Secretaries of state to debate call for making post nonpartisa

ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

Associated Press   12 January 2005

COLUMBUS, Ohio - States' top elections officials, accused of playing partisan politics, are hearing calls for changing the nature of their office.

Secretaries of state, at a meeting next month in Washington, D.C., will discuss whether it's appropriate for them to actively campaign for candidates whose elections they oversee.

The public must be assured "that we are not participating in any type of manipulation at that level," said Rebecca Vigil-Giron, New Mexico's secretary of state and president of the national group.

The ideas have been tossed around since Florida's disputed presidential election in 2000. The latest discussion was prompted by possible federal legislation seeking to ban campaigning by state elections officials, as well as calls for change by some editorial boards, said Meredith Imwalle, spokeswoman for the national secretaries of states group.

Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, an honorary Bush campaign co-chairman in the state that ultimately returned Bush to the White House, was criticized by Ohio Democrats and voter advocates, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP. All Ohio Republican officeholders were considered co-chairmen.

Blackwell drew new criticism last week with the revelation that he sent a letter to Republican donors thanking them for helping deliver Ohio for Bush.

Vigil-Giron, a Democrat, said she had stumped for Al Gore four years ago but felt better sitting out the campaign for Democrat John Kerry.

Secretaries of state are also chief elections officials in 39 states. All 50 identify with a political party, but some are appointed instead of elected. Several others also have been criticized for how they spend their free time:

In Arizona, the state Democratic Party called on Republican Secretary of State Jan Brewer to resign, criticizing her for her role as a Bush campaign co-chairman.

In California, state Sen. Jeff Denham, a Republican, has proposed a constitutional amendment to make the office nonpartisan following allegations that Democratic Secretary of State Kevin Shelley misspent federal election money. Messages seeking comment on the accusations were left for Shelley.

Georgia in 2001 banned secretaries of state from having any financial role in the campaign of a candidate whose election they would certify. And a bill that never made it out of an Ohio Senate committee last year would have prohibited the secretary of state from serving in federal, state and local campaigns.

Blackwell "pushed the envelope as hard as any secretary of state ever," said James Ruvolo, the Ohio chairman of the Kerry campaign.

"Once you are elected there is an expectation you will not be the leading partisan," Ruvolo said. "He shouldn't be the head cheerleader, and I think that's where he's gone wrong."

During the quashed congressional challenge of Ohio's electoral vote, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, pledged to introduce a bill banning state election officials from overseeing any national elections in which they've campaigned for one of the partisan candidates.

Jo Ann Davidson, the former Ohio House speaker recently nominated to be co-chairman of the Republican National Party, defended Blackwell.

"It was strictly honorary. He was invited to all the events in which the president was in, but he was not in the inside operational part of the campaign in any way, shape or form," she said.

Blackwell, a candidate for governor in 2006, dismisses the criticism as "cheap political talk."

He says people have already forgotten the victory he handed Democrats by ruling that independent candidate Ralph Nader was ineligible for the Ohio ballot, or his decision to bar all challengers from Ohio polls, including Republicans.

"At the end of the day, I'm a Republican elected official," Blackwell said. "I oversee a bipartisan system that has political appointees all the way through it. That's the brilliance of our system."

Two Democrats and two Republicans serve on each of Ohio's 88 county election boards.

Ohio U.S. Rep. Sherrod Brown, Democratic secretary of state in the 1980s, said he was involved in campaigns too but that times were different.

"I would have thought that Ken Blackwell would have learned from what happened with Katherine Harris, that you don't chair a campaign and also run an election," Brown said.

Republican Harris was serving as Florida's last elected secretary of state in 2000 when she was vilified for serving as Bush's campaign co-chair and for certifying the vote while Gore was still seeking recounts.

This year, Glenda Hood, filling the now-appointive post, avoided any campaign role yet still found herself the subject of numerous lawsuits over the administration of the Florida election. Gov. Jeb Bush, brother to the president, appointed Hood to the job, attracting some of the criticism.

Jim Pederson, Arizona Democratic Party chair, said it's too risky to have a partisan official overseeing an elections system, especially if a vote were close.

But state elections chief Jan Brewer said voters knew her party and her job description when they elected her.

"I count votes for Republicans, and I count votes for Democrats," Brewer said. "I count them fairly and honestly and would never fudge regardless of who was in the front and who was in the back."