Saturday, August 25, 2007
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
 Photo courtesy of .
For the second time in two election cycles, Jim Tarbell failed to get enough signatures to achieve ballot status. Back in 2005, he decided at the last minute to run for mayor, and failed to get enough signatures. And now this past week, he couldn’t manage to get himself on the ticket for School Board—which many view as an “entry level” political position. But perhaps more shocking than Tarbell’s failure is the unspoken endorsement given to Tarbell by The Cincinnati Enquirer with their Friday morning headline, pictured to your right.
As you can see from the picture, the Friday morning, above the fold headline proclaimed that Tarbell would be running for schoolboard. What a huge boost for Tarbell’s campaign!
Unfortunately, by the time Friday found the Board of Elections verifying signatures, Tarbell did not have enough. So what did the Enquirer do?
Turns out, they just changed their online record of what happened. Check for a list of all news stories from Friday. As you can see, the only story with Tarbell’s name in the headline is called ”Tarbell and team thrown off ballot.”
A field of eight candidates for the Cincinnati Board of Education shrank by half Friday when elections officials found that Cincinnati City Councilman Jim Tarbell and three other candidates didn’t have enough voter signatures on the candidate petitions they filed Thursday.
Tarbell, who is leaving council Sept. 4 after nearly eight years in office, had hurriedly put together a slate of three school board candidates that included himself and two women who have previously served on the board, Anne Power and Sally Warner.
The three-candidate team didn’t start collecting signatures on their nominating petitions until less than 24 hours before the 4 p.m. deadline Thursday. Each of them needed the signatures of 300 registered voters in the Cincinnati Public School District.
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But officials at the Hamilton County Board of Elections said Friday afternoon that they fell short, with 264 valid signatures each.
I think it’s amazing that the Enquirer gave front page above-the-fold coverage to a school board campaign that didn’t even get on the ballot.
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