CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Less than two months ahead of the November general election, a candidate for sheriff in Clay County is being forced to change his campaign course.
Tom Gorgone, a Republican who had been running as an independent, saw his name removed from the Clay County ballot after the state Supreme Court ruled this week that candidates registered with one of the four recognized political parties in West Virginia — Democrat, Republican, Mountain Party, Libertarian — cannot seek office as independents.
When a Clay County judge opted to follow the Court’s ruling with Gorgone’s candidacy, he decided to continue his campaign as a write-in candidate.
The write-in registration deadline is Tuesday, Sept. 20 ahead of the Nov. 8 election.
“I’m just going to have to educate the voters that they’re going to have to write my name in instead of marking the ballot,” Gorgone told MetroNews. When asked how difficult that would be, Gorgone replied this way: “Very difficult, because they’re going to have to remember to do it.”
Being a write-in candidate is the best option Gorgone sees for his campaign right now.
As an alternative, he had wanted to attempt to change his party registration but, “My attorney thought that that was going to be a long, drawn-out process and the election would be done by the time the judge heard that,” he said.
The Supreme Court ruling was in a case involving former Kanawha County Senator Erik Wells, a registered Democrat, who petitioned to run for Kanawha County clerk after the May 10 primary election.
The Court upheld a lower court ruling denying him a ballot spot after finding Wells’ registration as a Democrat precluded him from running as an independent.
“The Kanawha County Clerk is ordered to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure that Erik Patrick Wells does not appear on the 2016 General Election Ballot for the Office of County Clerk of Kanawha County,” the order said.
According to the Statewide Voter Registration System run through the Secretary of State’s Office, at least six more independent candidates — in addition to Wells and Gorgone — are affected by the ruling because they’re registered with a recognized party.
The list is as follows:
Roy Tiller, Mingo County sheriff candidate, registered Democrat
Chester Mitchell, Boone County circuit clerk candidate, registered Democrat
William Louisos, Fayette County commissioner candidate, registered Democrat
Charles Lewis, Preston County commissioner candidate, registered Republican
Linda Browning, Boone County clerk candidate, registered Republican
Tina Bishop, Preston County clerk candidate, registered Republican
There may be additional candidates, though, that were not entered into the system.
One such candidate is Sandra Saurborn, a Republican who had been running for clerk in Marion County as an independent. She’s also planning to seek office as a write-in candidate.
Chuck Miller, prosecuting attorney in Kanawha County, represented Kanawha County in the Wells clerk court case.
Miller had questions for those independent candidates. He asked, “Why did they not run in the primary or file or ask the executive committee to put them on the ballot? And why did they not change their registrations when they sought to run as independents?”
Wells, who was serving overseas in the military during the filing period, said he was inspired to run for county clerk after the May primary, when problems with voting precincts in Kanawha County surfaced.
On Tuesday’s MetroNews “Talkline,” he said he sought a spot on the ballot using a method that had been utilized successfully many times in the past.
Gorgone, a former sheriff’s deputy in Tennessee, firefighter and arson investigator who is now working as a private investigator in West Virginia, said he decided to run when he saw that Donny Triplett was the Democratic nominee for sheriff in Clay County.
Gorgone’s claim is Triplett does not have the law enforcement experience needed for the job.
“My thought process says that, if you’re going to run for sheriff, you need to have some kind of law enforcement experience. Even though the state doesn’t require it, you can’t run the sheriff’s department and not know what you’re doing,” he said.
Triplett was one of four Democrats who ran for the nomination in the May primary election. No Republicans sought the nomination.
“When I saw that there was that many people running for sheriff, I didn’t realize that they were all Democrats,” Gorgone said.
A full order from the Supreme Court is expected at a later date, possibly after Election Day. Monday’s compressed decision in the Wells case was released to meet ballot printing deadlines.