Published: May 16, 2008 11:14 pm            

Tanner's qualification disallowed

Rick Tanner said politics led to a decision on Friday by the Whitfield County Board of Elections and Registrars that he had not properly qualified for the July 15 Republican primary for chairman of the county board of commissioners.

The decision leaves former chairman Mike Babb as the only candidate from the two major parties, with the qualifying period for independent candidates still to come beginning June 23. Current chairman Brian Anderson, a Republican, is not seeking re-election.

“I’m not going to start planning on serving until I’m elected,” Babb said Friday.

Tanner said he had planned to qualify the week of April 28 but was delayed while traveling back from the West Coast and couldn’t get out of Chicago in time. An “agent” appeared at the courthouse shortly before the noon Friday deadline and an affidavit was presented on his behalf, but without his signature. The lack of Tanner’s signature was cited by Board of Elections chairman Sam F. Little as the reason for not accepting the affidavit as a proper means of qualifying.

GOP officials had accepted the qualification but with reservations, and Chuck Payne, a former county party chairman who is now a second vice chairman of the county party, formally challenged Tanner’s qualification.

The Board of Elections held a hearing Friday on the matter, but failed to notify the media or the public about it. The hearing was attended by Tanner, Payne, Janet Cochran, county attorney Lee Daniel, current GOP county chairman David Blackburn, registrar Kay Staten and board members Little and L. Stephen Kelehear. Board member Edna Massingill did not attend the hearing, and no members of the media were present, according to a person who attended the hearing.

Asked if there should have been a formal meeting notice provided to the public, Little said, “Maybe so.”

“Quite frankly, we were concerned because the ballots have to be determined by Monday,” he said. “This was sort of a quick problem, and we probably should have done that.”

“I can assure you there wasn’t any collusion, sir,” he added.

Also not in attendance was Babb.

“I stayed way away from this because I’m going to be blamed for it anyhow,” Babb said. “I stayed as far away from that as I could because I heard from the get go that there was a disagreement about the qualification that Friday.”

Asked if he had anything to do with Payne’s challenge, Babb replied, “No.”

But, he added, “Am I sad it happened? No. ... I enjoy serving the people but campaigning is not any fun at all. I never have liked to campaign.”

But Tanner is not convinced politics weren’t behind the challenge.

“Mr. Payne, in his complaint, stated this is nothing political, this is merely keeping the integrity of the process and so forth,” Tanner said. “I’m finding that very difficult to believe. I think it was political. I think these folks did not want me running, whether it was that they didn’t want me in there or they wanted it easier for somebody else to get in there. I don’t know, but my feeling was that it was politically motivated, that they wanted me out on a technicality and that’s what the situation was.”

Asked about that, Payne said, “I promise you ... I don’t have a dog in this hunt, so to speak. When I wrote this letter and filed this, at that point in time I wasn’t even aware that there wasn’t Democratic opposition. I know when I was chairman you’ve got to dot your ‘i’s,’ you’ve got to cross your ‘t’s’ and make sure the process is fair and adequate. ...

“I wanted to make sure it was contested so we didn’t get to the point of the county having to spend all this money. If Mr. Tanner wins the Republican nomination, then legally speaking someone could come in and say he never really qualified and then the county and everybody involved would have spent a ton of money for us to have to redo it. That’s why this needed to be decided now before we got to that point.”

Tanner said he will look at his options but he is not sure what can be done at this point.

“I think the Board of Elections was trying to be as fair as they possibly could, and I feel very good with those two gentlemen on the board and the efforts that they were making,” he said. “And I think if there were any options they probably would have let me know at the time, but again it’s going to be my responsibility to look into that and see if there are any options.”

Still, he said he is “disappointed” by the board’s decision.

“It basically removes from all the county voters a choice. ... I guess letter of the law, if you look at it that way I did not meet the exact qualifications, but again is that so important? Is that enough to put somebody out of the race and not give the voters any option at all? I disagree, and I think that the call should be made that due to extenuating circumstances I was unable to get here in time, I didn’t know that ahead of time, I didn’t consider it an issue because I planned to be back in time. Unfortunately I got stuck in Chicago and was not able to get back before noon on Friday and the agent did it for me. I thought everything was fine.”

        

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