'Do Not Vote For My Dad' Candidate John Mantooth's Daughter Exclaims

(July 27) -- With relatives like these, who needs political enemies?

John Mantooth, who's running for district court judge in Oklahoma, has encountered some stiff opposition in the race from his own daughter.

Jan Schill, Mantooth's second child from his first marriage, has started a website aptly named DoNotVoteForMyDad.com. As one might guess, Schill's reasons for opposing her own father's ascension to the judgeship are, in part, based on her own personal experiences. As she puts it on the website:

District 21 judicial candidate John Mantooth is not a good father, not a good grandfather and in my opinion a review of his 37 year record as an attorney in Cleveland, Garvin and McClain Counties reveals that he would not be a good judge.

Mantooth told The Oklahoman newspaper that the feud with his daughter stems from his divorce from her mother.

"This is a family issue which should have been kept private," Mantooth told the paper. "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."

Document Dump

As evidence for why her father does not deserve to be elected, Schill posted a slew of legal documents, including the 1981 application for her parents' divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable incompatibility, as well as a variety of lawsuits filed against Mantooth over the years.

The Son-in-Law and the Opponent

Schill's husband, Andrew, has both worked for his father-in-law's law firm and been a law partner with Mantooth's opponent in the race, Greg Dixon. Interviewed by The Associated Press, Mantooth was quick to point out the latter fact.

"That's a very strange set of circumstances," Mantooth said. "For a person to believe that Greg Dixon had nothing to do with this is like trying to believe that cows give chocolate milk."

For his part, Dixon emphatically denies he had anything to do with DoNotVoteForMyDad.com.

Worms in the Chocolate

And speaking of chocolate... Andrew Schill cites a 2004 Christmas gift from Mantooth as further reason to deny the candidate a vote. As the Los Angeles Times reported, Mantooth left the couple a box of chocolates that was a tad past its prime.

"My deepest momentary fear was realized when a survey of the remaining chocolate revealed the remains of the numerous worms and weevils that had long ago devoured the aged chocolate," Andrew Schill claimed.