Libertarian U.S. Senate hopeful Jeffrey Kanter will not appear on Ohio’s May 5 primary ballot, as Secretary of State Frank LaRose upheld a protest that many of the Shaker Heights resident’s petition signatures were gathered by ineligible collectors.
Kanter’s disqualification, announced by LaRose on Wednesday evening, leaves only one remaining Libertarian candidate in the race for Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted’s seat: Bill Redpath of Perrysburg, a former Libertarian National Chairman who ran for U.S. Senate in Illinois in 2022….
Wichers filed the protest out of suspicion that Kanter. who came out of nowhere this year to challenge Redpath, was running as part of a Republican-backed plan to keep Redpath from making the November ballot.
Such a move, the thinking went, would prevent the Libertarian nominee from getting votes that would otherwise go to Husted, who could be in for a tough general-election fight against the likely Democratic nominee, ex-U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Kanter has a history of involvement with the Libertarian Party. He donated a total of $644.40 to the Libertarian National Committee between October 2021 and December 2023, according to Federal Election Commission records. He also gave $101 in total to Ron Paul’s 2008 Libertarian campaign for president.
Wichers noted that Kanter is a registered Republican — which, in Ohio, means he pulled a Republican ballot the last time he voted in a primary. She also pointed to Kanter’s senior role last year with the Patient First Coalition, a group formed to promote President Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Wichers, in a statement Thursday, said that while she was “stopping short of alleging a formal conspiracy,” having Florida-based Republican operatives collecting signatures in a Libertarian primary “raises obvious concerns about meddling….
