Donna Christian-Lowe’s name will keep the hyphen on the ballot after the Hamilton County Election Commission threw out a challenge to the punctuation in her last name.
Last week, the Committee to Elect Steve Highlander and Dalton Temple of Hill City Strategies filed a challenge against Christian-Lowe, who is running against Commissioner Steve Highlander, R-Harrison, in the upcoming May Republican primary. During a Wednesday hearing, Temple told the Election Commission that he believed Christian-Lowe filed to run with a hyphen because it would put her first on the ballot alphabetically. But the commissioners voted unanimously to throw the challenge out.
During the hearing, Christian-Lowe submitted about 80 documents that showed her last name as hyphenated in her professional life, she said. Her legal name is Donna Lowe. Christian was her maiden name. She’s gone by either Donna Christian Lowe or Donna Christian-Lowe in her work as a radio personality and social media user since at least 2016, according to the documents, she said.
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Christian-Lowe said she didn’t know putting a hyphen between Christian and Lowe would put her above Highlander on the ballot. She said if she were asked to sign something, she would put Donna Christian-Lowe.