Complaints made against Patrick Henry College student and Oprison Campaign.

The Joe May campaign has submitted an informal complaint to the Legislative District Chair against Patrick Henry College (PHC) freshman Andrew Tyrrell, campaign manager for Chris Oprison. The Joe May campaign has also appealed the Loudoun County Republican Chairman’s ruling certifying that both the May and Oprison campaigns timely filed the requisite number of petition signatures under state law.

The Joe May campaign allege that Oprison’s petitions were sent in a few minutes premature disqualifying Oprison from the Republican primary in the race for the 33rd House District seat in Virginia.

Oprison's campaign contends that they filed their petitions a minute after the deadline at 12:01 on March 29, 2005.

The complaint is not formal but, according to a news release sent out by the Oprison campaign, the Joe May campaign is threatening civil lawsuits and criminal action against Oprison and his campaign manager, PHC freshmen Andrew Tyrrell, if their campaign proceeds.

David Juday, the Communications Director for the Joe May campaign, says that they never threatened civil lawsuits. He says that it is also too strong to say that they threatened criminal action but that they did say they reserve the right to turn this in to the commonwealth attorney.

Mr. Juday says that Joe May’s staffers sent in their petitions a few minutes early as well but, when they had discovered their mistake, withdrew the petitions immediately and re-filed them.

According to Mr. Tyrrell he first starting hearing rumors about the complaint on the 20th and that the whole thing broke the next day. He has not seen the actual complaint.

Oprison said in a prepared statement, "The May campaign seems to have turned to technicalities in a desperate attempt to avoid a discussion on the issues, namely a certain $1.4 Billion tax increase. Their motives are transparent–keep me off the ballot at all costs. Joe's heavy-handed actions stink of desperation and, quite frankly, I'm surprised to see Joe stoop to this level."

Mr. Juday says that it is not a technicality and that the whole of Mr. Oprison’s “public record has been his ballet filing and that should not escape scrutiny.”

Mr. Tyrrell believes that he met all the requirements for being eligible to vote in VA. The Joe May campaign is alleging that Mr. Tyrrell was not eligible to collect petitions at the time because a person cannot claim the right to vote in any other State to be eligible to register to vote in Virginia and Mr. Tyrrell was registered to vote in Orange County Florida. After hearing about the complaint, Mr. Tyrrell says that he has gone so far as to start the process to register to vote in Virginia.

According to Mr. Tyrrell, the Loudoun County registrar of voters told him that there were no problems with his qualifications and that they would process his application but that the May campaign called the registrar of voters and told her not to process Mr. Tyrrell’s application because he was not qualified to vote.

Thursday, Mr. Tyrrell says he received a call from the registrar of voters that she had been told not to register him. Mr. Tyrrell called back and asked what he needed to do to get registered. He was told they only needed to know if he was going to be living in Virginia. He did and his application is now being processed.

Mr. Juday says that it was Tim Powers, who is not on Joe May’s campaign payroll, who made the call simply to find out if being registered to vote in another state, in this case FL, disqualifies a person from being eligible to be registered to vote.

Last Monday the Loudoun County Republicans held their monthly meeting. According to Mr. Tyrrell there were none of the expected “fireworks” and Joe May did not show up.

Mr. Tyrrell says: “we are not giving up and we are moving forward with our campaign.”

--Robby