Jennifer Brunner campaigned on a platform of restoring integrity to Ohio's elections, but her first 100 days in office have established a troubling record of illegality, excessive spending, extreme partisanship and radical agendas.

Illegal Actions

On her first day in office, Brunner violated state law by returning a bill to the governor for a veto after it had already been enacted, prompting a lawsuit filed by Republican legislators.

• "The Republican argument centers on the idea that Democrat Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner did not have the legal standing to honor Strickland's request to return the bill to him. It is a compelling point. ...Paraphrasing Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, the Republicans have a good chance, they have more than a good chance, of winning the lawsuit." (Dennis Willard, Akron Beacon Journal, 2/4/07)

Radical Ideas

Brunner received wide-spread criticism for a plan to pursue a "poll-worker draft," including forced participation in a two-day training program and mandatory eight-hour shifts at a polling location.

• "Give Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner credit. She has come up with the ideal way to give the race to her challenger in the 2010 election - long before we know who that person will be. Brunner last week suggested Ohio become the first state to draft its poll workers. ...If her proposal would work anything like jury duty notification works, Brunner also would be able to take credit for getting fewer Ohioans to register to vote." (Editorial, Lima News, 1/31/07)

Even the ACLU was forced to speak out against Brunner's proposal.

• ACLU of Ohio Litigation Coordinator Gary Daniels said, "It is antithetical to the idea of democracy to force Ohioans to serve as poll workers in an election. An important component of American democracy allows people to participate in civics or not, if they so choose." (News Release, ACLU, 1/29/07)

Bloated Budgets

Just weeks on the job, Brunner adopted a bloated budget with fat payrolls for extra staff.

• "Employee rosters provided by Brunner's office show that her annual payroll for all employees is nearly $425,000 more than Blackwell's, and that she has five more workers than Blackwell had at the end of last year." (Mark Niquette, Columbus Dispatch, 04/04/2007)
• "Brunner and seven of her employees make more than $100,000 a year, compared with Blackwell and three of his employees." (Mark Niquette, Columbus Dispatch, 04/04/2007)
• "Rep. Kevin DeWine, a Fairborn Republican and member of the [Controlling] board, said he has concerns that Brunner's office is paying higher salaries for employees and has questions about nearly $400,000 in attorney fees paid to settle three lawsuits filed against Blackwell's office. ‘When an agency comes to us and says they are having problems making payroll while they've added staff and added to the wage rate of staff, we should have questions about that,' DeWine said." (Columbus Dispatch, 04/10/2007)

But when Brunner was confronted with her excessive spending she tried to blame it on her predecessor.

• "Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is asking for the authority to spend an additional $2.5 million in business fees to cover expenses through the end of June. Her office's shortfall, she has said, is the fault of overspending by her GOP predecessor, J. Kenneth Blackwell." (Columbus Dispatch, 04/10/2007)

Partisan Politics

Brunner consistently uses her office to make false accusations against her Republican predecessor.

• "When newly elected Secretary of State Jennifer L. Brunner discovered that the office did not start processing several years worth of certain corporate documents until 2006, she blamed her predecessor, J. Kenneth Blackwell. Brunner even suggested that some businesses got away with not paying business taxes ‘because of the prior secretary's failure to carry out his statutory duties.' But it turns out that the Ohio Department of Taxation, not Blackwell, was mostly to blame for the delay." (Mark Niquette, The Columbus Dispatch, 2/8/07)

Connections for Sale

Brunner's husband decided to cash-in on his connections to the new Secretary of State and sell access to his wife as a new lobbyist.

• "Rick Brunner, an attorney who is married to Ohio's new Democratic secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, is a newly minted lobbyist on his own. ...‘People listen to me now,' said Brunner, who campaigned with his wife for two years. ‘I have friends and connections. So when clients ask me to make a call for them, I feel I have to be registered as a lobbyist.'" (Mark Naymik, The Plain Dealer, 4/1/07)
• "Talk about brazen. Had a relative of, say, a recent Republican governor said such a thing, Democrats would have gone ballistic with claims of undue influence-peddling." (Editorial, The Plain Dealer, 4/4/07)

Hypocritical Policies

Brunner vowed to restore public trust in elections, yet she hired a field director who was removed from her previous elections job for allegedly violating Ohio law.

• "The former Auglaize County Elections Board director, who was removed for improperly running the office, will oversee elections in nine counties as one of the regional field representatives for the new Ohio Secretary of State." (Karen Campbell, Wapakoneta Daily News, 01/13/2007)
• "A woman who was removed for improperly running her elections office is now the new Ohio Secretary of State's regional representative." (Heather Rutz, Lima News, 01/10/2007)
• "Her violations of or noncompliance with the laws governing petitions, public records, office administration, and the voting process are inexplicable and inexcusable. She appeared fully aware of the impropriety of her conduct and offered no defense of her actions." (Order of the Secretary of State, 4/4/05)