Mayoral race in Campbell has new twist

Only a few weeks ago it looked like F. Anthony Fontes was going to give Campbell Mayor John Dill a serious challenge and quite possibly beat the incumbent next month.

As I wrote in a Sept. 14 column, there is obvious voter dissatisfaction with how the city is run.

Citizens rejected a proposal last year to permit Aqua Ohio to manage Campbell's water treatment plant and to have the company potentially buy it in the future. Voters also said no to a request allowing the financially-ailing city to look into contracting fire services.

There's a citizen referendum on the November ballot to stop the city from negotiating a sale or lease of the plant to Youngstown.

The city is in state fiscal emergency since 2004 with little sign of getting out of it anytime soon.

Dill even sees the writing on the wall telling me last week, "Politically, it's going to be tough for me to win."

It certainly still is possible for Fontes to win the Nov. 6 election, but he's done nothing in the couple of weeks to help his cause.

The most damaging thing for Fontes was his Oct. 10 arrest by Campbell police for operating a vehicle under the influence and failure to control.

Fontes crashed his Ford Explorer into a utility pole, cracking it in half. When an officer asked if he'd been drinking, Fontes said no.

[This doesn't only apply to Fontes, but why do people who've obviously been drinking — even if they don't think they're legally drunk — tell a police officer who can smell alcohol on their breath that they haven't?]

Breath test

Fontes agreed to take a breath test that police say showed his blood-alcohol content at 0.176 — more than twice the legal limit.

Everyone has errors in judgment, and while Fontes is innocent until proven guilty, the timing of the arrest is awful for his political career.

A few days before that incident, Fontes came to The Vindicator for an endorsement interview.

To say he was unprepared is being overly generous.

Like city voters last year, Fontes doesn't want to sell the plant.

"No one's looked at going into a partnership 50-50" to operate the plant, he said. That also includes Fontes, who threw out the idea, but had no clear plan on implementing his proposal.

"I don't know the ins and outs of this," he said.

Fontes also wants to reduce the city's 2.5 percent income tax by 0.5 percent. The reduction, he said, would attract businesses to the city.

That may be the case, but Fontes didn't even know how much such a cut would cost the city. It's about $300,000 annually, by the way.

Little grasp of issues and the OVI arrest makes Fontes' goal of winning the election a bit more challenging.

Fontes isn't the only politician recently charged with operating a vehicle under the influence.

Columbiana County Sheriff David L. Smith was stopped last week in Guernsey County for that offense by a state trooper.

Bringing great pride to the area, the sheriff told trooper that in Columbiana County, you can let people go home if you believe they're driving drunk.

The trooper asked Smith, "You just stop people and don't test them and then you let them go?" Smith's response: "If it was me, yes."

Smith told the trooper he had nothing to drink. See the earlier sidenote about that tactic.

Smith also pulled the fellow cop routine on the trooper, who wasn't interested in playing that game.

And Smith told the trooper, he's up for re-election next year.

Regardless of his innocence or guilt, Smith's conduct when pulled over should cause Columbiana County voters to think at least twice about whether that is how they want their top cop to act.