According to the Progress Ohio blog and the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Ohio Highway Patrol has announced that they have arrested a man for making death threats against Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. For the past few weeks, Brunner has been deflecting an aggressive effort by the Ohio Republican Party to suppress votes in the upcoming election. The ORP has responded with a variety of scurrilous charges against Brunner, and last week there were reports of threats against her, her family, and her office. The man in custody now admits to having threatened to assassinate her in a telephone call received by one of her employees.
The person in custody is Dana R. Mcartor, a 51-year-old Columbus man. He has been charged with intimidation, a third-degree felony, and may face five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He is now being held in Franklin County Jail pending investigation.
The threat was one of several that have been directed against Brunner, her family and various state employees. In other incidents, a mysterious package containing an unidentified powder was sent to the Secretary of State's office last week; the SOS office has received a barrage of phone calls, emails and even business filings containing menacing messages; and the SOS website was temporarily placed in limited operation after a security breach was detected.
Just today, Ohio Republican Party Deputy Chairman Kevin DeWine tried to downplay the security breach and the threats in a press conference.
DeWine: "... I can't help but wonder whether or not, whether or not that is a, uh, that is a latest excuse or whether in fact there was a real security breach, uh, in the Secretary of State's office ... Number one, we are calling on the US Attorney's office to investigate this security breach, this alleged security breach in the Secretary of State's office."
Reporter: "You said you weren't sure about the validity of, about what happened with the security breach. Do you doubt that there were death threats against Secretary Brunner that have been reported?"
DeWine: "I have no idea, I have no information about it. I know this, Bill, that I get the same sorts of phone calls here. Pick up the phone out here any day. We get the same sorts of letters, we get the same sorts of phone calls."
Ohio Democratic Party Chris Redfern issued this statement today:
Republican Party leaders sank to an outrageous new low today by accusing the Secretary of State of covering up for election fraud, suggesting that she had fabricated the security breach currently under investigation by the Ohio Highway Patrol, and even downplaying the recent threats made against her life. The Ohio Republican Party has lost their sense of basic decency in a storm of wild charges, frivolous lawsuits, scare tactics and deeply personal attacks.
The ORP's main line of attack was an attempt to require the Secretary of State's office to match registration data for new voters against other databases, such as the BMV, and report all mismatches to the county Boards of Election. Nearly all of these mismatches would have been due to data entry or other clerical errors -- famously, Joe the Plumber's last name was misspelled on his voter registration --, but any of them could have led to challenges on Election Day. It has been estimated that as many as 200,000 voter registrations in Ohio could have been subject to challenge this way. (Recall that Bush won against Kerry in 2004 by 119,000 votes in Ohio.)
The Republicans obtained an en banc ruling in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals (a conservative bench based in Cincinnati) in their favor, but that ruling was overturned by the US Supreme Court. The Republicans have been directing a variety of attacks against Brunner ever since; just today, John Boehner called on the US Justice Department to intervene in the Ohio election.
Here's Jennifer Brunner on Rachel Maddow last week. Let's hope that these ugly attacks on her, her family and her employees will stop now, once and for all.