Mike Zickar’s recent letter attacking judicial candidate Corey Speweik is wrong.
On the eve of the 2020 primary election, Republican Secretary of State Frank Larose coordinated a lawsuit against himself; hoping that one Columbus judge would change the primary deadline for all candidates and voters across Ohio.
The judge assigned to the case, Democrat Richard Frye, swiftly rejected this. Yet secretary LaRose said he was going to cancel voting on the last day of the primary anyway. Because he lacks this power, the ensuing chaos caused massive uncertainty. Different county boards tweeted different things. Were polls going to open? Is there a new primary deadline? Or would Ohioans who hadn’t voted yet be disenfranchised? A Buckeye version of Bush v Gore was brewing.
My law firm represented Corey with the aim of ending the confusion. The result almost didn’t matter as long as we got a statewide decree from the Supreme Court of Ohio. This required us to sue LaRose and, for purely technical reasons, the local board of elections. Contrary to Mr. Zickar’s letter, we never said “in a brief to the court” that it was a “so-called pandemic.” We never even filed a brief. Here’s why. After our complaint, Dr. Amy Acton issued an order that effectively suspended the primary election. This provided the statewide uniformity sought and so we made no more filings in the case. We never minimized a pandemic. In truth, our complaint said that the spread was known since 2019. The problem was that the Ohio legislature didn’t change the primary date and thus secretary LaRose couldn’t unilaterally cancel or suspend it at the eleventh hour—just as Judge Frye held.
The Ohio Democratic Party then filed its own lawsuit averring that LaRose was outside his power in ordering a three-month extension. We filed a friend-of-the-court brief in that case and then worked with legislators to set a new primary schedule ensuring robust voting without a shifting deadline favoring wealthy candidates. Lawmakers agreed. And the Supreme Court then adopted Corey’s argument in Ohio Democratic Party v. LaRose.
Corey played a part in bringing a principled resolution to a looming electoral crisis even though he was in the middle of his own hotly-contested primary, which he won.
Andy Mayle
Perrysburg.
