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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > March > 11
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Editorial: Husted’s intentions not all that count
State Sen. Jon Husted, allegedly of Kettering, is not going to get kicked out of the Ohio Senate if Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner decides he might not really live there and, thus, might not be eligible to vote locally.
Once someone is elected, the Senate, under the state constitution, has wide latitude to decide whom to seat. Should someone complain about Sen. Husted’s residency, the Republican-dominated group would be easily persuaded that voters in a large portion of Montgomery County overwhelmingly elected him and that is that — regardless of where he sleeps.
Democratic Secretary Brunner, however, is required by law to break a tie vote by the Montgomery County Board of Elections — which has two Democrats and two Republicans — to settle the matter of whether he really lives in the community and, thus, is eligible to vote here and be a candidate again in the future.
(Briefs to Secretary Brunner were due just this week.)
She is in a ticklish spot. Sen. Husted is widely expected to run for secretary of state next year. Though Secretary Brunner has said she’s running to replace George Voinovich in the U.S. Senate, if she changes her mind, she could face Sen. Husted.
Even if she isn’t his opponent, Secretary Brunner can create a political problem for a legislator who unquestionably has been an aggressive advocate for Dayton. He needs to be registered to vote some place, and here’s a guy who apparently wants to be the state’s chief elections officer, though he’s the subject of an investigation challenging whether he is properly registered in his legislative district.
This is not a problem a secretary of state candidate-in-waiting relishes. Sen. Husted is unsympathetic to the fact that the Montgomery County Board of Elections had no choice but to investigate his residency status once it got a formal complaint. The board simply doesn’t have the option of ignoring these sorts of allegations.
Though it happens rarely, the board does get reports about voters voting in the wrong place or not being eligible; sometimes fraud is involved.
That was the case last year during the presidential campaign, when ineligible individuals were registering to vote in the state, and non-residents were falsely saying they lived in Ohio in an attempt to run up the votes for Barack Obama here. Of course, that sort of abuse of the system is wholly different than the criticism of Sen. Husted. But nobody should want local elections officials deciding they’ll ignore some laws, but not others.
In response to Democratic board members’ questions of him, Sen. Husted has not gone out of his way to offer compelling evidence that he spends substantial time at 148 Sherbrooke Drive.
Rather, his defense pretty much is “to the extent he left Montgomery County temporarily,” he was doing so in his capacity as a “state employee” and that he intends to return to the county.
His intentions — which he says the board must consider by law — come up again and again in his brief to elections board members.
Sen. Husted is unlike many legislators in that he married a woman who lives in Columbus, and he has a child from a previous marriage who lives in Columbus. Moreover, when he was House speaker, that job required him to spend a lot of time outside of Dayton.
That said, there is this pesky law that aims to ensure that elected lawmakers have more than a fleeting association with the voters who elect them. It is not a ridiculous law, and Sen. Husted — notwithstanding his professed intentions — has yet to demonstrate that he has been meeting the spirit of its intentions.
The board of elections doesn’t get to consider the intentions of the people who made the complaint against him. That is personally and politically inconvenient for Sen. Husted, and, yes, there are other politicians who undoubtedly could be similarly challenged.
Some of them may be worrying because of Sen. Husted’s unhappy experience. Of course, they have the option of saying the law is too strict and trying to loosen it.
In the end, Secretary Brunner may not want to be too much of a stickler, for fear of seeming partisan; for sure, the Senate will cut Sen. Husted a break if it gets involved.
But the truth is the truth; Sen. Husted hasn’t really been living here even part-time, and he’s asking Secretary Brunner to read the law in absolutely the most favorable light for him, while ignoring much that undercuts his case.
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