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Yemma to formally withdraw
Photo
Dan Yemma
STRUTHERS
Mahoning County Treasurer Dan Yemma will formally withdraw as a Struthers council-at-large candidate shortly.
The 15 county Democratic precinct committee members from Struthers have until Aug. 24 to select Yemma’s replacement on the November ballot, said Thomas McCabe, director of the county’s board of elections.
County precinct committee members voted Monday to appoint Yemma to the unexpired treasurer term. Yemma resigned his Struthers council-at-large position May 23 to serve as interim county treasurer, a week after Lisa Antonini resigned from the treasurer job.
State law prohibits Yemma from serving as county treasurer and Struthers council-at-large.
If Yemma didn’t get the treasurer appointment, he said he would have remained an at-large candidate.
But with his win, Yemma will withdraw from the November election race in the next few weeks and “allow the committee people to replace me on the ballot. I want to give them plenty of time.”
Also at Monday’s meeting, Struthers precinct committee members voted to appoint Carol Crytzer, a precinct committee member, to Yemma’s unexpired term on city council.
Crytzer said Wednesday that she’s “very, very interested” in replacing Yemma on the November general election ballot.
County Democratic Chairman David Betras said after Yemma resigns, he’ll announce a schedule for when a vote would be held to replace Yemma on the ballot.
Unless someone files by the Aug. 29 deadline to run as a write-in candidate, the person selected to replace Yemma as well as Ronald Mathews and Michael S. Patrick, two incumbent councilmen-at-large who won the May Democratic primary, would run unopposed in November.
Meanwhile, the Ohio secretary of state’s office rejected a complaint Yemma filed June 2 over the use of hand-held electronic voting units rather than paper ballots during Monday’s vote. The secretary of state’s rejection came Tuesday, a day after the vote.