Allen County Election Board Boots Potential Candidates.

On March 9, 2007, the Allen County Election Board booted James Talarico from running for city council at large. It seems that Talarico voted in the last election as a Democratic, but selected the republican ticket to declare his candidacy. With that last name Talarico was more than likely to draw a lot of votes. Talarico could have appeared on the ballot with the blessing of the Allen County Republican Chair, Steve Shine, but that did not happen.

The election board also decided that the City Council at-large candidate James Talarico and city clerk candidate Thomas Schrader would not be on the Republican primary ballot. Both had voted as Democrats most recently and had not received a certificate of support from Republican Party Chairman Steve Shine.

Side note here, Ron Buskirk declared his candidacy for the 5th district. Buskirk did not become a member of the 5th district until January, 2007. Which means that Buskirk will represent long term voters of the 5th district. Buskirk last voted in precinct 412. Buskirk has not vote in his new precinct 578, is this fair?


Another candidate who was booted from the pool of contenders was Thomas Schrader. Schrader running for city clerk was dismissed based on his voting record rather than his party affiliation. The Democratic leader Kevin Knuth, did not give a thumbs up to this candidate, and should have invited them into the party game. Now we fully understand Steve Shine assimilation into the money community did not accept these waffling gents. But it is still a questionable eyebrow raising event for Knuth to thumb his nose at any potential candidate for the Democratic Party.

I forgot the Democratic Party is about the less the merrier membership. This party gave us a Pat Love to screw property owners on their taxes. This woman was a stellar post child representative for the incompetent leadership driving the party. And by keeping the Democratic party cliche membership low, members don't have to share power. And members do not have to take inclusion, serious, either. (wink, wink). Or pushing for more jobs for African-Americans, they just need the African-American votes. Independently typing outloud, if it's not true,prove me wrong.

Where are the independent candidates? I understand there is one independent candidate who will be running for Mayor.