CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio — The argument over who rode where in the Circleville Pumpkin Show’s Friday night parade has left Pickaway County. It now sits with the Internal Revenue Service.
Pickaway County Democratic Party Chair Carolyn Loxley filed a complaint with the Ohio Attorney General’s Charitable Law Section on Oct. 27 alleging the show favored Republican candidates in the parade, held during this year’s show, Oct. 21–24. Loxley has stressed that the filing is a complaint — not a lawsuit.
An attorney general’s spokesman confirmed the office received the complaint and said that because it concerns the show’s status as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the office forwarded it to the IRS. The complaint asks for an investigation into whether the show violated the rules attached to that status. Under federal law, 501(c)(3) organizations are barred from participating in or intervening in political campaigns.
At the center of the complaint is the parade on Friday night, Oct. 23. Don Leonard, the Democratic candidate challenging U.S. Rep. Mike Carey in Ohio’s 15th Congressional District, was denied a parade spot after his campaign applied late, according to the complaint. When last-minute candidate slots became available, Leonard’s campaign was not notified, and when it contacted the show again after learning that Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy would participate, it was denied a second time.
Ramaswamy received a last-minute spot and rode in the second position in the parade, directly behind Circleville’s mayor, with several other Republican candidates near the front. Ramaswamy also held a rally at the show that Friday. Loxley said parade positions are supposed to be granted in the order parade permits were filed, and she contends Ramaswamy’s placement itself violated the show’s parade rules.
“My big concern is either adhere to your own rules or change the rules and let everybody know so we have a level playing field for next year,” Loxley said.
Mark Weaver, an attorney with the firm that has represented the Pumpkin Show, said the show’s policy allows candidates in the parade and that both parties were represented. “Certainly, our policy permits candidates to appear in the Friday night parade – there were Democrats and Republicans in that parade,” Weaver said.
“We’re willing to look at what happened and talk to anyone about how our rules work, and how we have no desire to take sides in any political campaigns,” he said. Weaver said the show is run largely by volunteers, described parade assembly as “organized chaos,” and said the show is looking into both Leonard’s exclusion and Ramaswamy’s placement. He called a separate allegation in the complaint, involving a political event at a private residence, “reckless.”
Leonard’s campaign issued its own statement: “The Don Leonard for Ohio campaign regrets the decision of The Pumpkin Show organizers to exclude our campaign from the parade while allowing a late entrant and a rally for the Republicans. We enjoyed getting to eat pumpkin chili and meeting voters where they are to discuss the issues that actually matter – fixing the economy and ending the chaos and corruption.”
Pickaway County Republican Party Chairman Travis Ricketts said Ramaswamy and the other Republicans attended “in order to talk to the working families of southern Ohio,” and accused Democrats of “trying to spin this because Amy Acton and Sherrod Brown never bothered to show up.” Acton is the Democratic candidate for governor; Brown is the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate. “As far as I’m aware, there were other Democrats in the parade,” Ricketts said. “So that’s just the proof in the pudding.”
Ohio Republican Party Chairman Alex Triantafilou dismissed the complaint as “whining by Democrats,” said he had seen no evidence of wrongdoing, and added: “I can’t believe that the Democrats are involving a governmental entity because they had a bad grassroots showing at the Circleville Pumpkin Show. I’ve been in politics a long time, and I can’t remember the IRS being invoked to hurt a wonderful community event like this. So the whole thing is preposterous and a waste of time.”
Ramaswamy’s campaign had not publicly responded to the complaint as of Saturday afternoon.
Early coverage described the filing as a lawsuit. Searches of Pickaway County Common Pleas Court records and federal court records on Saturday found no lawsuit over the parade; the only cases naming Circleville Pumpkin Show, Inc. on the county docket are closed cases dating from 1995 to 2012.
