Judge denies Bruce Childers' effort to be placed on Escambia Supervisor of Elections ballot

After weighing all the testimony following a long afternoon in court, Circuit Judge Jennifer Frydrychowicz said in ruling to leave retired Escambia Attorney Bruce Childers off of the local election ballot that she simply could not bring herself to reverse the decision of a sitting county constitutional officer.

"I do not find any basis in law for taking such a bold step as to overrule the supervisor of elections," she said.

Childers had filed a lawsuit against Robert Bender and the Supervisor of Elections Office on June 21, a day after he said he was informed he had not properly filed a "full and complete" Form 6 financial disclosure document and therefore did not qualify to seek office.

The notification came, Childers claimed, after two Supervisor of Elections Officers had informed him he had completed the necessary paperwork to qualify, posted that he had qualified on the Escambia County elections website and notified the news media he was among those who had done what it took by the noon, June 14 deadline to get on the ballot.

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George Levesque, arguing on behalf of Bender's office, said that the law requiring candidates seeking office to present a full and complete financial statement have been on the books for 30 years, and Childers should have known that he would not qualify by turning in one page of a multi-page Form 6 disclosure form.

A motion filed by Levesque ahead of the Friday hearing claimed that in his lawsuit Childers had misstated the law on what he was required to submit to qualify as a candidate, misstated the law on whether he had formally qualified as a candidate and misstated the law on whether Bender's failure to qualify him had the effect of removing him from the ballot.

"He cannot escape his own personal malpractice of claiming he did not know his qualifying papers were deficient because Supervisor Bender failed to inform him of such defects," the motion in response to Childers motion for an emergency ruling in the lawsuit said.

Much of the disputed testimony hovered around an iPad that Pam Childers said she had carried with her to the Supervisor of Elections Office on the day her husband made his ultimately doomed effort to qualify. Childers told the court Friday that she could have pushed a button on her iPad and printed out the required Form 6 if she'd been told the full form was needed. The couple had already filed with the Florida Commission on Ethics.

But two employees within the Supervisor of Elections Office testified that Pam Childers iPad hadn't been able to successfully print the needed form and that she had advised them she would email the required documents later in the day from a different computer. That email never got sent, according to testimony.

The Supervisor of Elections Office staff members who testified, Keelie Sekerka and Chief Deputy Superintendent Sonya Daniel, did both testify that they had checked off the Form 6 document as one that had been received from the Childers, though it had not been. Each said they had done so based on the assumption the promised email documents would be forthcoming.

The motion in response to the request for emergency hearing by Childers said that it was Daniel, and not Bender, a former Escambia County Commissioner appointed to the supervisor role in January, that had reviewed the Childers' paperwork.

It said it was not until the paperwork was reviewed following the end of qualifying that it was learned the Form 6 paperwork had not been provided as promised.

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Childers' attorney, Ed Fleming, focused on the check list that had been completed ahead of the paperwork being actually filed and on wording in the Supervisor of Elections handbook that states "the filing officer should make every effort to contact the candidate if there is a problem with the paperwork.”

The handbook also advises the filing officer to document all efforts to contact the candidate and similarly note any conversations with the candidate.

Daniel and Sekerka both testified they had fulfilled the requirements stated in the handbook when they had gone over the Childers' paperwork with them and notified them that the completed Form 6 needed to be turned in.

Daniel, who testified it was her who made the call to disqualify Childers, was asked by her attorney, Levesque, if she would have done anything differently in handling the processing of Childers paperwork. She said she would not have marked off on her checklist that the Form 6 paperwork she had been told would be provided until it was indeed provided.

"I would not take them at their word. I'd have made them produce the documents," she said.

Frydrychowicz said she found case law presented by the Supervisor of Elections Office defense team to be the most relevant to making her ruling in the case at hand. In that case, a candidate for office had relied on bad advice from a Supervisor of Elections official and couldn't qualify because they had paid an incorrect filing fee.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Bruce Childers denied entry into Escambia Supervisor of Elections race