SECOND JUDICIAL CIRCUIT—A sign on the doors and corridors of the Hamilton County courthouse alerted us this morning to something that we had NO idea was going on in the case of the challenge to Eric Dirnbeck’s judicial candidacy.
As it turned out, judge William Speroni, sitting in on the case on a conflict from the First Judicial Circuit, issued the order, but we kinda had to jump through hoops to find this out.
Here’s the short version:
Back in March, during the Primary, there was a heavily-contested race for the seat being vacated in the Second Circuit by Kyle Vantrease. All of the contenders were Democrat and no Republican emerged after the Primary, so the winner of the Primary was going to be judge.
During the Primary, it appeared candidate Kent Renshaw was going to emerge the victor. The vote was really split amongst five candidates, but Renshaw had a strong showing. Then, at the eleventh hour—LITERALLY—Dirnbeck was notified that there were some absentee ballots that were “found” in one of the precincts in Franklin County, and when he came toting those ballots in, 42 of them were miraculously for him, and he won the election. Or so he thought.
A few weeks later, Renshaw, with the detestable but capable (in matters like these) attorney Morris Lane Harvey in tow, filed a miscellaneous remedy case seeking reconsideration of the vote tally. The matter wasn’t able to be sorted out before the election; despite that, ballots were printed with Dirnbeck’s name on them, and people had the option to vote for him….a symbolic vote, as there still wasn’t a candidate. But since the Renshaw matter wasn’t resolved, as such, in the course of the MR case, it was determined that whatever votes cast for Dirnbeck on November 6 wouldn’t count, and that an election would be held after the matter was resolved in court. Which could take forever.
There were some misapprehensions about keeping this information off the election results. As one public official put it this morning, “those are the peoples‘ votes!” But it was ordered and entered into the record October 23, and there it stayed. WHY this wasn’t made widely public at that time is a mystery. If at that time the judge could have explained to the public that it was wise to keep the numbers out of the public eye because IF there were an overwhelming showing for Dirnbeck, it might sway any decision a judge or jury might make in the future of the MR case, it might have made such misapprehensions dissipate. But there wasn’t that. There was just a sign like the one above, posted at Hamilton County. Which, by the way, is the only place we’ve seen it so far. Results of Dirnbeck’s vote tally are on Wayne County’s unofficial results. A total of 4,866 votes of 7,731 ballots cast were entered for Dirnbeck there….and I’d imagine there are other counties where the number is made available. Pick up next week’s issue of Disclosure‘s print version to see if this is the case…and to keep up with the Franklin County MR case that could potentially bring us a new judicial candidate in the Second Circuit.