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Daughter urges Okla. voters to not vote for father

2010-07-27 07:31:46

By SEAN MURPHY, Associated Press Writer Mon Jul 26, 9:14 pm ET

OKLAHOMA CITY An Oklahoma judicial candidate is fending off a political

attack from his daughter, who has taken out a local newspaper ad urging voters:

"Do not vote for my dad!"

McClain County judicial hopeful John Mantooth's daughter and son-in-law paid

for the quarter-page advertisement, which features a picture of the daughter's

family, highlights cases in which Mantooth has been sued and lists a website

the couple started, http://www.donotvoteformydad.com.

Mantooth said the bad blood stems from his 1981 divorce from his daughter's

mother.

"This is a family issue which should have been kept private," he said Monday.

"I'm very sad about this. I'm very disappointed. I'm hurt, but I love my

daughter, and I want things to get better, and I hope they will."

Jan Schill, 31, said she never has had a good relationship with her father and

doesn't think he'd make a good judge.

"We just felt like it would be bad if he were to become a judge," Schill said

in a telephone interview from her home in Durango, Colo. "I assumed that he

would not appreciate it, but he's made so many people mad, I'm just another

mark on his board of people's he's had a beef with."

Keith Gaddie, a professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma,

said such campaigning illustrates that "none of us wants our lives too closely

examined."

"It's reality show politics," Gaddie said. "It's unsavory. It's undignified,

and it's real."

But Mantooth also suspects political maneuvering. He said his son-in-law,

Andrew Schill, was once law partners with one of his opponents in Tuesday's

primary, Greg Dixon.

"That's a very strange set of circumstances," Mantooth said. "For a person to

believe that Greg Dixon had nothing to do with this is like trying to believe

that cows give chocolate milk."

Andrew Schill said he and Dixon were law partners for about three years, but

that the partnership was dissolved after Schill and his family moved to

Colorado in 2007. He said he and his wife are responsible for the ad and that

there was no coordination with Dixon.

"We put that stuff out there," Andrew Schill said. "We want people to look at

this record and his cases. I think people can look at that and draw their own

conclusions."

Dixon also said he had nothing to do with the ad or website.

"Unequivocally, absolutely not," he said. "I don't want to be affiliated with

that website or that ad. I don't want to use it as a platform in my political

campaign."