Marburger stays in race
Gordon Marburger will mount a write-in campaign against state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, a decision made only days after a state Supreme Court ruling kicked Marburger off the ballot.
Marburger said he’s “very disappointed” in the ruling but remained steadfast in his desire to represent the 12th District. Marburger was set for a ballot faceoff against the incumbent Metcalfe in the May 20 Republican primary.
He’s put too much time into campaigning to just give up, Marburger said, so now he’s turning his efforts to educating residents about how to vote for a write-in candidate.
“There’s nowhere else to go above the Supreme Court, so we have to live with the decision and move forward,” he said. “And that’s what we’re doing.”
The Supreme Court took Marburger off the ballot because he failed to file a statement of financial interest with the state Ethics Commission in time. A lower court had ruled Marburger could remain on the ballot, but the Supreme Court on Friday overturned that decision.
Marburger said he understands the diminished odds write-in candidates have of winning. However, he said he is different from regular write-in candidates, if only for the fact that he’s run a long and detailed campaign already.
“We’re looking at it different from a normal write-in campaign,” he said. “We’ve already had a campaign in place the whole time and I’ve run the whole gamut of what to do as a candidate. Now it’s just a matter of getting the message out about the write-in, and that’s what we’re concentrating on.”
The Supreme Court’s decision isn’t only giving headaches to Marburger and his campaign, however.
Shari Brewer, director of the Butler County Election Bureau, said she and her staff worked through the weekend to reprint ballots.
All of the ballots are printed in the election bureau, she said, which is nice because staffers there won’t have to wait for the state to reissue new ones.
Brewer said the county will foot the bill for the cost of reprinting, although she couldn’t say on Monday just how much it will total.
Brewer and her staff also worked through the weekend reprinting more than 140 absentee ballots that were sent out Thursday. She said her staff waited as long as possible for the Supreme Court’s decision but had to mail them Thursday to comply with state laws.
“The court ruled Friday so we had to return and do it all over again,” she said.
All in all, the ballot change made for a busy weekend, she said.
“It was a lot of work, a lot of reprinting,” she said. “We worked all weekend and we’re still working now.”
