Crall, Kent win party races; CPD levy passes

Sarah Ein­se­len — Staff

Can­di­dates and friends watch incom­ing elec­tion results scroll on a screen in the base­ment of the Craw­ford County Cour­t­house on Tues­day night, March 6, as county elec­tions offi­cials tally votes. The night’s final results were announced just after 11:30 p.m. (Inquirer photo/Sarah Einselen)

By Sarah Einselen

Inquirer Reporter

Elec­tion night was long, but sat­is­fy­ing, for some can­di­dates for elected office.

At about 11:30 p.m., those gath­ered in the base­ment of the Craw­ford County Cour­t­house were handed sheets of paper declar­ing the unof­fi­cial counts from all 41 county precincts. It came nearly two hours after the pre­vi­ous mid­way tal­lies had been dis­trib­uted. The offi­cial count will be announced in ten days, once all pro­vi­sional bal­lots are included.

Bucyrus pros­e­cu­tor and law direc­tor Matthew Crall won 60 per­cent of the vote for a vic­tory over 10-year county pros­e­cut­ing attor­ney Stan­ley Flegm in the pri­mary race for the prosecutor’s seat.

“I’m hum­bled by the sup­port of the Repub­li­can vot­ers and the peo­ple who helped out with the cam­paign,” Crall said. Next, he will face Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date Jack Fel­gen­hauer in the Novem­ber gen­eral election.

Deputy sher­iff Scott Kent defeated fel­low deputy Chris Hey­dinger with just 52 per­cent of the vote in the Demo­c­ra­tic race for county sheriff.

“It’s pretty excit­ing right now and hasn’t really sunk in yet,” Kent said in a phone inter­view just after mid­night. The real­iza­tion will set in over the next cou­ple of days, he said, then he’ll hun­ker back down to busi­ness as usual and prepa­ra­tions for the Novem­ber elec­tion. He’ll face off with Repub­li­can can­di­date Roger E. Het­zel then.

Craw­ford parks direc­tor Bill Fisher and nat­u­ral­ist Josh Dyer were both on the scene at the cour­t­house until results were announced. Once they found out the park dis­trict levy passed–by 54 percent–they knew they could start breath­ing easier.

“It’s a sigh of relief that we can con­tinue to serve Craw­ford County with the qual­ity pro­grams we have,” Fisher said. “We appre­ci­ate the sup­port of every­body who helped pass the levy and every­body who sup­ported the parks.”

The levy means that the Lowe-Volk Nature Cen­ter will return to full oper­at­ing hours, includ­ing a full day Sat­ur­day and Mon­day and half-day on Sun­day after­noons. The staff will also be able to carry out some main­te­nance projects that had been post­poned because of bud­get tight­en­ing, Fisher said.

Long­time Galion res­i­dent Dave Dayne lost in his bid for a county commissioner’s seat. Steve Rein­hard was elected with a whop­ping 80 per­cent of the vote, a result Dayne hadn’t expected.

“I’m sure appre­cia­tive of the peo­ple that did vote for me,” Dayne said. He and his wife joked that a long honey-do list awaited him now that he wouldn’t be busy with cam­paign­ing for the gen­eral election.

Rein­hard, on the other hand, will face Floyd J. Rein­hart in Novem­ber. Rein­hard the Repub­li­can will strug­gle with estab­lish­ing name recog­ni­tion, he said, since the can­di­dates’ sur­names are so similar.

“Dave Dayne has always been a good asset in Galion,” Rein­hard said. He referred to a state­ment Dayne had made dur­ing the cam­paign, “we’re not run­ning against each other, we’re run­ning for the office.” He praised the non-combative atti­tude that pre­vailed between the two of them.

“We’ll prob­a­bly cam­paign that way in the fall,” Rein­hard said. “In the end, every­body in a county our size needs to work together.”

Mark Baker won 63 per­cent of the vote in the county engineer’s race, defeat­ing Bart Den­ni­son. No Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date filed a can­di­dacy for that office.

For the state representative’s race, Den­nis Ster­ling lost the county to incum­bent Jeff McClain by a wide mar­gin, win­ning just a quar­ter of the county’s votes.

The Bucyrus city income tax was voted down by 55 per­cent of city res­i­dents, who also gave a thumbs down to the Bucyrus library levy, 56 per­cent to 44 per­cent. The Crest­line school levy renewal passed by just 53 per­cent. Wynford’s two renewal levies passed with 62 per­cent of the vote. Cran­berry Township’s replace­ment levy also passed with fly­ing col­ors, by 83 percent.

In the U.S. Pres­i­den­tial pri­maries, Rick San­to­rum took the county’s GOP nom­i­na­tion with 44 per­cent of the vote. Mitt Rom­ney won 31 per­cent and Newt Gin­grich got 14 per­cent, fol­lowed by Ron Paul with 10 per­cent. Rick Perry and John Hunts­man each got less than a hun­dred votes.

Josh Man­del won the county’s Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion for U.S. Sen­a­tor hand­ily, get­ting 57 per­cent of the vote among a race with five con­tenders. Michael L. Pryce came in with 17 per­cent and Donna K. Glis­man with 13 percent.

Turnout in Craw­ford County stood at 33 per­cent as of Tues­day night. Final, offi­cial results will be tal­lied and released after ten days, at which time pro­vi­sional bal­lots will be con­sid­ered. Tues­day night’s results included absen­tee ballots.

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Mar 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.