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Coin toss verifies election winner
By jeanne starmack
youngstown
The suspense intensified in the Smith Township trustee election while nothing changed in the Campbell mayoral race after the Mahoning County elections board counted provisional votes Wednesday.
Provisional votes are from voters whose eligibility has to be verified before they can be counted. There were seven provisional votes from Smith Township and 34 from Campbell. Smith’s and Campbell’s were the only two races in the Nov. 8 general election that could have been affected by the provisional count.
When the counting was finished Wednesday morning, a coin toss decided the winner in Smith Township after a 557-557 tie between incumbent Valas Winters and challenger Paul Freer. Freer won the toss and is the election winner for now. The tie triggered an automatic recount, however, which will take place Tuesday.
“It doesn’t happen too often,” said elections board clerk Rich Nagel about the tie. He said there’s not much the board can do to settle a tie, so it uses the coin toss. “Our options are limited.”
In Campbell, incumbent Mayor Bill VanSuch remained the winner over challenger Lewis Jackson in what was a close race there. VanSuch had a total of 1,465 votes to Jackson’s 1,442.
Freer said Wednesday afternoon that he is still not confident he’ll be declared the winner after the recount.
“When it started out with absentee ballots, I was 50 percent ahead,” he said. “In the final count, I was two votes behind. Now, I won by the flip of a coin. I’m still a little bit nervous. Will it change again?”
If Freer sits on the board of trustees, it will be his first political office. He was police chief in Sebring for 17 years. He now works in security for the Copeland Oaks retirement community.
“We need to stay within our budget, and as far as I’m concerned, we aren’t going after additional tax levies,” Freer said about his plans for the township. “And we’ll try to find companies that want to move in,” he added.
Winters said he hopes Tuesday finds him the winner again, but if not, he has time to travel and play golf.
He was a trustee for 12 years. “I gave it my best,” he said.
VanSuch, who became Campbell’s mayor by default in January after former mayor George Krinos resigned, said he is thankful to the city residents.
VanSuch was city council president and moved to the mayor’s office to fill the vacancy, which is procedure under the city’s charter. He said he will continue to do the job to the best of his ability.
“And make them proud of me,” he added.
Jackson said he definitely is encouraged by the closeness of the race, and he will run again.
He had been city administrator under Krinos, and when VanSuch dismissed him to hire former mayor Jack Dill as administrator, he became 4th Ward councilman. That post will be filled by Robert Yankle, who defeated Anthony Matash.
Jackson said that even though he won’t be a councilman any longer, he’ll continue to work on projects he was involved in while on council and while he was city administrator.
He said he’ll run again for mayor, because he prefers the administrative side of government.