FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE    October 18, 2005  

Enraged Over Elections Board Decision to Remove Brown from Ballot, Supporters Intend to March Through Brunswick

 While Elaine Brown files her Superior Court appeal of the Glynn County Elections Board’s decision last Friday to disqualify her as a candidate for mayor and as a voter in the November 8, 2005, municipal elections, her supporters intend overwhelming the streets of Brunswick in protest of that decision. 

The decision against Elaine, slated to become the City’s first black and first woman mayor, has stirred rage in much of black Brunswick, as typified by the remark of one supporter who yelled out at the Board at the hearing, “I hope you’re all dead in the morning!”  Others feel that taking away Brown’s right to run and vote disenfranchises voters themselves.

 In her appeal, Elaine will argue that, among other things, the so-called challengers, Howard Buie and Alice Norman, who admitted they did not know her at all, made their false claims under the sponsorship of mayoral candidate Bryan Thompson’s backers, including Mayor Brad Brown and the principals of Blueprint Brunswick, Inc.—Indeed, Buie acknowledged he was a “friend” of Brad Brown, and that his wife was a “re-enactor” affiliated with Brad Brown’s Sons of Confederate Veterans.—Their charge that Elaine did not live in Brunswick for the required one-year period was not proven, and it was overcome by Elaine’s showing at the hearing that she was a Brunswick registered voter and resident as of November 5, 2004.  The Board’s decision, however, was virtually a verbatim rendering of the arguments made by the challengers’ attorney, John Albert Dow III—whose purchase of a property contiguous to his law office was recently facilitated by a condemnation proceeding initiated by Mayor Brad Brown.  Elaine will also show that the Board’s hearing and process were rife with due process and Elections Code violations—as well as criminal violations.