Curiously Certain: Barnes Campaign Treasurer Voted In Four GOP Primaries Before August 7th

By Kleinheider Posted on September 25, 2008 at 4:47 pm

An interesting email landed yesterday afternoon in the inboxes of the seven GOP Senate Committee Chairs headlining a fundraiser for uprooted incumbent Democratic Senator Rosalind Kurita.

The sender, Elizabeth Klein, who identifies herself in the email as legal assistant and campaign treasurer to Tim Barnes, the Democratic nominee in state Senate District 22, writes in a very unfavorable tone towards the seven GOP Senators for their show of solidarity with Kurita.

[Senator Rosalind Kurita] has lied, cheated, threatened, manipulated and forced her way through her political career with unbelievable gall and arrogance—she has no known morals or ethical boundaries regarding her treatment of people—and she has, seemingly, gone out of her way to slander and degrade the good name of her opponent when she didn’t accomplish her goal of winning by whatever means necessary, however illegal.

So, in America we don’t steal an election, huh? Well Rosalind Kurita should know—she certainly tried to do it herself and because of her illegal actions was unsuccessful.

I am Elisabeth D. Klein. I have been legal assistant to Tim Barnes for the past seven years. I am also his political treasurer. And I am a Republican.

And indeed, she is a Republican. According to records obtained from the Montgomery County Election Commission, Tim Barnes legal assistant for seven years, Elizabeth D. Klein, voted in no fewer than four Republican primaries dating back to the year 2000. Her first venture into the Democratic primary since that time was this August.

A bona fide Republican, if you will.

Of course, the main argument that her boss, Tim Barnes, made in contesting Rosalind Kurita’s win in the August 7th primary was that there was a coordinated effort to get Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary.

As evidence of the GOP’s success in this conspiracy, numbers were distributed by the Barnes campaign to show that folks normally voting in Republican primaries voted in August in the 22nd state Senate District primary in what they saw as extraordinary numbers.

The assumption was that these historically Republican voters who chose to vote in a Democratic Party primary this year were doing so to vote for Kurita as part of a coordinated effort by Republicans. An unprovable assumption, of course, but one that was accepted at face value.

It now seems that at least one of those “Republican” statistics was, in fact, a vote for Tim Barnes.

When reached for comment, Klein did not see any inconsistency in the arguments Barnes made in contesting his primary defeat and her own voting history.

“It’s not that we didn’t want Republicans voting in the primary,” explained Klein. “We just didn’t want, and state law is against, the Republican Party interfering actively in the primary, telling people who to vote for. We wanted people to vote their conscience.”

Tim Barnes in speaking with Post Politics echoed the words of his campaign treasurer.

“The amount of Republican participation in the primary was really more of a supporting argument based on the concerted effort by party leaders,” stated Barnes.

“I don’t have a problem with individuals switching primaries based on their personal choices, personal reasons. I certainly had Republican friends voting for me,” Barnes explained. “At issue here was the concerted effort by party leaders, not the choice of individual voters.”

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Tags: Concerted effort, Elizabeth D. Klein, Elizabeth Klein, Jim Kyle, Rosalind Kurita, Tim Barnes