“I think primaries are a waste of money.” — Ohio Republican Party Chairman Robert Bennett, trying to engineer a challenger-free race.

I can see why Robert Bennett is so uncomfortable with democracy. When Republican candidates have to spar with each other for a slot on a ballot, they can get pretty dog-gone nasty.

In the Republican race to fill a slot for the November 2006 House election in Southern Ohio’s 18th District, the daggers have come out. Joy Padgett, who won her current position as State Senator by bizarrely suggesting that Terry Anderson was “soft on terrorism” for personally confronting his Hezbollah captors, is clearly upset that her attempt to be anointed as the Republican candidate for election didn’t work. And with good reason: her six competitors are dredging up aspects of her past that just don’t look so good.

Chief among Padgett’s attackers is James Brodbelt Harris, a financial analyst from Zanesville who would like to take as many primary votes away from Padgett as possible. Harris has written a grammatically-challenged (”the Attorney General Petro opinion”) and often distracted essay that nonetheless documents some troubling aspects of Joy Padgett’s financial history:

Padgett is not professionally qualified to represent Republicans or Ohioans in Congress, though she and her backers tout her incumbency and local connections among party officials.

A million-dollar deadbeat and bankrupt, Padgett is insolvent and has recently defaulted on SBA loans guaranteed by the U.S. Government, Small Business Administration, and defaulted on other debts, totaling over $1,000,000, and now creditors or taxpayers must pay for her defaults.

It is very good that the U.S. Government offers liberal and generous bankruptcy protection, and all Ohioans are happy that Padgett will likely keep hundreds of thousands of dollars of assets including her home, personal property, three cars, mutual funds, insurance policies, retirement accounts, corporate bonds, and generous state employee pension plans, totaling several hundred thousand dollars. (Bankruptcy previously was too harsh, and early in American history bankrupts, like felons, were actually disenfranchised, with serious penalties like physical earmarks or branding with T for “Thief”, and these laws were terrible. Under English law in colonial America, bankruptcy was thought to be a capital crime, and even today in England, a bankrupt may not apparently serve as a member of Parliament, which is too harsh a legal prohibition).

Still, bankruptcy is not a badge of honor and it is an ethical and professional disqualification from representing Ohio Republicans and taxpayers in Congress. Padgett blames the economy, but in 2004 she signed and guaranteed an SBA loan for 15 years at a low interest rate, and has now personally defaulted on her liabilities and shafted creditors and governments, leaving taxpayers at risk to pay for her failures.

If business has been going well for decades, then how, as Treasurer of her half-owned corporation, did she spend in two years three quarters of a million dollars in taxpayer guaranteed SBA loans?

If business in 2004 in Ohio was going badly, then why did she borrow money under a huge SBA loan and put U.S. Taxpayers on the hook for paying for her losses?

Presumably, the approval of the 2004 SBA loan was on the up and up, but who approved the loan and why did she decide to borrow money during a difficult, mean-spirited 2004 campaign for State Senate, when she was otherwise occupied and busy brutally attacking another candidate who was a victim of Hezbollah terrorists?

Come now, Mr. Harris. Why don’t you tell us what you really think?

The Buckeye State Blog provides some independent confirmation of Harris’ claims, quoting a Zanesville Times Recorder of June 15 — just weeks before Padgett was hand-picked by the Ohio Republican Party to run for Congress:

Tuesday night they were informed Don’s business and personal bank accounts had been seized and on Wednesday afternoon a representative from JP Morgan Chase Bank, formerly known as Bank One, walked through the front door on Main Street and took over the business….

The couple knew they were in trouble with the business about six years ago, Sen. Padgett said. But, they hoped and hoped the economy would turn around and they would be able to make the business what it once was.

“But, the economy just wouldn’t let us,” Sen. Padgett (R-Coshocton) said. “We believed the bank believed in us because it kept lending us money and they don’t do that if they don’t believe. But, the economy just never turned around.”

Will Joy Padgett try to run the nation like she’s run her career — busting budgets and attacking victims of terrorists? What will Padgett’s opponents find next? And how long will it take before she blows her top and starts returning fire?

Get the popcorn ready and make your potty run now. This one’s going to be fun to watch.