I put together this recap of Friday’s hearing from my notes of the hearing that lasted over four hours. When we get a transcript, we will give you a more detailed account with quotes.
Last Friday, Judge Jennifer Frydrychowicz denied Bruce Childers’ emergency motion for injunctive relief so he could face off against Escambia County Supervisor of Elections Robert Bender in the August primary.
Childers, a retired attorney and husband of County Clerk Pam Childers, was initially reported as having qualified to be a candidate on the Supervisor of Elections (SOE) website and in local media. However, SOE staff later discovered Childers didn’t submit the required Form 6, which provides full and public financial disclosure of his net worth, assets, liabilities, and income. Therefore, he didn’t qualify to be placed on the ballot.
For a week, Bruce and Pam Childers repeatedly said SOE officials told them Bruce needed only to submit the photo of Form 6’s page 1 on Pam’s laptop to their office. They framed the disqualification as “disenfranchising the people of this county from their opportunity to vote for the supervisor of elections that they feel is best suited to represent them.”
Bender refused to engage with the couple or the media. He wanted to wait to tell his office’s side until the emergency hearing on June 28.
Pam and Bruce were the only witnesses their attorney, Ed Fleming, called to testify. Pam provided more details than Bruce on how they went to the SOE office twice—the first time to submit their Form 6 and other paperwork to become candidates and the second time to pay the qualifying fee after Bruce opened his campaign account. She talked about how she showed Bruce’s Form 6 on his laptop during the first visit and was told that was fine because it had a watermark on the page.
Bender’s attorney, George Levesque, relied on video of the Childers filing Bruce’s papers from a camera labeled “Mosh Pit East,” which I assumed was so named by former Supervisor of Elections David Stafford, and the testimony of Daniel and Vote-by-Mail Coordinator Keelie Sekerka. He also had the SOE office’s IT coordinator verify the video’s authenticity.
The video showed Pam didn’t have her laptop during the first visit to the SOE office. Fleming tried to brush it off as an insignificant lapse in Pam’s memory, but Levesque used it to show Pam was an unreliable witness.
Sekerka told the couple on the second visit that the Form 6 photo needed to be a complete financial disclosure statement. She needed the three other pages of the form, especially the fourth page with the signature. Sekerka told Pam the form could not be printed from an Apple iPad, and the website warns users of the issues with using Apple products to complete the form. She told them to print it from another computer and email it to her. Sekerka even offered to give them her email address, but Pam said she had it.
Daniel confirmed Sekerka’s testimony. They assumed Pam would email Form 6, so they marked the task completed on the internal candidate checklist and published he had qualified. Fleming quizzed them about why they did it, and both were sorry for assuming the email would be sent.
Daniel and Sekerka testified Bender played no role in listing Bruce as qualified. Daniel said it was her decision to later disqualify Bruce.
Judge Frydrychowicz found Daniel and Sekerka’s testimonies and the video “most compelling.” She said Pam Childers and the two SOE employees made incorrect assumptions. Pam assumed she didn’t need to email the complete Form 6 when she saw Bruce was listed as qualified, and they assumed Pam would email it.
However, the judge saw that the laws were clear: the candidate is responsible for the documents submitted. If the Florida Legislature wanted to give judges the power to overrule the SOE decisions, the law would need to be changed. She denied Bruce’s motion.
#notreadbypamchilders
