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July 27, 2010

Daughter urges Okla. voters to not vote for father

Associated Press

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, 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."

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