After Ney: Ohio GOP Race May Also Get Tied Up in Courts

Who knew the Jack Abramoff scandal would provide such a bruising tutorial in election law?

Yesterday, Tom DeLay and the Texas Republicans finally lost their bid to replace his name on the ballot – they had attempted to declare him as ineligible because of his move to Virginia. But now Ohio Republicans seem ready to try a clever scheme of their own. And the Democrats seem ready to challenge it again.

Bob Ney hasn’t officially dropped out of his reelection race yet – to do that, he’d need to file his notice of withdrawal with Tuscarawas County in Ohio. Doing so would trigger a special election to replace Ney. But Chuck Miller of the Board of Elections there just told me they still hadn’t received anything.

Here’s a possible reason why. If Ney and the Republicans were to wait until August 19th, according to Ohio election law, they would then have a four day window during which the county Republicans could directly replace Ney with their hand-picked candidate.

When the AP called Ney’s office to ask whether they were contemplating this, they were told that Ney “was not available for comment.”

Ohio Democratic Party spokesman Brian Rothenberg told The Washington Times that their lawyers were “looking into” challenging the Republicans’ efforts to replace Ney on the ballot.

Oh, and there’s another wrinkle to the race. Ney’s handpicked candidate, state Sen. Joy Padgett, may be disqualifed from running by what’s called the “Sore Loser” statute in Ohio law. Candidates are prohibited from running in a general election if they’ve lost a primary election that year. Padgett ran and lost for lietenant governor this year; a spokesman for Ohio’s Secretary of State says that the office is researching whether Padgett would indeed be disqualified. If the state doesn’t automatically disqualify her, Democrats are making noises that they’ll try themselves.