He is Now Waging Write-in Campaign Against Baldwin
Mike Barnes dropped his lawsuit against the Greenvile County Republican Party, Friday after the Judge failed to appear for the scheduled court session. He immediately began campaigning as a write-in candidate for the District 18 seat on Greenville County Council.
The case was scheduled to go before the judge at 9 am. on Friday. About seven minutes before 9 Stephen Brown, attorney for the Greenville County Republican Party, received a phone call at the courthouse informing him that the case would be rescheduled with another judge because the scheduled judge was not present.
Near the end of the day, Barnes withdrew his case. He informed The Times Examiner Monday that he dropped the case out of frustration with the court system.
Earlier in the year, Barnes challenged incumbent Joe Baldwin for the District 18 County Council Seat in the Republican Primary. Barnes got the most votes in that contest and would have been the winner, except that he, like many other candidates, was was caught in the State Supreme Court decision that disqualified hundreds of candidates in South Carolina because they did not file an ethics document precisely as required by law.
Barnes was in the process of attempting to prove that he had filed all the proper documents, when the Greenville County Democratic Party sued the Republicans, claiming Barnes, and two senatorial candidates Ross Turner and Jane Kizer, were illegally certified as candidates.
The Judge cleared Turner and Kizer, but Barnes was unable to prove that he had filed the proper documents.
Apparently learning that a case in the low country involving different circumstances had resulted in a judge directing a new primary, Barnes filed suit against the Greenville County Republican Party asking for a new primary. In the meantime, Joe Baldwin, the incumbent has been certified as the Republican candidate going into the November General Election.
Stephen Brown did not think Barnes had a case, but prepared, just to be safe, because in recent times, Judges sometimes make their own law. No one could have predicted the State Supreme Court decision that disrupted more than two hundred candidates campaigns and disenfranchised thousands of voters.
Regardless of the merits of the case, Barnes withdrew and is now engaged in running a 30 day write-in campaign against Baldwin. Nothing positive resulted from either the lawsuit by the Democrat Party or Barnes, but Greenville County Republicans are stuck with thousands of dollars in attorney fees, due to no fault of their own.
