Jennifer Lee Brunner (born February 5,1957)[citation needed] is an American attorney,politician,and judge. She is currently an associate justice of the Ohio Supreme Court,a position to which she was elected after serving as a judge on the Ohio Tenth District Court of Appeals. A member of the Democratic Party,Brunner also served one term as Ohio Secretary of State from 2007 to 2011 and unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010.[1] Prior to being elected Secretary of State,Brunner worked in the Ohio Secretary of State's Office and served as a County Judge in Franklin County,Ohio.
In 2022,she was defeated by fellow associate justice Sharon Kennedy in an election to become Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court.[2]
Following Supreme Court elections being made partisan in 2021,as of 2025 Brunner is the only statewide elected Democrat in Ohio.
Career
Brunner was born in Springfield,Ohio and raised in Columbus,Ohio.[3] She earned a B.A. in sociology-gerontology,cum laude,from Miami University in 1978 and a J.D. from Capital University Law School with honors in 1982.[1][4][5] Subsequently,Brunner worked in the Ohio Secretary of State's Office as a deputy director and legislative counsel to the Ohio General Assembly during the administration of Sherrod Brown from 1983 to 1987,working with state legislators on finance-reporting laws for campaign committees and laws for election procedures.[6][7][8]
Private practice
From 1988 to 2000,Brunner maintained a statewide law practice focusing on election law and campaign finance.[5][7][9] During that time she also briefly served as a member of the Franklin County Board of Elections.[10]
Brunner litigated various ballot propositions in her private practice,including propositions involving alcohol sales,tax levies,rezoning,and gambling.[11][12][13][14] Brunner also represented several Ohio politicians in disputes involving redistricting and false statements in campaign literature.[15][16][17]
Early political career
In the early 1990s,Brunner served on the Ohio Student Loan Commission,a nine-member group that guarantees loans for college students.[18] In 1995,Brunner applied for a vacant seat on the Columbus City Council,but was not selected.[19] In 2000,Brunner was elected to an unexpired term on the Franklin County Common Pleas Court.[20] She was reelected in 2002.[21][22] In 2004,Brunner,along with other Court of Common Pleas judges,created a separate drug court to reduce addiction-related recidivism.[23]
Brunner (2006-03-22)
Brunner resigned from the Court on September 1,2005 to run for Ohio Secretary of State.[24] She ran unopposed in the May 2,2006 Democratic Primary.[25] Her campaign received support from the Secretary of State Project,a progressive political action committee.[26] On November 7,2006,she defeated Republican Greg Hartmann by a 55%–40% margin,taking office on January 8,2007.[27]
Secretary of State
During her tenure as Secretary of State,Brunner took several measures intended to improve election security and expand access to voting,including redistributing voting machines to precincts with long voting wait times and providing a higher number of paper ballots to precincts.[28] Brunner also established the Voting Right Institute (VRI) to improve voter access to elections in Ohio. The VRI instituted a "Grads Vote" program which supplies voter registration forms to all graduating high school seniors,partnered with the U.S. Postal Service to include voter registration forms in government moving packets,and partnered with the Overseas Vote Foundation to improve online absentee ballot applications for overseas and military voters.[1] She also worked to shield social security information and other private information from public view for millions of online records and coordinated with the Ohio General Assembly to prevent the filing of private information.[1]
In September 2007,Brunner announced plans to identify and correct security and reliability problems with voting machines in advance of March 4,2008 Ohio Democratic and Republican primaries.[29] In particular,she expressed concern about local election officials taking voting machines home with them in the days before an election,and she ordered bipartisan transport teams for voting machines and proscribed storage conditions.[30] She also advocated the replacement of all Ohio voting machines with paper ballots counted by optical scanning machines,[31] although the Ohio General Assembly did not provide funding to switch to paper ballots for the November 2008 general election.[28]
During the 2008 presidential primaries,Ohio experienced record voter turnout,but the primary was marred by paper ballot shortages,bomb threats,ice storms and power failures.[32] In addition,flooding forced the relocation of some polling places in southeastern Ohio.[33] 21 precincts in the Cleveland metropolitan area were held open for an extra 90 minutes due to paper ballot shortages.[34]
Between January 1,2008 and mid-October 2008,over 666,000 Ohioans registered to vote either for the first time or with updated voter information,and over 200,000 of them provided driver's licenses or Social Security numbers that do not match government records. Many of the newly registered voters were the result of voter registration drives to register voters for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the March 4,2008 Ohio Democratic primary.[35] The voter registrations that did not match government records were challenged in federal court,on the basis that they did not comply with the federal Help America Vote Act,which mandates that states corroborate voter registration applications with government databases.[36] The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled against Brunner,deciding that extra steps must be taken to authenticate these registrants. However,that decision subsequently was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.[35]
