Tim Sharp—an America First “MAGA” candidate in Flagler County, Florida—has filed a lawsuit against Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd and the Florida Division of Elections after allegedly being unjustly bumped from the ballot.
Sharp, who was running for the Florida House of Representatives, was disqualified from the Aug. 23 Florida primary despite completing all candidate requirements. The state elections department told Sharp he was disqualified because his qualifying check wasn’t labeled as his official campaign account, but Sharp disputes this claim.
On June 17, 2022, Sharp hand-delivered a check for his campaign qualifying fee to the state elections department. According to the image of the check, it was written from his primary campaign account at Middlesex Federal Savings.
Not Qualified
Sharp insists he was told by the elections employee who accepted his qualifying check that everything was in order and that they would update their website later that night to show that he had qualified. Sharp was stunned to find later that night that the website showed he had not qualified. The following Monday, Sharp made frantic phone calls and sent a flurry of emails to the division of elections, trying to find out what went wrong. He received no response. On June 22, Sharp drove for three hours back to Tallahassee, only to be told that he had been disqualified because his check did not say “campaign account” on it and the account it was drawn from was not a campaign account.“What really makes it ironic is that I physically waited in the parking lot in Tallahassee until after 12 p.m. in case there was an issue so if I got a phone call I could run in and correct it,” Sharp told The Epoch Times. However, Sharp was never contacted by the Division of Elections with notification that there was a problem with his check, nor did they provide him an opportunity to rectify the issue.
“Initially I thought, maybe that is the rule and I just missed it,” Sharp confessed, adding that “the rules are very convoluted and anything the government does becomes a mess.”
As a first-time candidate, Sharp thought it was possible he had made a mistake. Feeling defeated, he got back in his car and started his three-hour drive back home. An hour into the drive he started getting text messages from his advisers. They had found records from several other candidates who had also paid their qualification fee with a check that did not say “campaign account” on it.
“That’s when I drove back to Tallahassee to physically talk to Donna Brown, because I wanted to show her the evidence I had,” Sharp said, referring to the bureau chief for election records at the Florida Division of Elections (DOE). “But she refused to speak with me because she said she didn’t have time.”
Jessico Bowman, one of Sharp’s campaign advisers, was with Sharp when Brown dismissed him.
Other Qualifying Checks
According to the Florida elections website, Randy Ross, a Republican candidate for Florida House District 39, filed his qualifying paperwork on May 16, 2022. His qualifying check, received by the department on June 16, 2022, did not have the words “campaign account” printed or written on it.
Moreover, the check was written from an account at Harris Bank in Chicago. According to his campaign bank account records, Ross designated TD Bank in Orlando, Florida, as his official campaign account. Ultimately, Ross lost his primary bid to fellow Republican Doug Bankson.
Denali Charres, a Democrat-turned-Republican running for the Florida Senate in District 10, also submitted her qualifying fee without the words “campaign account” printed or hand-written on the check. She was not disqualified.
According to Sharp, after discovering that he had been disqualified for reasons the Florida Division of Elections excused for other candidates, he decided to pursue legal action. However, while he had contacted several attorneys in Florida who told him they would take his case, he said they strung him along for a couple of weeks before they “came back and said they didn’t have the manpower.”
“That’s why there was such a delay in actually filing the case,” Sharp explained. “Because we didn’t actually file until about 90 days after the primary was over.”
The Lawsuit
The complaint (pdf), filed Sept. 9, 2022, in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, specifically names Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd and Donna Brown, bureau chief for election records at the Florida Division of Elections (DOE).As secretary of state, Byrd oversees the DOE.
“Under Florida law, the DOE regulates the qualification of candidates and the entry of their names on the ballots that voters receive for state elections. Without the approval of the DOE and its designation that a candidate is qualified, a candidate’s name cannot appear on the ballot.”
