapping, for contempt of court. Brunner said she removed Vogel from the case because the defendant’s family could no longer afford to pay him and “he was not on the list of court-appointed attorneys paid by the state to represent poor clients.”[18]

ACORN

See also: Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now

Karyn Gillette, development director for Project Vote, the voter registration arm of ACORN, was listed on Jennifer Brunner's 2006 campaign website as a consultant and "was paid $21,250" for her services.[19] Anita MonCrief, a former of employee of ACORN who testified in a Pennsylvania courtroom in October 2008, said that "in November 2007 Project Vote development director Karyn Gillette told her she had direct contact with the Obama campaign and had obtained their donor lists" and was later "given a spreadsheet to use in cultivating Obama donors who had maxed out on donations to the candidate, but who could contribute to voter registration efforts"[20]

HAVA violation

See also: Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002

In addition to Gillette, Brunner was given regular election strategy advice from members of Project Vote, including guidance on 'voter caging'. In regards to this issue, she published a directive saying "that Ohio voters must be afforded notice and due process before their right to vote is challenged, and that returned mail alone can not be used as a partisan tool to suppress the vote in this presidential election year"[21]. At the same time, however, she admitted that "there are ‘discrepancies’ on about 200,000 of the new registrations" in the state. Brunner's direct refusal to give state election officials the tools to combat voter registration fraud, Matthew Vadum wrote on the Capital Research Center Web site, stood in violation of "provisions of the Help America Vote Act."[22]

On October 2, 2008, the Ohio Supreme Court decided, unanimously, to order "Brunner to tell county boards of elections not to reject applications for absentee ballots because of an unmarked box next to a statement that the applicant is a qualified elector."[23] Seven days later, U.S. District Court Judge George C. Smith found that "Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner violated federal election laws by not taking adequate steps to validate the identity of newly registered voters."[24] The Supreme Court of the United States, however, threw out the case on a technicality, ruling "that Congress had likely not authorized private individuals or political parties to bring suit under the section of HAVA requiring voter registration verification through data-matching," choosing to flatly ignore the issue at hand.[25]

Dead registered voters

See also: Dead people voting

WEWS - News Channel 5 out of Cleveland, Ohio conducted an investigation of the voter registration rolls in Cuyahoga County and found nearly 13,000 dead voters. Despite reassurances by election officials in the county that the problem would be corrected, their second investigation two years later revealed that "thousands of dead voters [were] still on the rolls." The precise number of dead individuals registered as Ohio voters can not be placed due to a directive issued on behalf of Brunner's office to all state Boards of Elections ordering them to "withhold dates of births in public records requests."[26]

Secretary of State Project

See also: Secretary of State Project

The Center for Public Integrity reported in September 2008 that Brunner received a substantial donation of $167,000[27] from the Secretary of State Project, a below-the-radar 527 political organization whose purpose is to "wrestling control of the country from the Republican Party" through the process of "removing their political operatives from deciding who can vote and whose votes will count," namely the office of Secretary of State in many cases.[28]

Electoral history

2006

  • 2006 Race for Secretary of State - Democratic Primary
    • Jennifer Brunner ran unopposed
2006 Race for Secretary of State - General Election[29]
Candidates Percentage
Jennifer L. Brunner (D) 55%
Greg Hartmann (R) 40.45%
John A. Eastman (Non-Partisan) 2.48%
Timothy J. Kettler (Non-Partisan) 2.04%
Write Ins 0.03%
Total votes 3,823,354

Family life

Jennifer Brunner currently resides in Columbus, Ohio with her husband of twenty-eight years, Rick. They have three adult children together.

Awards

  • Profile in Courage Award from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum (1998)[30]

Contact Information

Ohio Secretary of State
180 East Broad Street
Columbus, OH 43215

(877) 767-6446 (SOS-OHIO) or local (614) 466-2655


External links

References

  1. ↑ Cleveland.com "Jennifer Brunner announces candidacy for U.S. Senate" 17 Feb. 2009
  2. ↑ Ohio Politics "Senate 2010: Brunner & Fisher Eye DC" 17 Feb. 2009
  3. ↑ Akron Beacon Journal "Blossom petitions protested" 8 Sept. 1988
  4. ↑ Columbus Dispatch "Petition's validity questioned" 13 Sept. 1989
  5. ↑ Columbus Dispatch "Expanded tests for pesticides in drinking water supported" 15 Jan. 1988
  6. ↑ Plain Dealer "Prentiss to stay on ballot, board rules" 6 April, 1994
  7. ↑ Columbus Dispatch "Tavares’ petition upheld by Taft – Democratic rival contested candidacy" 19 March, 1998
  8. ↑ Columbus Dispatch "Union groups rip Taft’s plan to implement campaign reform law" 23 Sept. 1995
  9. ↑ Columbus Dispatch "Elections commission drops Democrat's complaint" 17 May, 1996
  10. ↑ Akron Beacon Journal "Mourning dove issue may land on Nov. ballot petition drive faces one more legal hurdle" 21 July, 1998
  11. ↑ Plain Dealer, The "Track looks to harness ballot issue" 19 Sept. 1998
  12. ↑ Business First of Columbus "Secretary of State race turns acidic with anonymous dirty tricksters" 29 Sept. 2006
  13. ↑ New York Times "Ohio to Test Vote Systems Before March" 27 Sept. 2007
  14. ↑ New York Times "Ohio Elections Official Calls Machines Flawed" 15 Dec. 2007
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Ohio considers poll worker draft Associated Press and WSTM, Jan. 28, 2007
  16. ↑ Ohio Considers a Draft System for Poll Workers (Audio Interview) by Melissa Block, All Things Considered, National Public Radio, Jan. 30, 2007
  17. ↑ Columbus Dispatch "South Side residents still await payment" 24 Sept. 2002
  18. ↑ Columbus Dispatch "Attorney jailed for refusing to stop representing client" 7 April, 2005
  19. ↑ Thurber's Thoughts "Brunner's ties to ACORN run long and deep" 30 Oct. 2008
  20. ↑ Wall Street Journal "An Acorn Whistleblower Testifies in Court" 30 Oct. 2008
  21. ↑ Reuters "New Directive to Increase Protection for Ohio Voters From Partisan Voter Caging" 8 Sept. 2008
  22. ↑ News Max "Senate Candidate Brunner is ACORN Loyalist" 19 Feb. 2009
  23. ↑ Michelle Malkin "GOP wins court round against voter fraud-friendly Ohio Sec. of State" 2 Oct. 2008
  24. ↑ Michelle Malkin "Judge rules Ohio Secretary of State violated federal election law; plus ACORN victim on tape" 9 Oct. 2008
  25. ↑ Red County "SCOTUS Sides with Brunner -- Registration Verification Off Again" 21 Oct. 2008
  26. ↑ WEWS - News Channel 5 "Dead voters submit ballots from beyond" 31 Oct. 2008
  27. ↑ Center for Public Integrity: Paper Trial Blog "Election '08: Scoring Secretary of State Seats for Dems" 8 Sept. 2008
  28. ↑ American Spectator "SOS in Minnesota" 7 Nov. 2008
  29. ↑ Ohio Secretary of State - 2006 General Election Results
  30. ↑ NECN.com ""Jennifer Brunner receives Profile in Courage Award (acceptance speech video)" 12 May, 1998

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