Independent's petitions OK'd

This is the candidate's third congressional run.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER
A Newton Falls man barely made it on to the November election ballot as an independent candidate for the 14th Congressional District seat.
Werner Lange, who has run unsuccessfully for Congress on two other occasions, submitted nominating petitions with 2,479 signatures.
The board of elections in Lake County, the largest county in the 14th District, certified Lange's petitions Tuesday with 2,017 valid signatures. He needed 2,012 valid signatures -- 1 percent of those who voted in the seven-county district's 2002 gubernatorial race -- to get on the ballot.
Independent congressional candidates need signatures from at least 1 percent of the district's last gubernatorial election to get on the ballot under state elections law.
Lange collected all the signatures himself, a task he said took more than 300 hours.
Lange will face U.S. Rep. Steven C. LaTourette, a Concord Republican seeking his seventh term, and Democrat Lewis Katz of Pepper Pike, a 40-year professor at Case Western Reserve University Law School who won the three-man Democratic primary last month in his first run for elected office.
Geographic area
The district includes seven northern townships in Trumbull County as well as all of Ashtabula, Geauga and Lake counties, and portions of Cuyahoga, Portage and Summit counties.
This is Lange's third congressional bid; he lost independent bids in 1986 and in 1992 for seats.
Lange lives about 17 miles from the 14th District, but state law doesn't require congressional candidates to live in the district they represent.
Candidates' running for congressional districts in which they do not live is not unusual. For example, state Sen. Charlie Wilson of St. Clairsville is running for the 6th Congressional District, and doesn't live in that district, and Katz doesn't live in the 14th.
Lange also unsuccessfully ran as an independent in 2002 for the then open 65th Ohio House District seat.
Background
Lange, a pastor at Bonner Chapel in Hiram, Portage County, has taught at Kent State's Trumbull, Geauga and Ashtabula campuses, and was a pastor at a Cuyahoga County church.
He was an active supporter of imprisoned ex-U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., convicted in 2002 of bribery, extortion and tax evasion.
Lange said LaTourette doesn't properly represent the district, and Democrats "haven't put anyone who's even in Traficant's shadow" to challenge the Republican incumbent.
skolnick@vindy.com