Bruce Childers, the husband of County Clerk Pam Childers, expressed his displeasure with the News Journal over the county hiring GrayRobinson to represent Supervisor of Elections Robert Bender in Childers’ lawsuit against the elections office.
On “Real News with Rick Outzen” this morning, Bender didn’t apologize for defending Florida’s election laws.
“We needed someone who had experience with election law. It is a specialty, but they’re aware of other cases that have happened. Of course, they’ve tried election law cases. We’ve gone a long time without having them. As I would say, we have a great county attorney staff and I did utilize them as much as I could,” Bender said.
When Childers’ attorney, Ed Fleming, tried to pressure Bender to allow Bruce on the ballot and threatened a lawsuit if the election supervisor didn’t do it, Bender asked for GrayRobinson’s legal advice and didn’t really engage them until after the suit had been filed.
“Mr. Childers didn’t turn in the last three pages of the form, including the signature page,” Bender said. “So to think that I had discretion and just saying, ‘Well turn it in after the deadline’ is quite shocking actually to someone running for the position and that you’re not going to follow the law and that he’s an attorney that knows and understands the law, but you want a pass because you couldn’t do what we asked you to do in sending the rest of the form.”
He added, “So really this is $50,000 that the Childers cost the people of Escapia County.”
Pam and Bruce Childers repeatedly attack Bender’s character and integrity before the hearing. Bender pointed out again that he stayed out of the qualification process regarding Childers to avoid any appearance of a conflict.
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