Uh ohhhhh

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse for our old friend Tom Brinkman, out pops another potential scandal with his name all over it. Less than six weeks before the election, facts have been revealed courtesy of the Gay People's Chronicle that may show Tommy Boy getting in a bit of hot water.

You may remember that, earlier this year, city council voted to add sexual orientation and transgender status to the city's non-discrimination code. Obviously certain elements in Cincinnati did not care much for this, and so they organized under the umbrella ERNSR (Equal Rights Not Special Rights), which is an affiliate of Filthy Phil Burress' CCV, to circulate petitions to get that measure put on the ballot in November.

The petition drive ended up failing, as only two signatures above the 7,654 required were submitted to the elections board. As anyone that's ever dealt with an election knows, you need to have significantly more signatures than required, since some will be invalidated. Well in this case, there were over 1,000 struck down, and allegations of fraudulent addresses and names have been thrown around (which isn't surprising, since I don't believe that Fidel Castro is not a legal Cincinnati resident, but he still signed the petition).

This is where is gets really dicey for Brinkman. (click below the fold to read the rest)

Apparently, the organizer of the petition drive was not the ERNSR, but in fact Brinkman himself. This opens up a whole can of worms for the state representative.

The linked article mentioned that there was a shadowy payment from the ERNSR of $40,000 that it refused to disclose who the recipient was. The logical assumption is that Brinkman was the recipient, which is ok if it went directly to him, but not if it went to his campaign. That part is still in question.

The bigger issue is the rejected signatures. When you have over 1,000 rejections, the next logical step is to think that there was some sort of fraudulent behavior, or tampering of some sort. And from what's understood, many of the signatures or addresses did appear to have been "adjusted" after the fact. Behavior like this is considered election fraud, which is a felony, and since Brinkman headed up the operation he stands as the one to take the heat. And the Board of Elections is taking a hard look at this, to the point where even republican prosecutor Joe Deters has begun a criminal investigation into the matter.

So basically, Brinkman was the invisible head of an operation that quite likely committed fraud, and his campaign may have improperly received payment for his services. Can't say that it looks good for him right now.