Local & State Headlines

Commission hopeful’s petition for independent run nixed

• A petition to put Debbie Roland’s name on the ballot for Lee County commissioner in November fails.

Susan McCord

LEESBURG — Debbie Roland won’t be challenging Betty Johnson as an independent candidate on the Nov. 4 ballot for the District 2 Lee County Commission post.

Roland, the wife of District 1 Commissioner Dennis Roland, filed papers before the July 15 primary to run as an independent candidate for the District 2 seat, using a Leesburg address that was different from her husband’s listed home in rural Smithville-Chokee District 1.

But Roland, who said she’d moved into town and made it her residence last year, failed to obtain the 122 valid signatures she needed for her name to be placed on the Nov. 4 ballot, Lee Elections Supervisor Veronica Johnson said.

“When we verified and validated the signatures, she fell short,” Veronica Johnson said.

Of the 130 signatures Roland submitted, the Lee Elections Board could only validate 86 of them as registered voters in the Leesburg District — several were voters still registered in other counties, or another one of Lee’s five commission districts, Veronica Johnson said.

Roland said she thought she had some 300 signatures, then found three pages of them voided because a Notary Public who had notarized the pages also signed the petition.

“If I had had 500 million signatures,” Roland said, “I don’t think I would have done it to have suited them.”

A candidate seeking to run as an independent needs signatures from 5 percent of the number of registered voters in a district at the time of its last election to get his or her name placed on the ballot in the general election.

Roland, who plastered her Leesburg home with Norman Hoover signs before the July 15 general primary, said she was running to keep Betty Johnson, Lee County’s tax commissioner, from being elected to the County Commission.

Betty Johnson defeated Hoover 673-368 in the Republican Primary, and with no Democratic candidates — and now no independent candidate — to face on Nov. 4, is the presumptive commissioner-elect.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” Betty Johnson said Tuesday. “I don’t want to get negative. What can I say? I’ve been elected, and I’m going to proudly serve.”

Betty Johnson would take office as a commissioner in January, after she retires from the tax office in December.

But the contest is not over for Roland, whose beef with Betty Johnson stems from the experience her daughter had as an employee in the Tax Commissioner’s Office.

Roland’s daughter recently filed a complaint, obtained by The Albany Herald, with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The complaint alleges Betty Johnson discriminated against the 28-year-old woman because of her illness, a charge Betty Johnson recently denied.

Roland said her daughter’s experience as an employee, hired when Betty Johnson informed her husband of an opening, was such that she does not want Betty Johnson to hold elected office in the county.

“I’m hoping that EEOC is going to stop it before November,” Roland said.

Lee County Administrator Alan Ours said he had no comment on the validity of the EEOC complaint, but said his office was cooperating by providing information to the agency.

While she may be out as a commissioner, Roland said she might look into public service in Leesburg, which has a coming election to fill the seat of Jim Quinn, a councilman recently elected the city’s mayor.

“I know you can tell that I get extremely passionate about things that involve other people,” she said.

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