A legal challenge against two candidates’ candidacies to the Crescent Springs City Council, Carol McGowan and Chad Longbons, has failed on appeal.
The decision was delivered by Appeals Judges Sara Combs, Kelly Easton and Jeff Taylor on Nov. 6 and stems from a legal challenge, which alleged that Longbons and McGowan had failed to adhere to laws regulating the process of registering as candidates for office and should, therefore, be disqualified from running in the general election.
As LINK nky reported in August, the suit dates back to the end of June when city resident Robert Flaherty alleged that Longbons and McGowan had violated legal procedures around petitioning to run for office. Kentucky law requires people running for local office to gather at least two signatures from registered voters in the area where they’re running to be considered official candidates.
Flaherty’s initial motion pointed to a section in Kentucky law that states, “if any person joins in nominating, by petition, more than one nominee for any office to be filed, he or she shall be counted as a petitioner for the candidate whose petition is filed first.”
Longbon’s, McGowan’s and Patrick Hackett’s, another candidate who formerly sat on the council, petitions all contain signatures from Deborah Noe, yet another former council member and Hackett’s wife. Each petition holds only one other signature. Hackett’s petition contains McGowan’s, and both Longbon’s and McGowan’s contain Hackett’s.
Court documents indicate that Hackett filed his paperwork before the other candidates, so Flaherty’s motion argued that Noe’s signature on the remaining petitions was invalid. As such, the suit contends that McGowan and Longbons failed to follow the prerequisite requirements for candidacy and that their names should not appear on the November ballot.
In the legal battle that ensued, attorneys argued over whether language in the relevant part of Kentucky law fell into one of two legal categories: directory and mandatory requirements of a law. Mandatory requirements are essential to the legal process they relate to. If one breaks a mandatory requirement, it delegitimizes the entire process. A directory requirement is more like a guideline, so breaking it doesn’t necessarily undermine the legal process in question.
Longbon’s and McGowan’s answer to Flaherty, which they filed on July 15, argued that the signature requirement is directory. They cite cases from throughout Kentucky’s history in an effort to rebut Flaherty’s claim.
For instance, one case from 1936, Skaggs v. Fyffe, argues “if a statute simply provides that certain acts or things shall be done within a particular time or in a particular manner, but does not declare or indicate that their performance is essential to the validity of the election, they will be regarded as directory if they do not affect the actual merits of the election.”
Other cases were cited as well, indicating that this is not the first time something like this has happened in Kentucky.
Flaherty fired back on July 26, where he argued that the wording of the statute is too unambiguous to be considered directory, citing other Kentucky cases to make his argument.
Pulling from one 2009 case, MPM Fin. Group, Inc. v. Morton, Flaherty’s attorney argues, “when the words of a statute are clear and unambiguous and express the legislative intent, there is no room for construction or interpretation and the statute must be given its effect as written.’”
Moreover, the response states, “The words in the last sentence of [the law] are clear and unambiguous, and nothing in the context of that statute provides otherwise. Accordingly, the word ‘shall’ in the last sentence of [the law] must be interpreted as mandatory unless the legislative intent is that it should be interpreted as directory.”
Judge Kathy Lape, who was assigned to the case, wasn’t convinced by Flaherty’s arguments.
In a judgment order from Aug. 1, Lape writes that the intent of the law “is that candidates seeking election are to be nominated by a prescribed number of eligible voters from his/her jurisdiction” and that Kentucky law has generally favored allowing candidacies to continue whenever possible.
Lape writes elsewhere in her judgment the relevant law “does not state a candidate will be disqualified if one of his/her petitioners nominates more than one candidate.”
Flaherty did not accept this and filed a motion asking Lape to reconsider her judgment on Aug. 8. At a hearing on Monday, Aug. 12, which was attended only by the parties’ attorneys, Lape upheld her original judgment, overruling Flaherty’s motion.
Flaherty appealed the decision a few days later, but the appeals judges agreed with the lower court’s decision that the statutory requirement was directory, rather than mandatory.
“After careful review, we hold that the nominating petitioner ‘counting’ requirement of [the law] is directory in nature,” write the appeals judges. “We further hold that the Candidates substantially complied with the statute. Deborah Noe served as a petitioner on more than one candidate’s nominating petition, but it is undisputed that she is registered to vote and is an eligible voter in the general election for the office of Crescent Springs City Council.”
Neither Longbons nor Hackett won their election bids earlier this month, but McGowan earned the third-highest number of votes from Crescent Springs residents.
Flaherty in a phone call with LINK nky described the whole situation as “water under the bridge,” suggesting that he didn’t intend to escalate the case again.
“The candidates that won the election, I’m pleased with,” Flaherty said.
When LINK nky first wrote about this story in August, Flaherty was hesitant to talk about his motivations for bringing the suit, much to the chagrin of the defendants, who were unsure why he had spent so much time and money on legal proceedings over what they viewed as a technicality.
This was also not the first time Flaherty had brought legal action against Crescent Springs or its candidates. In 2023, he filed a complaint with the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office alleging the city had failed to comply with open meetings laws for not releasing annual budget documents to him before they’d been presented to the city council. The Attorney General denied his complaint.
When asked about his motivations again, Flaherty replied, “Their [the candidates] filing wasn’t very transparent.”
Later in the conversation, Flaherty stated that “people need to know about the democratic process, the election process and transparency,” but declined to comment further.
McGowan wasn’t buying it.
“It’s not about transparency,” McGowan said.
“He thinks he’s got to police council,” McGowan added, saying she believed Flaherty thought certain council members, including herself, had fallen under the (undue) influence of Hackett.
“He comes to council almost every time, and he just stirs the pot,” McGowan said. “He’s an unhappy person.”
McGowan believed that Flaherty had been funneling money to certain candidates, but this was not discernible from candidate financial declarations on the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance. Most candidates declared $0 in both expenditures and contributions to their campaigns. Bob Mueller, who won the most votes, did not file with the registry at all in 2024 (or, at the very least, his information for the 2024 election is not displayed on the registry’s website).
Longbons, who has not yet responded to LINK nky’s follow-up inquiries, called the whole ordeal a “150-page waste of time” and “a prime example of why good people don’t want to serve in public office” when he spoke with LINK in August.