Sunbury/Big Walnut COC hosts Candidates Night at BWHS

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

The 2012 Gen­eral Elec­tion is just around the cor­ner, and can­di­dates for elected office are using every venue that they can afford to stump for votes. It’s esti­mated that the pres­i­den­tial race will top $1 bil­lion in cam­paign costs, much of that money going to tele­vi­sion advertising.

Can­di­dates closer to home can­not afford mass media cam­paigns. They have to get out, knock on doors, look folks in the eye and shake hands, and attend func­tions where they have the oppor­tu­nity to explain their positions.

Two of those oppor­tu­ni­ties took place last week, thanks to mem­bers of the Sunbury/Big Wal­nut Area Cham­ber of Com­merce in part­ner­ship with the East­ern Delaware County Repub­li­can Club and the Delaware County Demo­c­ra­tic Party. Last Thurs­day evening fea­tured the annual Can­di­dates Night at Big Wal­nut High School; and the fol­low­ing Fri­day morn­ing the Cham­ber of Com­merce held a Can­di­dates Break­fast spon­sored by Manos, Mar­tin & Per­gram LPA at North­Star Golf Club.

COC Board Pres­i­dent Dave Mar­tin intro­duced the can­di­dates; East­ern Delaware County Repub­li­can Club mem­ber John Whit­ney was the time­keeper. The rules were sim­ple. Can­di­dates run­ning for con­tested offices were allowed three min­utes at the podium, with Whit­ney flash­ing warn­ings cards at one minute and 30 seconds.

Incum­bent Repub­li­can Con­gress­man Pat Tiberi, seek­ing reelec­tion in Ohio’s 12th Con­gres­sional Dis­trict, is run­ning against Demo­c­ra­tic chal­lenger Jim Reese. Both were present at Fri­day morning’s event.

Tiberi said he’s frus­trated with Wash­ing­ton, and how manda­tory spend­ing has grown to almost two-thirds of the fed­eral bud­get. When manda­tory spend­ing out­paces dis­cre­tionary spend­ing, it becomes more dif­fi­cult to bal­ance the bud­get, Tiberi said.

“The huge chal­lenges ahead are going to take lead­er­ship from the White House and Con­gress,” Tiberi said. “We’ve got to get more jobs, that starts with energy and ends with taxes. We need lead­er­ship and com­mon sense solutions.”

Jim Reese said he’s run­ning for the 12th Con­gres­sional Dis­trict seat because, as a small busi­ness owner, he under­stands the strug­gles of small businesses.

“We find our­selves in the great­est reces­sion since the Great Depres­sion,” Reese said. “I want every cit­i­zen to pros­per. I believe a con­sumer econ­omy; a trickle-up rather than trickle-down econ­omy. When peo­ple have the abil­ity to choose, we pros­per. And we have to end tax sub­si­dies for imported Chi­nese goods — that only under­mines the Amer­i­can economy.”

Scott Rupert is run­ning as an Inde­pen­dent Party can­di­date for a U.S. Sen­ate seat.

“I’m not a politi­cian; I’m a truck dri­ver, an aver­age Amer­i­can,” Rupert said. “I’m on the bal­lot because the Con­sti­tu­tion says I can be on the bal­lot. The Con­sti­tu­tion sets the bar to be a sen­a­tor so an aver­age Amer­i­can is qual­i­fied, and if we see some­thing wrong we can do some­thing about it.”

Rupert said he wants bring back local gov­ern­ment con­trol, and, in his words, get the fed­eral gov­ern­ment behav­ing the way it’s sup­posed to.

“Right now we give the fed­eral gov­ern­ment all of our money and then have to beg to get it back,” Rupert said. “The fed­eral gov­ern­ment is good at divid­ing Amer­i­cans into spe­cial inter­est groups, and then get­ting them fight­ing against each other. They know that 350 mil­lion indi­vid­u­als think­ing inde­pen­dently are hard to con­trol. I intend to actively solve prob­lems instead of just cam­paign­ing against them; and our $16 tril­lion debt must be controlled.”

Mar­garet Ann Ruhl and John Ryer­son are seek­ing to serve res­i­dents of the newly-formed Ohio House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives 68th District.

The 68th House Dis­trict includes all of Knox County and part of Delaware County. The parts of Delaware County included in this new 68th Dis­trict are: precincts in Kingston, Porter, Berk­shire, Tren­ton, Harlem and Genoa town­ships as well as the vil­lages of Galena and Sunbury.

West­er­ville precincts that are in Delaware County are also in the new 68th Dis­trict; and some Colum­bus precincts that are in Delaware County are also in the new 68th District.

Ruhl, a Repub­li­can, is cur­rently serv­ing her sec­ond term rep­re­sent­ing Ohio’s 90th House District.

