County pays for legal defense against Gains

Gains said Yavorcik shouldn’t be on the November ballot.

STAFF REPORT

YOUNGSTOWN — Mahoning County commissioners have authorized paying a Columbus law firm up to $20,000 to defend the board of elections against legal action filed by county Prosecutor Paul Gains.

Commissioners at their Thursday meeting authorized Murray, Murphy, Moul Basile, LLP, to represent the board before the Ohio Supreme Court.

Gains, a Boardman Democrat, asked the court to overturn a decision by the local elections board that certified Atty. Martin Yavorcik as an independent candidate for prosecutor in November.

Gains had asked the elections board to declare Yavorcik’s candidacy invalid on the grounds that Yavorcik was a Democrat when he signed his official statement of candidacy as an independent Feb. 22.

The Ohio Secretary of State’s office issued an opinion last year saying a person cannot run as an independent if he or she serves on a political party’s executive committee or votes in a partisan primary after filing as an independent.

Gains thinks Yavorcik’s independent candidacy is a sham because of his having served on the Democratic Party’s Central Committee in recent years and other issues.

Yavorcik sent a Feb. 23 letter to county Democratic Chairwoman Lisa Antonini “disaffiliating myself from the Democratic Party.”

The elections board said the only relevant issue is that Yavorcik wasn’t a member of the party’s executive committee on March 3, the independent filing deadline.

Yavorcik has criticized Gains’ attacks on his candidacy, renewing them Thursday with a press release that said the need to spend public money to fight Gains is a “travesty” that “clearly demonstrates the need for a prosecutor who puts the community first.”