VA: Buckingham GOP withdraws fired registrar's nomination for elections board

[RandySF]

The leader of the Buckingham County Republican Committee has withdrawn the county’s recently fired interim registrar and his wife from the party’s list of three nominees for a vacant Republican position on the local elections board, a move that prompted a local judge to postpone an upcoming hearing on the matter.

In an email to the judge sent Sunday, May 21 — two days after The Virginia Mercury published a story revealing the latest list of nominees the local GOP had submitted for the Buckingham Electoral Board — Buckingham GOP Chairwoman Ramona Christian claimed she had been “unaware of most of the issues” swirling around former county registrar Luis Gutierrez when she sent her nomination letter on May 10, the day after Gutierrez was fired at a public meeting. Christian told Buckingham Circuit Court Judge Donald Blessing she was withdrawing Gutierrez’s nomination along with the nomination of his wife, Tambra Riggs-Gutierrez.

Christian acknowledged she was aware Gutierrez had been fired before she nominated him and his wife to the board that fired him and will soon pick his replacement. But Christian said she recently learned the couple was legally prohibited from entering the county election office because a protective order had been taken out against them.

Gutierrez, a Republican, had served as the county’s interim registrar for almost a month before he was fired by the Electoral Board on May 9 after an outcry from Buckingham citizens who interacted with him.

The local GOP’s decision to immediately nominate Gutierriez to a new election oversight job appeared to indicate the party was rallying around him. In addition to numerous residents saying he was temperamentally unsuitable for the job, Gutierrez had expressed support for former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims the 2020 election was tainted by fraud and was sued by a Democratic supervisor just a few weeks into his tenure for allegedly violating the state’s Freedom of Information Act. After the initial attempt to double down on Gutierrez remaining involved with the election office, Republicans now seem to be changing course.




https://www.virginiamercury.com/2023/05/22/buckingham-gop-withdraws-fired-registrars-nomination-for-elections-board/

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

1. NUTCASE! the behavior that got Gutierrez fired from the registrar job within a month

erwinski said Gutierrez was terminated for “falsification” of his job application, but the firing comes after numerous residents reported unusual encounters with the man recently hired to run voter registration and elections in the rural central Virginia community of almost 17,000 people.

Buckingham County Supervisor Jordan Miles announced this week that he intends to file a lawsuit against Gutierrez over a Freedom of Information Act dispute in which Gutierrez attempted to charge him a $200 “convenience fee” for public records and sent a scathing email suggesting Miles “get a part-time job at WalMart” to afford the FOIA fees.

Virginia’s FOIA law does not allow public officials to charge extra fees beyond the actual expense of finding records and making copies.

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Kenda Hanuman, who described herself as an independent, said Gutierrez came in with a “new marshal in town” attitude that led to repeated clashes with people interacting with his office.

“He likes to dress up in cowboy clothes,” Hanuman said. “He’s stopped doing that since there’s been a lot of spotlight on him.”

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Gutierrez said he thinks one of those women will get the job next.

“The Democrats are so good at what they do. They’re going to get their way no matter what. So let’s put a Black woman in there. And if they say no to her, then the Republicans are racist. That’s their plan,” Gutierrez said, adding that he’s never expected to get a job because he’s Hispanic.

At other points in the interview, Gutierrez stated most of the people “attacking” him are women and said one of his critics suggested to him the registrar job should always go to a woman.

“Our country is dying because our men have become weak,” he said. “The result of that weakness is what you saw in there.”

Gutierrez said he’s thinking of canceling his voter registration in the county because he’s not sure his ballot will be counted.

https://www.virginiamercury.com/2023/05/09/buckingham-electoral-board-fires-republican-registrar-after-less-than-a-month-in-the-job/