Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown today says Democrat Nick Harper should be seated in the 38th Legislative District.
Brown’s statement — to appear this morning on her blog — is her first specific comment on how she thinks the Senate should respond to Sen. Jean Berkey’s request to defer Harper’s seating because of a belief his victory is the product of a tainted election. (It looks like Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt shares Berkey’s viewpoint regarding Harper.)
Brown writes:
“Some – including the Senate minority leader – have suggested that the voters in one particular district were duped. They have suggested that voters in the 38th legislative district didn’t know who they were really voting for when they made Nick Harper their first choice in the primary and gave him 60 percent of the vote in the general election.
They have even suggested that, because of the actions of a PAC that didn’t obey state campaign finance disclosure laws, the Senate should move not to seat Nick Harper as state senator – even though Nick Harper knew nothing of this PAC’s activities.
These suggestions are wrong, and I don’t support them. This wouldn’t be fair to Harper – who was given a clear mandate by the voters – and wouldn’t be fair to the voters of the 38th district, who would be denied representation in the Senate for some unspecified period of time.
It’s not the job of legislators to determine the legality of an election. Nor is it the job of legislators to decide what the remedy should be for an election that did violate the law. That’s the job of the courts.”
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