“Kryssi Wichers” Clears “Her Name” and Countersues

Last night after her hearing before an elections panel (which she won by unanimous vote), we talked with “Kryssi Wichers” about what happened and where she goes from here.

TLR: This is TLR, talking to Kryssi Wichers… if that is her real name. She’s running for Ohio’s 77^th, and recently suit was filed contesting her eligibility to run due to, well… I’ll let her tell it. For those not familiar with the case, could you give a brief description of what happened?

KW: So, um… not only did they challenge my ability to run, they challenged my eligibility to vote. So, what happened is, the Ohio House Republican Committee, they got some random Republican volunteer to challenge my eligibility to vote based on the fact that I changed my name to my husband’s name a little over a year ago. So, they were saying…

‘Do we really know who she is? Because she’s gone by Kryssi Jones and she’s gone by Wichers. So we don’t know who she really is.’ Even though I have gotten married… I changed my name, I’ve changed my social security card, my voter registration, my identification… all of that has been changed for a year. So it was pretty baseless. The Republican House Committee decided to literally take this to court. It was the day after a debate, after I kind of creamed the Republican incumbent. And we got word, some insider information, that they conducted a poll and saw me at a high margin to win, and they decided to go after me because of that.

TLR: So you know that there was coordination between the resident bringing the suit and the Ohio GOP?

KW: We do know that there has to be coordination. I mean, technically we’re speculating, we do have a Freedom of Information Act request in. But the Ohio Republican House Committee put out the press release before the board of elections even had time to send us notice.

My lawyer did ask the challenger who paid for this challenge, who paid for the lawyer, and he declined to answer. He did admit that it was not him that paid for it.

TLR: So after the challenge was brought, possibly in an official capacity by the GOP, after supporting Kavanaugh, was that GOP trying to shift the burden of proof onto the accused in asking you to prove a negative, at least in the court of public opinion?

KW: Yes, absolutely. They were shifting it definitely on me, and wanting me to prove that I had gotten married, wanting me to prove I got my name changed. Mind you, this was already proved when I registered to vote and I voted in the primary in May.

TLR: Essentially, the GOP was refusing to recognize you taking your husband’s last name after entering a traditional marriage. Why do Ohio Republicans hate traditional family values?

KW: I wish I knew. I think that they may have gotten tired of going after gay marriage, so now they’re going after hetero marriage. I had a very traditional marriage with my husband. I wore a white wedding dress. We had a wedding, we got married, I changed my name, as tradition goes, towards my husband. And as a Libertarian, it’s a little hard for us to follow those traditional norms, but I did. I got married to my hetero male husband, and I changed my name to my hetero male husband’s last name… and… the Ohio GOP? They just said ‘no, you’re not allowed to do that, and you’re not allowed to vote anymore’. In 1920, women got the right to vote. So I think the Ohio GOP forgets it’s 2018. I think they’re stuck in 1918.

TLR: Part of the suit alleges that you continued to use your previous name in an open criminal case after you had officially become Wichers. Does this or any other case or controversy you’ve had, allege a violation of the NAP? As in, was there a victim in the identity theft case?

KW: No, actually, that got dropped. The only charges that came through, was that falsification charge, that I lied to a police officer. So if you consider my lying to the police a NAP violation, then I would like to take your Libertarian card.

(Laughter, cross-talk)

And yeah, I didn’t use that name, because that was the name that I had in 2016 when I had that card, so when the card got finalized and everything was done in 2018, of course my name was on there, and that actually did got brought up in the suit today. And we had an affidavit from the public defender’s office saying that they had in fact advised me to sign an affidavit that I had signed that I was uncomfortable because they were not going to change my name on the official court proceedings if it didn’t get in the arraignment, and it didn’t get in the arraignment, so my name was not changed.

TLR: Who would you rather talk to– me or Dr. Phil?

(Laughter) I love you. I feel like you’re a tad bit more honest. Dr. Phil’s accent’s not even real. And I haven’t talked to Dr. Phil since 2011, so, um… I don’t know how he’s doing lately. I hear his son divorced his porn star wife, so she was kind of doing the same thing I was doing but she was filmed.

TLR: While much of the media was wasting time talking about your name, what issues that affect Ohio have been overlooked?

KW: I’m so glad you asked that question. You’re the only member of media that has asked me that question. So, yeah, let’s talk about the issues.

So, I want to get rid of the state income tax in Ohio. That would put an average of $1,300 back in every taxpayer’s pocket. I think that’s important for the economy, and I think it’s important because they are stealing our income in order to fund their crazy escapades, taking someone to court in order to determine their last name. So I think we should give that money back to the taxpayers.

I also want to de-criminalize marijuana. I don’t mean legalize, I mean a full de-crim. I want marijuana regulated like onions, like Larry Sharpe says. I think that I should be able to grow, consume, trade as I wish. And I think that’s important here in Ohio, because we have… we’re number two in the country for the opioid crisis. Statistics show, in states that have legalized, that overdoses and addiction have gone down up to thirty-five percent when you legalize marijuana. So I think that’s really important.

Third, I want to take our legislature from full time to part time. Apparently, they’re bored. One of the bills that they’re talking about is HB539, that is a bill to determine what our state dog should be. So I think that they’re a little bored. If they could take thousands of dollars a year to do things like that, I’m saying they go get a real job and we should cut their pay in half. I think thirty thousand dollars a year for a temp job is more than enough, coming from the taxpayers already. So, that’s one of my biggest platform points.

Lastly, I want to bring more transparency to the Ohio checkbook. What that is, is the expenditures and the money we take in, in Ohio, they claim that it’s spent fairly. However, we are over twenty billion dollars in debt, and there’s a category labeled “other” that three billion dollars are in. So what I’m saying is if we’re twenty billion in debt, let’s explore that three billion dollars quote un-quote “other” category.

So those are some issues that are being overlooked. We have been going door-to-door for the past few months that I’ve been campaigning, and those issues are very important to Ohioans. And in the media, all they’re talking about is my eligibility to vote, my past… they haven’t really talked about the issues. So thank you for bringing that up. Thank you for having integrity in journalism. I appreciate this.

TLR: Awww… thank you. I heard you might have a surprise after the hearing. What is it?

KW: We are officially suing the challenger and the Ohio Republican Party for malicious prosecution and for abuse of process. They abused the process to determine eligibility to vote, we know why they did that, to take it off the ballot, to take me off the ballot. So that means they abused a taxpayer-paid process, so we are suing them for that. Tim Schaffer might be in on that suit after we get the results of our freedom of information act request. And if we find out his fingerprints are on this, then he’ll be involved in that suit. We will be bringing that suit immediately.

As far as I know, we’re the first to report on her intentions to sue. To learn more about Kryssi Wichers, her website can be found here.