“I was born in Knox County on a dairy farm and am a Mount Ver­non res­i­dent,” Ruhl said. “I’m a mem­ber of the legislature’s Agri­cul­tural and Nat­ural Resources Com­mit­tee; Trans­porta­tion, Pub­lic Safety and Home­land Secu­rity Com­mit­tee; and serve as vice-chair of the Finan­cial Insti­tu­tions, Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment Committee.”

Demo­c­rat John Ryer­son, also run­ning for the 68th Ohio House Dis­trict, grad­u­ated from North­west­ern Uni­ver­sity, The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity School of Law, and is a prac­tic­ing attor­ney who has lived in the dis­trict for 34 years.

“I believe in small towns and local gov­ern­ment, and espe­cially water and waste­water issues,” Ryer­son said. “School fund­ing will be my num­ber one pri­or­ity. School fund­ing in Ohio has been ruled uncon­sti­tu­tional four times, but noth­ing has been done to fix it.”

Ryer­son said he would also work to restore cuts made to local government.

State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Andy Bren­ner, cur­rently serv­ing the 2nd Ohio House Dis­trict, is run­ning for reelec­tion for the newly carved 67th Ohio House Dis­trict that includes the west­ern two-thirds of Delaware County.

Bren­ner said two years ago Ohio had 9.8 per­cent unem­ploy­ment; today that num­ber is 7 percent.

“Today Ohio is fourth in the nation in job growth, and num­ber one in the Mid­west,” Bren­ner said. “Edu­ca­tion fund­ing reform has des­per­ately been needed for a long time; and I will con­tinue to work towards mod­ern­iz­ing state agen­cies to cut costs and increase efficiency.”

Repub­li­can incum­bent Delaware County Com­mis­sioner Ken O’Brien said he was born and raised on a Delaware County dairy farm and loves the county.

“When I’m mak­ing deci­sions I ask myself what will these deci­sions mean 50 years from now,” O’Brien said. “Our ances­tors worked very hard to make Delaware County what it is today. We need to look at the com­pre­hen­sive plan, do some wise plan­ning, and then imple­ment the plan.”

New to the polit­i­cal arena is for­mer Delaware Gazette/Sunbury News Pub­lisher Gary Mer­rill, a Repub­li­can can­di­date for Delaware County Com­mis­sioner who cites busi­ness expe­ri­ence as his most valu­able asset.

“A county com­mis­sioner is basi­cally a CFO for the county, and with my back­ground I would be very help­ful in that regard,” Mer­rill said. “I’ve been told I have the right way of ask­ing the right ques­tions; and I’m com­mit­ted to help­ing the board of com­mis­sion­ers of this county serve all res­i­dents of the county. I’m a fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tive that believes in spend­ing smartly, not spend­ing just because you have the money.”

Rick Beer, a Cap­i­tal Uni­ver­sity Crim­i­nol­ogy grad­u­ate, is a Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date run­ning for Delaware County Recorder who said he wants to bring integrity back to the Recorder’s Office.

“Why is the Recorder’s Office impor­tant?” Beer asked. “Because all county real estate doc­u­ments are there; and if there is a his­tory of those records being com­pro­mised banks will not lend money.”

Beer noted that the cur­rent Delaware County Recorder is appointed, and, he added, in two years she hasn’t attended one Tax Records Com­mit­tee meeting.

Run­ning for a seat on the bench of the Ohio Court of Appeals 5th Dis­trict is Jeanette Moll.

Moll said the 5th Dis­trict cov­ers 15 Ohio coun­ties, and serves 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple, but all of the seated judges are from Can­ton. Moll said she has worked in pro­bate, juve­nile and gen­eral courts – spe­cial­iz­ing in domes­tic abuse and high-conflict fam­ily law.

“I’m the only can­di­date from a small town,” Moll said. “I’m a strict con­sti­tu­tion­al­ist. My job would be to imple­ment law and not leg­is­late from the bench.”

Seek­ing seats on the non-partisan Ohio State Board of Edu­ca­tion, Dis­trict 6, are Mike Collins, Kristin McKin­ley and John Stacy.

Collins cites his busi­ness and pub­lic edu­ca­tion expe­ri­ence, and said: “The future of pub­lic edu­ca­tion holds the key to eco­nomic devel­op­ment in Ohio.”

McKin­ley is a cur­rent Dis­trict 6 State Board of Edu­ca­tion mem­ber seek­ing a sec­ond four-year term; her last because of term limits.

Stacy said some school dis­tricts in the state are very good; some not so good. He said the state board of edu­ca­tion would look into the edu­ca­tion fund­ing issue dur­ing the year ahead.

Run­ning unop­posed, but present, was Delaware County Pros­e­cu­tor Carol O’Brien.

Mar­tin closed the North­Star Golf Club break­fast ses­sion encour­ag­ing every­one to get out and vote.

“If you don’t vote,” Mar­tin said, “don’t complain.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Oct 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.