Brunner was born in Springfield, Ohio and raised in Columbus, Ohio. She earned a
B.A. in
sociology-
gerontology,
cum laude, from
Miami University in 1978 and a
J.D. from
Capital University Law School with honors in 1982. Subsequently, Brunner worked in the Ohio Secretary of State's Office as a deputy director and legislative counsel to the
Ohio General Assembly during the administration of
Sherrod Brown from 1983 to 1987, working with state legislators on finance-reporting laws for campaign committees and laws for election procedures. During that time she also briefly served as a member of the Franklin County Board of Elections. Brunner litigated various ballot propositions in her private practice, including propositions involving alcohol sales, tax levies, rezoning, and gambling. Brunner also represented several Ohio politicians in disputes involving redistricting and false statements in campaign literature.
Early political career In the early 1990s, Brunner served on the Ohio Student Loan Commission, a nine-member group that guarantees loans for college students. In 1995, Brunner applied for a vacant seat on the
Columbus City Council, but was not selected. In 2000, Brunner was elected to an unexpired term on the
Franklin County Common Pleas Court. She was reelected in 2002. In 2004, Brunner, along with other Court of Common Pleas judges, created a separate drug court to reduce addiction-related recidivism. Brunner resigned from the Court on September 1, 2005 to run for
Ohio Secretary of State. She ran unopposed in the May 2, 2006 Democratic Primary. Her campaign received support from the
Secretary of State Project, a progressive political action committee. On
November 7, 2006, she defeated
Republican Greg Hartmann by a 55%–40% margin, taking office on January 8, 2007.
Secretary of State During her tenure as Secretary of State, Brunner took several measures intended to improve election security and expand access to voting, including redistributing voting machines to precincts with long voting wait times and providing a higher number of paper ballots to precincts. In particular, she expressed concern about local election officials taking voting machines home with them in the days before an election, and she ordered bipartisan transport teams for voting machines and proscribed storage conditions. She also advocated the replacement of all Ohio voting machines with paper ballots counted by
optical scanning machines, although the Ohio General Assembly did not provide funding to switch to paper ballots for the November 2008 general election. During the 2008 presidential primaries, Ohio experienced record voter turnout, but the primary was marred by paper ballot shortages, bomb threats, ice storms and power failures. In addition, flooding forced the relocation of some polling places in southeastern Ohio. 21 precincts in the
Cleveland metropolitan area were held open for an extra 90 minutes due to paper ballot shortages. Between January 1, 2008 and mid-October 2008, over 666,000 Ohioans registered to vote either for the first time or with updated voter information, and over 200,000 of them provided driver's licenses or Social Security numbers that do not match government records. Many of the newly registered voters were the result of voter registration drives to register voters for
Barack Obama and
Hillary Clinton for the March 4, 2008
Ohio Democratic primary. The voter registrations that did not match government records were challenged in federal court, on the basis that they did not comply with the federal
Help America Vote Act, which mandates that states corroborate voter registration applications with government databases. The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled against Brunner, deciding that extra steps must be taken to authenticate these registrants. However, that decision subsequently was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Brunner's order was challenged in state and federal court by
Ohio Republican Party officials and Republican voters, who argued that Ohio law requires voters to be registered for 30 days before they cast an absentee ballot. Brunner's order ultimately was upheld by both state and federal courts. In November 2008, two supporters of Republican congressman
Steve Stivers supporters sued Brunner over the validity of approximately 1,000 provisional ballots in the race for
Ohio's 15th congressional district, which at the time of recounting had a 149-vote margin with and 27,000 absentee ballots still to be counted. The case was consolidated with other cases in the United States District Court upon Brunner's request. On December 5, 2008, Stivers' supporters won a ruling in the Ohio Supreme Court that the 1,000 provisional ballots that lacked signatures or had names and signatures in the wrong places be thrown out. during the
2008 Democratic National Convention. (2008-08-26)
2010 campaign for U.S. Senate On February 17, 2009, Brunner announced that she would be a candidate for the U.S. Senate in
2010, running against Lieutenant Governor
Lee Fisher for the Democratic nomination. In September 2009,
DSCC Chairman
Bob Menendez, who supported Fisher and had been trying to clear the field for him, stated he would actively work against any underfunded candidate. By February 2010, Brunner had significantly less cash on hand than Fisher or likely general election opponent
Rob Portman (who would eventually win the seat), but claimed, "I only need enough money to win." Polling in late 2009 and January 2010 showed Brunner to be more competitive than Fisher in a general election matchup against Portman, while Fisher and Brunner were deadlocked in Democratic primary polling. Brunner ultimately lost to Fisher in the May 4, 2010 party primary, 55% to 45%. Following her defeat in the 2010 Senate primary, Brunner sat on several public commissions and boards. Republican Governor
John Kasich appointed Brunner to a Democratic seat on the Ohio Cultural Facilities Commission in 2011, which she held until the commission's abolition in 2013. In October 2012, Kasich also appointed her to the Ohio Counselor, Social Worker, Marriage and Family Therapist Board. In 2013, Columbus Mayor
Michael B. Coleman appointed Brunner to the board of the
Central Ohio Transit Authority.
2014 campaign for Ohio Tenth District Court of Appeals Brunner was certified as the sole Democratic candidate running for the Ohio Tenth District Court of Appeals seat occupied by incumbent judge Amy O'Grady, who was appointed to the seat by Governor
John Kasich in 2013. The 2014 judicial elections were notable for the number of judges on the ballot, with
The Columbus Dispatch stating that it was the first time 12 contested judicial seats would appear on the ballot in
Franklin County, Ohio. She was the only Democratic nominee for the appellate seat. Brunner defeated O'Grady and was elected to a two-year term as Franklin County appeals judge unexpired term in the General Election. == 2020 Campaign for Ohio Supreme Court ==