Mercer County Republican Party Chair Robert Hibner asked the Mercer County Board of Elections to reject campaign petitions filed by Arienne Childrey of Auglaize County,
The Lima News file photo
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A second transgender candidate for the Ohio legislature is now in danger of being kept off the ballot for not listing her “deadname” on campaign paperwork.
On Friday, Mercer County Republican Party Chair Robert Hibner asked the Mercer County Board of Elections to reject campaign petitions filed by Arienne Childrey of Auglaize County, according to a copy of the protest provided by the elections board.
Childrey, a Democrat, is seeking to unseat Republican state Rep. Angie King of Mercer County in House District 84, which covers Mercer County and parts of Auglaize and Darke counties.
While the Mercer County Board of Elections certified Childrey’s petitions last month, Hibner’s protest claims that she violated a little-known 1995 state law requiring candidates for public office in Ohio to list both their current name and any other names they went by in the past five years on their petition sheets.
Hibner claimed that Childrey went by her birth name within the past year.
The Mercer County Board of Elections has scheduled a hearing on Jan. 18 to consider the protest, according to Kristi Rable, the board’s deputy director.
In a statement posted to X, Childrey noted that the requirement to list her prior name wasn’t mentioned in the 33-page candidate guide issued by the Ohio Secretary of State’s office. “Had I known of this provision and tried to comply — which I certainly would’ve, my legal name and deadname simply could not have fit in the space provided on the candidacy documents,” Childrey wrote.
For many transgender people, referring to them by their “deadname” – their birth name that they went by before transitioning – can be “quite invalidating or traumatic,” according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Hibner’s protest letter was first reported by The Daily Standard of Celina, Ohio.
If Hibner’s protest is successful, Childrey would be the second transgender would-be candidate for the Ohio House to be disqualified from running because of the law. Last week, the Stark County Board of Elections voted unanimously to disqualify Vanessa Joy, who filed to run for a House seat being vacated after this year by Republican state Rep. Reggie Stoltzfus. Joy is appealing the board’s ruling.
A third transgender Ohio House candidate, Bobbie Arnold of Preble County, initially said last week that she, too, had been disqualified for not putting her prior name on her petitions. However, Arnold later walked back that claim, and the Montgomery County Board of Elections certified her petitions to run against Republican state Rep. Rodney Creech, also of Preble County.
As of late Monday morning, no protest had been filed against Arnold’s petitions, according to the Montgomery County Board of Elections.
Ari Faber, a transgender Ohio Senate candidate from Athens, filed to run under her birth name of Iva Faber, as she has not yet legally changed her name.
All four are political newcomers who live in solidly Republican, mostly rural districts. All but Faber have said that they were motivated to run for state legislature by Republican lawmakers, who have introduced a number anti-transgender measures in the past year – most notably House Bill 68, which would prohibit transgender athletes from playing women’s sports and ban minors from receiving gender-affirming medical treatment.
