Wink Hartman, a Wichita businessman and candidate for the Republican Party nomination for United States Congress from the fourth district of Kansas, has recently voted in Florida, records indicate.
Last November, acting on a tip, I telephoned the Palm Beach County Florida election office and found that both Hartman and his wife had voted in Florida’s general election and presidential preference primary election in 2008. Also, both voted in Florida’s 2006 general election.
At the time of my call, both were still listed as active voters in Florida. Sedgwick County voting records show that Mr. and Mrs. Hartman registered to vote in Sedgwick County in July, 2009.
While a person with houses in two or more cities or states might choose to call any of them his home, he can vote in only one place. That Hartman chose to vote in Florida may give Kansas voters reason to wonder which state — Kansas or Florida — he feels is his “political home.”
In 2006 and 2008 the Hartmans could have voted in Sedgwick County either in person or through the advance voting process. The election office will send ballots to out-of-state addresses.
After requests by email and telephone, Hartman and the campaign declined to comment on this matter. (See update following.)
Other candidates for this nomination and their campaign websites are Wichita businessman Jim Anderson, Wichita businessman Mike Pompeo, and Kansas Senator Jean Schodorf. Election filing records maintained by the Kansas Secretary of State indicate that Paij Rutschman of Latham has filed for the Republican Party nomination, but little is known about this candidate at this time, and no website is available.
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Update: Late in the afternoon the Hartman campaign issued a press release that accused the Pompeo campaign of engaging in “negative, personal attacks.” Hartman’s statement said “I always have and always will consider Kansas my home” and that Pompeo was “raised in California, educated on the East Coast, spent many of his professional years working at a Washington, D.C. Law-firm.”
According to Pompeo’s biography, he attended college at West Point and then Harvard Law School after serving in the U.S. Army. He worked at the Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly for three years before moving to Wichita.
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