After a nearly 10-hour hearing Monday, the Franklin County Board of Elections voted to let State Rep. Ismail Mohamed keep his voter registration address as an apartment in Franklin County.
The challenge to Mohamed's voter registration came from his opponent in the race for Ohio's District 3, which covers much of northeast Columbus, including parts of Clintonville.
Bernadine Kennedy Kent, a former Democratic state representative who won the GOP nomination as a write-in candidate, alleged that Mohamed lived at a property he owns in Delaware County and not in the district he represents.
Members of the Franklin County Board of Elections voted 3-1 to deny Kent's challenge. Meredith Freedhoff was the lone vote to sustain the challenge.
Kent told WOSU on Tuesday that she was "a bit frustrated" with the results.
"I think it's concerning, some of the things specifically that were contradictions and that were admitted under oath," Kent said of Mohamed's testimony.
Kent's attorney, Curt Hartman, got Mohamed to admit to some errors in purchase and mortgage documents for his Delaware County home. Kennedy also took issue with Mohamed's assertion that he and his significant other had bought the home at least in part to rent out as an Airbnb.
She said Mohamed may sometimes sleep at an apartment in his district, but he's paying property taxes in a wealthy part of Delaware County.
"Here in one of the districts that is considered one of the higher poverty districts, he doesn't have to pay a dime in property taxes. So, it's as if 'I can just flop here, but I can live in luxury there,'" Kent said.
Mohamed said that he's allowed to have more than one home and that plenty of other elected officials do. He called Kent's challenge of his address a "sham."
"I think it was politically motivated, very clearly," Mohamed said on Tuesday.
Many of Hartman's questions for Mohamed and his significant other, Hoda Adheys, delved into their personal lives and touched on cultural traditions and Islamic law.
"I mean it got to a point where they were asking about whether my significant other — what she wears and why her hair was out and things that were out completely outside the bounds of what (the board) was being asked to consider," Mohamed said.
Mohamed is happy that the board allowed him to keep his voter registration, but said that Kennedy seemed to succeed in what he characterized as a "smear campaign."
"I think she achieved what she was trying to accomplish, unfortunately," Mohamed said. "Have I made some mistakes? Absolutely. Were there some things that I would have done differently? Sure. But she was imputing a lot of things. Both her and her attorney were saying a lot of things completely outside the bounds to try to create this narrative, which is not there."
Kent plans to keep digging into the issue. She said she will look into whether the home owners' association for Mohamed's Delaware County property would have allowed him to rent it out as an Airbnb, among other things.
