Will Muscogee school board candidate be able to run after challenge? Here’s the decision
A challenge to the qualification of a candidate for public office in Columbus was decided Thursday.
The Muscogee County Board of Elections and Registration unanimously voted to deny the challenge, based on residency, and uphold the Rev. Walter Taylor’s candidacy for the District 7 seat on the school board.
The meeting was conducted via video conference due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Elections Director Nancy Boren said the board members relied on the documents Taylor presented: his driver’s license and utility bills.
The board members participating in the meeting were chairwoman Margaret Jenkins, Linda Parker, U.D. Roberts and Diane Scrimpshire. Eleanor White was absent.
Questions about Taylor’s residency have circulated since he filed two months ago the paperwork to be a candidate.
Taylor, senior pastor of The Life Church of Columbus and director of The Life Center, wrote 604 Front Avenue as his address on the document he filed with the elections board to qualify for the June 9 nonpartisan election against incumbent Cathy Williams.
Susan Berry, a Front Avenue neighbor of the residence in question, filed the challenge three weeks later.
To be a school board member, candidates must be a resident of that district for at least six months before the election.
The L-E reported March 6, the day the qualifying period ended, that Lexis.com lists Taylor’s current residence as being in Phenix City since November 2016.
Taylor told the L-E then, “My wife owns a home in Phenix City. … I don’t have any residence in Phenix City.”
Taylor acknowledged his wife has a child that attends school in Phenix City, but he said his two children attend school in Muscogee County.
Columbus Historic District neighbors told the L-E that 604 Front Avenue routinely is advertised and used as an Airbnb and that they rarely have seen Taylor there.
“We became aware of this when there were several loud parties,” Berry wrote in her challenge. “We quickly learned that he was renting out this house for weddings and parties. I personally talked to a group leaving one morning who had been there for a wedding. When approached by two neighbors concerning the noise, he claimed he had purchased the home. We assumed this to be true, but later found otherwise.”
Taylor told the L-E, “Because of my travels, I have rented out my home for Airbnb while I’m away, but my residence is 604 Front Avenue.”
“We know Mr. Taylor does not live in this home as his primary residence as it is usually vacant, except for when there are visitors, usually on the weekends,” Berry wrote.
Taylor said he has lived at 604 Front Avenue for “a year or so” but declined to say whether anyone else lives with him there.
“My utility bills and my driver’s license and my voter registration all reflect my home address, where I live,” he said.
When a Ledger-Enquirer reporter visited 604 Front Avenue on March 6, nobody answered the doorbell. On the doorknob, Liberty Utilities had left a notification that service was discontinued for lack of payment.
“I will say that since the article was published and he removed his AirBnb ad, the home primarily sits vacant,” Berry wrote in her challenge. “I have no doubt that the utilities are in his name, and that he may have spent a night or two there, but mainly the home remains empty or with weekend visitors. … I feel strongly that an individual who is misleading and misrepresenting himself is using this information to apply for an office where truth and ethical conduct is expected and required.”
Voters may file a challenge against a candidate’s qualification for two weeks after the qualifying period ends. That deadline was March 20, but the elections board has until the election date to challenge a candidate’s qualification.
The property record on the Columbus Consolidated Government’s website for 604 Front Avenue lists Cargill Wright Investments as the owner.
Co-owner Jack Wright told the L-E Thursday, “I’m aware of what’s going on, but the management is taking care of it,” he said. “From what I understand, they renew in July or the end of June, and they were told they can either leave early or they would not be renewed. . . . All I know is that I heard they were not renewing because the guy has not handled his lease right.”
The L-E didn’t reach Taylor for comment Thursday.
Williams told the L-E in an email after the board’s decision, “I don’t really have any reaction; it is what I assumed would happen.”
Asked to explain the reason for that assumption, she said, “Residency is very difficult to disprove.”
Williams added, “I’d like to thank the Board of Elections. This volunteer position is often a difficult, if not impossible, and often thankless job. I appreciate each of them.”
This story was originally published May 7, 2020 at 2:59 PM.
