1 week Ago By Jane Harper
VIRGINIA BEACH — A Circuit Court judge on Monday declined to grant an emergency order that would have kept a Virginia Beach School Board candidate’s name off the November ballot as the registrar’s office prepares to send out mail-in ballots and begin early voting next week. But the ruling by Judge Afshin Farashahi doesn’t guarantee that John Sutton III will remain a qualified candidate for the District 3 seat. A trial on the matter will be held to determine if the voter signatures he submitted to become eligible met all the requirements.
No date was set Monday, but the trial will be held before the November election. Sutton, a retired Virginia Beach teacher and school administrator, and Mark Bohenstiel, a small business owner, are the only candidates for the District 3 position. Incumbent Jessica Owens is not seeking reelection.
Bohenstiel sued Sutton last week, and asked for an injunction that would keep Sutton off the ballot. Bohenstiel’s case centers on the petitions Sutton submitted to qualify for the race. Candidates had to obtain 125 valid signatures from qualified voters in the district.
While Bohenstiel’s complaint doesn’t challenge the authenticity of the signatures, it does question the dates included with some of them, as well as the process followed when the petitions were notarized. During a hearing Friday before Farashahi, Sutton testified he did his best to follow all the rules for obtaining and submitting signatures. He said he dated the pages of signatures he collected as Feb.
3, which is when he began gathering them. Some, however, were obtained on Feb. 4 and Feb.
5, he said. A former student of Sutton’s who attends the University of Virginia helped collect signatures, along with two of his fraternity brothers, Sutton said. A notary public in Charlottesville who notarized the petitions submitted a written statement in which he said the petitions were signed before they were presented to him.
In such cases, he wrote, the standard practice is to have the presenters swear to their signatures in the notary’s presence and then re-date them. They weren’t re-dated in this case, he said. Farashahi said there wasn’t enough evidence presented at last week’s hearing to indicate whether Bohenstiel is likely to succeed at trial.
He also said that while Bohenstiel would suffer “irreparable harm” if Sutton’s name is included on the ballot at this time, and then he’s later determined to have been an ineligible candidate, the harm to Sutton would be greater if he were kept off the ballot now and then were to prevail at trial. “What’s the remedy for that?” Farashahi asked during Monday’s hearing. “It’s impossible .
.. There is no way to remedy that.
” Mail-in ballots are expected to be sent out Sept. 16, and early voting begins Sept. 20.
Election day is Nov. 5. Jane Harper, jane.
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