A new legal opinion from the national law firm Thompson Hine says Ohio Republican Party (ORP) chairman candidate Bryan Williams and his supporters are correct to insist that new leadership elections must take place at their organization’s meeting, to be held on Friday, near Columbus.
Members of the ORP’s State Central Committee (SCC) will meet at the Nationwide Hotel and Conference Center in Lewis Center Friday morning for a party reorganization pursuant to the election of new members last month. A notice of the meeting, which members of the general public may attend, indicated, “business will include swearing in all qualified members.”
Williams and his allies contend that the agenda must include something more: elections for executive officers. Conservative and reform-minded SCC members, who outperformed moderates and status-quo backers in the August 2 special primary, largely back Williams, who presently serves as ORP’s vice chairman. Backed by the new legal assessment from Thompson Hine attorney Thomas Wyatt Palmer, they maintain that current Chairman Bob Paduchik, who is widely expected to seek re-election, cannot legitimately defer votes for new party leaders until next year.
Most critically, Paduchik’s critics argue, the ORP’s failure to elect a new executive team would breach a provision of the Ohio Revised Code which stipulates that “members-elect” of both major political party SCCs are to “meet following the declaration of [their election] results by the boards of elections … at a suitable place and time to be designated by the retiring chairman of the committee … .” The law calls for appointment of a “temporary chairman and secretary” to oversee election of officers including “chairman, vice-chairman treasurer [and] secretary … .”
According to Palmer, “members-elect” is a key term insofar as the ORP’s elected committeepersons will no longer be members-elect once they are sworn in. Therefore, he reasoned, they must vote on their leadership no later than Friday.
“You have asked whether the Republican State Central Committee … will violate Revised Code 3517.04 if the Committee does not elect new officers during its September 9, 2022 organizational meeting,” Palmer wrote to Williams. “The answer to the question is yes. Given that the declared business of the September 9 meeting includes swearing in all qualified members, the only time that an election of the Committee’s officers can occur and comply with the Revised Code is at that same meeting.”
Palmer also commented on a section of ORP bylaws stating that the SCC must elect its executive board in January of every odd-numbered year. He determined that that provision cannot nullify the requirement that members-elect vote on party leadership, observing that no one could be considered a “member-elect” in January.
Williams supporters have furthermore noted that party bylaws elsewhere state that officer elections must take place “at the first meeting of the State Central Committee following the election and qualification of its members … .”
Opponents of the vice chair’s aspiration to become SCC leader sent out an email to ORP voting members this week calling Williams’s run for the chairmanship an “an untimely, disruptive, and embarrassing internal distraction.” The group responsible for the message calls itself Our Ohio Republican Future but names no leaders or participants.
The email cites news stories from The Akron Beacon Journal, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer and The Cincinnati Enquirer in an attempt to link Williams with former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and others implicated in the FirstEnergy bribery scandal but points to no charges against or investigations directly targeting Williams.
Former SCC member Mark Bainbridge told The Ohio Star he believes the message clearly went out under Paduchik’s direction.
“This is a phony group that Bob Paduchik set up to try to intimidate the members of the State Central Committee because he’s got somebody running against him for chairman tomorrow,” Bainbridge said. “His autocratic rule has been going on ever since he became chairman.”
Williams has himself criticized Paduchik for “numerous ORP bylaws violations, designed to thwart the governing authority of the elected State Central and Executive Committee.” He has faulted the chairman as well as Treasurer David Johnson for alleged lack of transparency regarding the organization’s finances. Litigation filed by some party members including Bainbridge asserts that $3 million has “gone missing” from ORP accounting documents.
Williams has pledged to make changes in other areas of party governance as well, particularly when it comes to endorsements of candidates in contested races, something Williams opposes.
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Bradley Vasoli is managing editor of The Ohio Star. Follow Brad on Twitter at @BVasoli. Email tips to [email protected].
