Lawrence County Republican Dave Lucas lost his spot on the primary ballot for state representative this week.

Wednesday, January 12, 2000

Lawrence County Republican Dave Lucas lost his spot on the primary ballot for state representative this week.

Lucas had filed for election to the 92nd District House of Representatives seat at the Scioto County Board of Elections on Friday, the deadline to turn in petitions. He would have been unopposed in seeking the Republican nomination to the seat currently held by state Rep. Bill Ogg, D-Sciotoville, who is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination.

Board officials there rejected that petition based on insufficient signatures, clerk Jane Bussler said.

Lucas called it an "unfortunate set of circumstances," saying he had waited to file because he wanted to meet fund-raising goals first.

"I don’t like to believe politics is based on finances, but it does have something to do with running," he said.

Financial support came through Jan. 4, giving Lucas a late start on gathering petition signatures.

"Basically, it was Wednesday or Thursday before we started getting petitions," he said. "They found three names they considered not to be correct."

Petitions for election to the state office must contain 50 valid signatures of registered voters and Lucas fell short, Ms. Bussler said.

Lucas had filed a petition bearing only 51 signatures.

Boards of elections must check each petition for office for valid signatures, Ms. Bussler said.

Invalid signatures include names that are printed, names of members of the opposite political party, maiden names unless changed back legally, names of unregistered voters, names with a post office box address attached and many others, she said.

Regulations about proper signatures are given to candidates when the pick up petitions, Ms. Bussler said.

There is no appeals process after a petition has been rejected by an election board, she added.

Lucas said he is disappointed that the petition failed, but said he is compelled to try for the representative seat again.

This primary would have been the Ohio University Southern Campus professor’s second attempted at winning Ogg’s seat. He was defeated in the 1998 General Election.

"We can’t be satisfied with the status quo," he said. "We need a risk-taker in that office in particular. We don’t need business as usual. We can’t because we have lost all our business."