Despite the admonitions in the supervisor’s handbook issued by the DOE, “Defendant Byrd’s DOE disqualified Sharp as a candidate after wrongfully determining that the check for the qualification fee that he submitted was not drawn upon a campaign account solely because the naming information on the face of the check referred to a business instead of a campaign committee,” the lawsuit states.
As bureau chief of election records, Brown “was the primary official responsible for the wrongful determination that Sharp should be disqualified based on his qualification fee check and the wrongful decision to refuse to correct the error once Sharp brought it to the DOE’s attention.”
According to Page 2 of the supervisors handbook, “the qualifying officer’s duties are ministerial in nature. This means that the qualifying officer may not determine whether the contents of the qualifying papers are true or accurate.”
Questions regarding “the truth or accuracy of matters stated in a candidate’s qualifying papers becomes a judicial question if and when an appropriate challenge is made in the courts.”
According to Sharp, bumping candidates from the ballot isn’t the only way the establishment eliminates unwanted challengers.
“One crazy thing is there were several other candidates around the state who were actually propositioned to drop out of the race,” Sharp disclosed. “I’m talking grass-roots, constitutional conservative candidates.”
The ‘Righteous Fight’
Among the documents on the DOE website for Wuertz, his qualifying paperwork was received on July 26, 2021. Due to redistricting, Wuertz redesignated his campaign for state representative for District 38 on March 16, 2022.
This move placed Wuertz in a primary race against a Republican incumbent named David Smith.
“I ran on a very strong conservative platform,” Wuertz told The Epoch Times. Like Sharp, Wuertz was “tired of ‘go along to get along’ Republicans” who float on moderate campaigns and avoid bold commitments just to get elected. Shortly after switching to District 38, Wuertz said he was contacted by “someone in GOP leadership” and invited to meet for breakfast.
During the two-hour meeting, the GOP negotiator, “sent by order of the House Campaigns Committee,” tried hard to convince Wuertz to drop out of the race.
The man reminded Wuertz that Smith was a powerhouse with “a lot of money” and a lot of support from PACs, lobbyists, and the corporate establishment.
Again, Wuertz declined to drop out.
The party representative then played the “take one for the team” card, Wuertz said, pressuring Wuertz to “think about what’s best for the party.” They could even move him to another district “for a future run” and slide him “$25,000 or $50,000 in campaign funds,” the man allegedly said.
“I was thinking, this is like something out of a Mafia movie,” Wuertz laughed. “So I looked at his face, thanked him for breakfast, and then I said no.”
“When you get involved in this righteous fight and you’re a true America First conservative, they really stack the deck against you,” Wuertz said, adding that despite his election loss, he and his wife Valerie are “continuing the fight.” Wuertz serves as precinct committeeman and sergeant at arms for the Seminole County Republican Executive Committee. Valerie serves as the legislative chair for the Seminole County chapter of Moms for Liberty.
‘It’s a Strategy the Establishment Uses’
“I think what you’re seeing is that establishment politicians don’t want true constitutional conservative candidates in office,” Sharp said, adding that his race “was pretty quiet until Anthony Sabatini got involved” and came out to publicly endorse him.
Sabatini said he’s aware of how the establishment got rid of Sharp.
“They did this with a lot of people this year,” Sabatini told The Epoch Times. “It’s a strategy the establishment uses. They find some technicality in their paperwork—their notary was from a different county, or the check was from a separate account, or the postage date was on the wrong date—and they disqualify them on these different technicalities. But it’s not legal. But they know that most people don’t have the time or the money to file lawsuits so they just kick people off the ballot that they don’t want challenging their preferred candidate. But if the preferred candidate makes a mistake they'll just fix it administratively.”
Sharp also remembered how U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) allegedly tried to derail Sabatini’s congressional primary campaign.
“The establishment buys who they can, cancels who they can’t, and then comes at whoever is left standing,” Sharp asserted.
Sharp may have been removed from the ballot, but he’s fighting back legally, and he said the Republican Party hasn’t seen the last of him.