During the 2008 general election,Ohio experienced an unintended consequence of a new statute that resulted in a brief period of overlap voting,when absentee voting has started and before the close of voter registration. This period ran from September 30 until October 6,due to the newly instituted early voting policy.[28] On August 13,2008,Brunner ordered county election board officials to establish procedures to enable voters who register to be immediately issued an absentee ballot.[37] Brunner's order was challenged in state and federal court by Ohio Republican Party officials and Republican voters,who argued that Ohio law requires voters to be registered for 30 days before they cast an absentee ballot.[38] Brunner's order ultimately was upheld by both state and federal courts.[39]
In November 2008,two supporters of Republican congressman Steve Stivers supporters sued Brunner over the validity of approximately 1,000 provisional ballots in the race for Ohio's 15th congressional district,which at the time of recounting had a 149-vote margin with and 27,000 absentee ballots still to be counted.[40][41] The case was consolidated with other cases in the United States District Court upon Brunner's request.[42] On December 5,2008,Stivers' supporters won a ruling in the Ohio Supreme Court that the 1,000 provisional ballots that lacked signatures or had names and signatures in the wrong places be thrown out.[43]
On February 17,2009,Brunner announced that she would be a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2010,[44] running against Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher for the Democratic nomination.[45] In September 2009,DSCC Chairman Bob Menendez,who supported Fisher and had been trying to clear the field for him,[46] stated he would actively work against any underfunded candidate. By February 2010,Brunner had significantly less cash on hand than Fisher or likely general election opponent Rob Portman (who would eventually win the seat),but claimed,"I only need enough money to win."[47] Polling in late 2009 and January 2010 showed Brunner to be more competitive than Fisher in a general election matchup against Portman,while Fisher and Brunner were deadlocked in Democratic primary polling.[48] Brunner ultimately lost to Fisher in the May 4,2010 party primary,55% to 45%.[49]
Following her defeat in the 2010 Senate primary,Brunner sat on several public commissions and boards. Republican Governor John Kasich appointed Brunner to a Democratic seat on the Ohio Cultural Facilities Commission in 2011,which she held until the commission's abolition in 2013.[50] In October 2012,Kasich also appointed her to the Ohio Counselor,Social Worker,Marriage and Family Therapist Board.[51] In 2013,Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman appointed Brunner to the board of the Central Ohio Transit Authority.[52]
2014 campaign for Ohio Tenth District Court of Appeals
Brunner was certified as the sole Democratic candidate running for the Ohio Tenth District Court of Appeals seat occupied by incumbent judge Amy O'Grady,who was appointed to the seat by Governor John Kasich in 2013.[53] The 2014 judicial elections were notable for the number of judges on the ballot,with The Columbus Dispatch stating that it was the first time 12 contested judicial seats would appear on the ballot in Franklin County,Ohio.[54] She was the only Democratic nominee for the appellate seat.[54][55] Brunner defeated O'Grady and was elected to a two-year term as Franklin County appeals judge unexpired term in the General Election.[56]
2020 Campaign for Ohio Supreme Court
Results by county:
Map Legend
Brunner—60–70%
Brunner—50–60%
French—50–60%
French—60–70%
In August 2019, Brunner announced her candidacy to be a justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio, challenging incumbent Judith L. French.[57] On November 3, 2020, she went on to win the general election with 55% of the vote.[58]
2022 Campaign for Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court
On June 8, 2021, Brunner announced her candidacy for Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court in the November 8, 2022, general election.[59] In a virtual news conference on September 13, 2021, Brunner released a campaign platform that includes support for a statewide criminal sentencing database, a proposal for a permanent Commission on Fairness and Equality in Ohio’s Courts and Legal System, expansion of specialized dockets like drug courts, and what the Cleveland Plain Dealer called "good-government reforms."[60] At the general election held on November 8, 2022, she was defeated by her Republican opponent, fellow associate justice Sharon Kennedy, in a landslide, winning less than 44% of the vote.[61]
International work
Brunner worked with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as a consultant on campaign finance, elections, and ballot issues in the Republic of Serbia during 2012 and 2013, assisting the Serbian Minister of Justice with judicial reform.[62] Brunner also served as an adviser to Serbian misdemeanor court judges as part of its Judicial Reform and Government Accountability project on outreach strategies to rebuild the public's confidence in elections systems and to better detect and prevent corruption in the government.[63][64]
In March 2008, Brunner was awarded the Profile in Courage Award by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for challenging the reliability of electronic voting in order to protect the right to vote in Ohio.[68]
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