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Austintown resident files objection against commissioner candidate
YOUNGSTOWN
An Austintown resident has filed an objection to the candidacy of Pete Ceci for Mahoning County commissioner.
The board of elections will have a hearing on the matter at 5 p.m. March 4.
Mark Cleland Sr., a longtime citizen activist, filed the objection Friday, the deadline to turn in an objection.
“I protest the candidacy of Pete Ceci for Mahoning County commissioner based [on] the fact that his petition[s] are faulty,” Cleveland wrote in a letter to the board of elections.
The board certified Ceci’s candidacy last Tuesday by a 3-1 vote.
The issue was that two people who circulated Ceci’s nominating petitions — Ernest Beachman and Danielle M. Hamill, who both live at 3631 South Ave. in Youngstown — had Ceci’s name printed instead of their own in the document’s circulator statement.
Though state law doesn’t address that issue, there is a question as to whether the circulators witnessed whoever wrote in the number of signatures on the petitions.
Based on handwriting, it’s apparent the same person — likely not Beachman or Hamill — wrote Ceci’s name in the affidavit and the number of signatures on the forms, board officials, Lou DeFabio, Ceci’s attorney, and J. Corey Colombo, Cleland’s attorney, say.
But that doesn’t matter, DeFabio said.
“This is a technical defect or error, and these are the kind of things the court has ruled should not keep someone off of the ballot,” he said.
In the protest letter, Colombo wrote the statement “must be completed and signed by the circulator,” and because of that, they “are defective” and should be rejected.
Elections board member Robert Wasko, a Democrat, voted against confirming Ceci’s eligibility.
Board Vice Chairman David Betras, the county Democratic Party chairman, was initially inclined to vote against certifying Ceci, but said the secretary of state would just return the issue back to the board for another vote to break a tie.
The board’s two Republican members, Tracey Winbush and Chairman Mark Munroe, who also heads the county Republican Party, voted to certify Ceci’s candidacy.
Ceci, of Youngstown, a political newcomer, is challenging Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti, also of Youngstown, in the May 6 Democratic primary.
Rimedio-Righetti said last Tuesday: “I’m not concerned about him on the ballot. I’m not going to file a protest.”
Deputy Director Thomas McCabe, a Republican, said at last Tuesday’s meeting that Beachman and Hamill told him they would attend that meeting to explain the affidavit issue, but didn’t show up.
Hamill was running for the Democratic 33rd District State Central Committeewoman seat against board Director Joyce Kale-Pesta, but withdrew Friday from the race.
Beachman was charged Feb. 6 with a probation violation from a previous misdemeanor conviction of possessing criminal tools, spending seven days in the county jail before being bailed out. The nominating petitions he collected are dated Feb. 5.
Ceci said Friday that “you don’t need a road map to know who is trying their hardest to keep me out,” and called Cleland a “stooge.”
Ceci said he will win the protest and that the “entitled few are running scared” because “I’m a true candidate that the people will side with come May 6.”