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Potential candidate for Warren law director cites irrelevant questions about residency
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Atty. Jeffrey Goodman, representing himself against complaints that his campaign petitions for Warren law director were misleading as to his voting address, said Atty. Don McTigue asked some irrelevant questions at a hearing Wednesday.
Goodman told the Trumbull County Board of Elections that McTigue didn’t need to ask how often Goodman slept or watched television at his residence on West Market Street and the one on North Park Avenue in 2014 and 2015.
“Ohio case law is very clear: You can have two residences,” Goodman said. “We spent a lot of time talking about how many days have you slept here, slept there. But none of those things matter,” Goodman said.
Goodman said he has a friend who lives most of his time in Ohio but still votes using his address in Florida. “That’s his choice,” Goodman said.
McTigue was representing the two complainants, Dori L. Talstein and Joseph J. Thomas, both of Warren, who sat through the hearing without testifying.
Talstein and Thomas filed a complaint alleging Goodman should be removed from the Nov. 3 ballot as an independent candidate for law director because he didn’t change his voting address to 174 North Park until May 1, 2015, when he was about to file his nominating petitions.
He was living at the North Park address and the 119 W. Market address while circulating the petitions, and his legal voting residence was the West Market location when he circulated the petitions, Goodman testified.
McTigue told the elections board, which was conducting the hearing, that Goodman’s circulating petitions as a resident of West Market Street and then changing his voting address before filing them makes the petitions defective.
Goodman said a discrepancy in a candidate’s voting address doesn’t disqualify him from the ballot.
The more-important question is whether that discrepancy is misleading to the petition signers.
In his case, his home in the basement of the building that also houses his law office is about a block away from his home on North Park. Both are on Courthouse Square.
His voting precinct and polling place are the same for both addresses, so the specific address is a “technical matter,” Goodman said.
McTigue countered that “putting down a false address is not a technical matter.”
McTigue and board member Ron Knight also questioned Goodman on his reasons for running against incumbent Greg Hicks as an independent in the general election instead of against Hicks in the Democratic primary.
Goodman said the reason is that he thought his campaign would bring out more voting and debate on the issues before the November election than the primary.
Goodman denied that he was parliamentarian or acting parlimentarian for the Trumbull County Democratic Party last summer when he purportedly gave legal advice to Democratic Party Chairman Dan Polivka regarding a conflict with then-Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern.
McTigue raised that issue Wednesday an an attempt to have Goodman ruled inelgible to run as an independent on the grounds that Ohio law says an independent “cannot to be affiliated with a political party.”
Goodman and McTigue are allowed to re-state their case in legal briefs filed by Monday. The board will meet Aug. 31 to issue a ruling.