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Candidate Rick Steiner getting an education in process

Posted: Jun 7th 2006 By: mikeiles

Cherokee County school board member Rick Steiner is using a team of volunteers to help him tackle registered voters for his campaign.

Steiner said Tuesday he has collected close to 1,000 signatures and plans to collect 5,000 more by June 26. If he doesn't have enough signatures by then, he must decide whether to run as a write-in candidate.

Former pro-wrestler Rick Steiner will have to run under his legal name, Robert Rechsteiner.

To be listed on the November general election ballot as an independent candidate, he needs 4,634 signatures from registered voters. Those signatures are officially due July 11, Steiner said.

Steiner said he's attended community meetings and enlisted the help of Etowah High students who are members of the school's Republican Party.

"I'm having to start at ground zero and work my way up," Steiner said. "People are stepping up to the plate and helping me."

Steiner's petition can be found at Basic Chiropractic and J.D.'s Bar-B-Que.

If Steiner had qualified to run for office under his legal name, Robert Rechsteiner, he would have won with a single vote. He was the only person, Democrat or Republican, to qualify for the Post 5 school board seat, meaning his own vote would win him office.

A former professional wrestler who has used his ring name Rick Steiner for at least 20 years, he had to forfeit his qualification for the county Board of Education in May because county Supervisor of Elections Janet Munda couldn't find that name among registered voters during a routine search of qualified candidates.

Steiner withdrew from the race because only people who qualify under their legal names may seek public office. He plans to run now under his legal name, Rechsteiner.
The qualifying period for the primary is over, so the only way to get on the general election ballot in November is by qualifying as an unaffiliated candidate.

To do that, a person has to get signatures from 5 percent of the registered voters, as of the last election for that office. That means he'll have to get 4,634 autographs by July 11.

Steiner is overshooting to make sure he has that many.
The figure of 6,000 people represents a large chunk of the 15,806 people who voted in the 2004 primary for school board races.

Steiner was appointed as "Rick Steiner" last year to fill out a school board term. He was recently reappointed under his legal name.

He holds his real estate license in the name Rick Steiner, he said, and is known only as Rick Steiner "to everyone I know."

Steiner was half of the Steiner Brothers tag-team in various pro wrestling leagues in the 1980s and 1990s.

Also credit: Steve Gerweck and Gerweck.net