A judicial candidate has said that Delaware County Fair officials and a county sheriff’s deputy impeded her free speech.
Emma Mirles-Jones, who’s running for Delaware County Common Pleas Court judge, told The Dispatch in an interview that fair officials and a sheriff’s deputy disrupted her communicating with voters on Sept. 20 at the Delaware County Fair.
Mirles-Jones said that talking with voters and passing out campaign flyers about the upcoming nonpartisan special election for judge is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, something burgeoning attorneys learn about this in the first year of law school.
Organizers with the Delaware Agricultural Society did not respond to multiple requests from The Dispatch for comment.
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Whited, a spokesperson for the Delaware County Sheriff's Office, said that a deputy was having a conversation with the fair’s security director when the director got a call from a board member about someone campaigning and passing out literature on the midway, so the deputy tagged along.
“After a few minutes of civil conversation, the fair board member and our deputy asked the candidate to distribute her materials from the Democratic booth in the Merchants Building, which is where distributing materials is permitted (in a booth within a building),” Whited said. “She agreed.”
Mirles-Jones disputes that account, saying she didn’t agree at the time and left because she didn’t want to be arrested.
When she asked event organizers for the justification for banning electioneering on fairgrounds, the printouts shared with Mirles-Jones were about an Ohio law banning solicitation in the context of commercial activity.
Mirles-Jones said she connected with Democrats from Ashland, Ohio, who settled with the Ashland County Fair Board after some members were banned from the fair for displaying buttons critical of President Donald Trump in 2025. They recommended reaching out to the same law firm, The Dann Law Firm, which sent a Sept. 24 letter to the Delaware County Fair defending her right to free speech.
“Government officials cannot suppress such protected speech through ad hoc restrictions unsupported by established rules or standards,” Marc Dann, a Democrat and former Ohio attorney general and former state senator, wrote in the letter.
Mireles-Jones told The Dispatch that she missed out on campaigning Sept. 21-22 at the fair during what could have been the more fulfilling days of speaking to voters.
While Mireles-Jones is a lifelong Democrat, she emphasized that the judicial race is nonpartisan. She is running against Republican Nickolas K. McCoy to fill an unexpired term on the bench ending Dec. 31, 2030. Delaware County is a Republican majority county.
Anna Lynn Winfrey is a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch. She can be reached at awinfrey@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Judge candidate claims Delaware County Fair blocked free speech rights
