A little commentary on this and that

Libertarian U.S. Senate hopeful Jeffrey Kanter will not appear on Ohio’s May 5 primary ballot, as Secretary of State Frank LaRose upheld a protest that many of the Shaker Heights resident’s petition signatures were gathered by ineligible collectors.

Kanter’s disqualification, announced by LaRose on Wednesday evening, leaves only one remaining Libertarian candidate in the race for Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted’s seat: Bill Redpath of Perrysburg, a former Libertarian National Chairman who ran for U.S. Senate in Illinois in 2022.

LaRose upheld a protest filed by Kryssi Wichers, a former deputy director of the state Libertarian Party, arguing that more than a third of Kanter’s 609 signatures from registered Ohio voters were collected by four ineligible petition collectors:

• Daniel J. Alvarez and Elias N. Alvarez were found to be ineligible to collect signatures for a Libertarian candidate because they are registered Republicans in Florida.

• Juan Pichardo was disqualified because he was convicted of felony election forgery and misdemeanor election perjury in Colorado last year.

• Marcus McGovern was disqualified for not providing a valid permanent residential address on his circulator statement

The Plain Dealer has reached out to Kanter, a 71-year-old health-care consultant, for comment.

Kanter did not appear at a state hearing on Wichers’ challenge earlier this month. The hearing officer, attorney and ex-LaRose staffer Sarah Huffman, subsequently recommended to LaRose that 216 of the signatures collected by the four should be invalidated.

Wichers filed the protest out of suspicion that Kanter. who came out of nowhere this year to challenge Redpath, was running as part of a Republican-backed plan to keep Redpath from making the November ballot.

Such a move, the thinking went, would prevent the Libertarian nominee from getting votes that would otherwise go to Husted, who could be in for a tough general-election fight against the likely Democratic nominee, ex-U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.

Wichers noted that Kanter is a registered Republican — which, in Ohio, means he pulled a Republican ballot the last time he voted in a primary. She also pointed to Kanter’s senior role last year with the Patient First Coalition, a group formed to promote President Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Wichers, in a statement Thursday, said that while she was “stopping short of alleging a formal conspiracy,” having Florida-based Republican operatives collecting signatures in a Libertarian primary “raises obvious concerns about meddling.

“If the Republican Party disagrees with that assessment, they are welcome to step forward and condemn this fraud,” Wichers stated.

The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com has reached out to an Ohio Republican Party spokesman for comment.

Libertarians’ suspicions about Republican dirty tricks haven’t come out of left field. In 2014, as Republican Gov. John Kasich was seeking reelection against Democratic nominee Ed FitzGerald, Libertarian gubernatorial hopeful Charlie Earl was disqualified from running after his petitions were challenged on procedural grounds by veteran GOP consultant Terry Casey.

Even though the Ohio GOP’s chair at the time, Matt Borges, testified in federal court that the state party wasn’t behind the petition challenge, the law firm behind the effort was later found to have been paid $300,000 by the Ohio Republican Party.

About the same time, the Libertarian Party of Ohio lost state recognition altogether after state lawmakers passed new ballot-access rules. The party is back on the ballot this year after collecting tens of thousands of signatures to regain its minor-party status.

Last month, a protest was filed against the candidacy of Brennan Barrington, who filed to run as a Libertarian for Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Carey’s seat in Central Ohio.

The protest, which claimed Barrington was ineligible to run as a Libertarian because he pulled a Democratic primary ballot in 2024, was filed in the name of Reagan Gross, the college-aged daughter of Paul Gross, a Republican former Madison County commissioner and a grassroots campaign chair for Husted’s Senate campaign.

The protest, which referred to Reagan Gross as a “genuine” Libertarian voter, was filed on her behalf by attorneys with Bricker Graydon Wyatt, one of the most prominent law firms in Ohio.

However, earlier this month, the Franklin County Board of Elections unanimously ruled in favor of rejecting the protest. Reagan Gross did not attend the hearing.