Blade editorial challenges Stainbrook to mount petition drive for charter change – so he does
When you read – Mr. Stainbrook’s moment from Blade this weekend, it’s hard to see it any other way than the Blade editorial staff challenging Stainbrook to take up their cause and do it.
So the reform campaign offers the county Republican Party and its embattled chairman, Jon Stainbrook, the opportunity to show that it can achieve something other than squabbling with itself.
Mr. Stainbrook agrees that the proposal would enhance his party’s prospects of winning county offices. So far, though, his support for the reform proposal has been mostly rhetorical.
With some hard work and planning, it would seem entirely possible for Mr. Stainbrook to turn loose his central committee members and precinct captains over the next few weeks, and assign each of them to bring back a few hundred valid signatures of county voters on petitions. Those would be more than enough to qualify the reform proposal for the ballot.
Despite the Blade coverage, and Lucas County Commissioner Ben Konop’s attempts, the business community is not interested, the community as a whole is not interested. Realistically they are not interested in Lucas County Commissioner Pete Gerken’s plan either since neither man has people out there beating down doors to try to get signatures. Nor are there “the next few weeks” to even accomplish this Blade challenge.
Now it’s being reported that Stainbrook is going to launch the signature effort, and that he has 35 volunteers – (Blade link)
Trying to get 14,289 valid voter signatures by July 25 (Blade link) would be quite a feat, but they have less time than that since it was reported back in May that the Ohio Revised Code states it must be filed 115 days before the election -(Blade link) which would be July 10. Since that falls on a Saturday, the last date should be July 12.
Each one of Stainbrook’s volunteers will have to collect over 408 valid signatures. The word “valid” is the key. I predict more articles/editorials and lawsuits in the days ahead, especially since this is starting out with controversy over the filing date.
Pathetic!!!!
Is the petition even drafted? Probably not. If it is July 12th then what a joke…even if it was the end of July…still a joke.
There’s a reason Benny’s plan didn’t fly. Noone supports it.
July 5th, 2010 at 9:43 pmI don’t think it’s been drafted — having watched many a signature drive before, getting that many signatures in that short of a time span is going to be really difficult. Even with the support of the daily paper.
July 5th, 2010 at 9:59 pmLisa,
If he goes through with it he will be showing his true role in life, as a loyal Block bot doing his master’s bidding. . .
July 6th, 2010 at 8:33 amOne week to get 15,000 valid signatures? The goal should be 30,000 to cover for the bad.
This can’t be anything more than a stunt.
July 6th, 2010 at 9:49 amLisaRenee said in #2: “Even with the support of the daily paper.”
Fixed it for you: “Especially in spite of the support of the daily paper.”
July 6th, 2010 at 10:08 amStainbrook is showing his true colors to all with this stunt, IMHO.
He is nothing more than a puppet to JRB, and will do as much damage to those around him for the sake of ‘his cause’.
I’d love to know who he actually found to collect signatures.
Are they any of his lovely little Central Committee recruits like Eric Skowron who (alledgedly) shot Tyson the dog?
Something for y’all to ponder……..
July 6th, 2010 at 10:31 amA long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away, I helped my family with Linda Furney’s first campaign. I was too young to vote at the time, but I seem to recall that my mom, dad, and I, showed up at her campaign headquarters and were told we would be walking with a 3rd person in a stretch of streets. After a 40 minute delay, we found out that the third person in question had something else to do, so it would be the 3 of us.
My folks managed 12 signatures to get her on the ballot after walking for what seemed like days. (I am sure that since I was young, it was only 3 hours or so) I remember that my dad was NOT happy to find out that only 8 of the signatures they got were approved. It was the last time I can recall that they ever went signature gathering.
I’m going to dust off the trusty abacus here, and crunch some numbers from today’s Blade article… http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100706/NEWS16/7060345
14,289 valid signatures needed. Using my above formula, that mean 1.5 times 14,289 so the number they need is 21,433.5 and I suppose we could suspend the .5 and make it 21,433 which we will call X.
The number of people who will be out gathering signatures is listed as 35, however since it appears that only two out of 3 people actually show up, that would be 35 devided by 2/3 where so the number is actually closer to 23.3333 which we can round up to 24 and call Y.
So X devided by Y = 893.041 and we can even be kind and round that down to 893 per signature gatherer, which we will call Z.
Now there are two variations of deadline, one is July 25th, and for the sake of an argument, let’s say that is the actual date the signatures must be turned in by 5:00 PM. At the time of this article being written it is 11:00 AM on July 6th, leaving 19 days and 18 hours remaining for a total of 474 hours. However July 25th is a Sunday, so it is likely that we can add an extra 24 hours and show the deadline to be Monday July 26th at 5:00 PM for a total of 498 hours.
However there are only 12 good hours in a day to gather petitons. As it is unlikely that one will see someone out petition driving any time other than between 9 AM and 9 PM. So of those hours only 249 would actually be ‘good’ hours in which to collect signatures.
Therefore that means that each signature gatherer will have 249 hours to collect Z (893 signatures) which come down to 3.5863 signatures an hour.
So in conclusion, I think there is about a 50% chance this can be achieved if everything goes the right way. It likley comes down to if everyone reading this decides to answer the door when these people come knocking.
It also depends on if you choose to invite these people to rest and have a pop or do anything you can to stall them away from their 3.5863 signatures they need to get an hour, depending on how you feel about the issue.
July 6th, 2010 at 11:09 amSo…does this mean that if Jon gets all these signatures, Ben Konop will be the new chairman?
Seems to me that would make the Blade really happy.
July 6th, 2010 at 12:05 pmLet us all take a moment of silence for the political “death” of George Sarantou.
George is now left with the unenviable dilemma of publically denouncing this NEW county charter, and thus denouncing his party chairman and the Blade publisher, OR siding with them, and admitting the Lucas County Commissioner position he is currently running for, is not in the best interests of Lucas County residents.
Sooooo long, George.
July 6th, 2010 at 1:33 pmI had Jon pegged the moment he claimed leadership of the LCRP.
And everything I expected has come to pass.
Well, except for the mass defection from his inner circle. That one was a nice left-field shot.
But because I live in Florida I didn’t know what I was talking about?
I saw this coming from a long long way away, but I didn’t expect to find Sarantou lying on the tracks of the “JRB Owning Toledo Politics” express.
toot toot!
July 7th, 2010 at 7:17 pmWell said Maxie!
July 8th, 2010 at 9:51 amWhat a dope…when you think this guy can’t top himself…he finds a way. The answer to too much democracy isn’t more democracy.
July 9th, 2010 at 11:08 am