Mayor Stocker poised to pull off an election miracle in Struthers

The most interesting news coming out of the general election in the Mahoning Valley were write-in candidates.

The victory, defeat and apparent victory of incumbent Struthers Mayor Terry Stocker as a write-in candidate has garnered the most attention.

That’s because the Mahoning County Board of Elections failed to count 147 write-in votes from two precincts in the city’s 3rd Ward.

It initially looked like Stocker had won by 91 votes over Democrat Danny Thomas Jr. based on early-voting totals and the number of write-in ballots posted at the city’s polling locations.

But no one could be sure until the write-in votes were counted at the board. Just because someone filled in the oval next to the write-in line doesn’t mean that person voted for Stocker.

That certainly was the case with some voters who filled in the oval and didn’t include a name. Others wrote “none of the above,” and some wrote names of cartoon characters and real people – dead and alive – who aren’t eligible to be write-in candidates.

When the final total on the night of the election arrived, Thomas had a 72-vote victory among a little more than 3,000 voters. The numbers showed that of Stocker’s 1,426 write-in votes, 163 were no good. That 11 percent of the votes were rejected seems somewhat high. But it seemed plausible as write-in voting isn’t the easiest thing for those casting ballots.

During the chaos of election night, the ballot box for Struthers’ Precincts 3A and 3C were supposed to go to a location at the board office where write-in votes for Struthers mayor and Youngstown school board were being counted. Instead, the box was accidentally loaded with other ballot boxes that came off the truck from Campbell, Lowellville, Coitsville and Poland township and placed in a vault, said Joyce Kale-Pesta, the board of elections director. The seven other Struthers ballot boxes went to the correct location to be counted, she said.

The board will meet Nov. 14 to count those 147 write-in ballots. If even half of those votes are valid for Stocker – and to be very conservative, I expect about 75 percent to be valid – the incumbent mayor would have pulled off one of the most impressive and improbable election victories in Mahoning County in years.

There could be even more votes for Stocker when all the ballots with his name on the write-in lines in Struthers are counted.

There’s also about 50 provisional votes to count.

Lost in the Struthers controversy were two other write-in campaigns – one with an unlikely winner and the other a defeat for a candidate who received more than 2,000 write-in votes.

There were four seats up for grabs in the Youngstown school board race.

How relevant is the city board? Only three people filed nominating petitions for the four positions.

That meant that a write-in candidate would fill that fourth spot.

Among those four write-ins was Dario Hunter. Six months ago, Hunter suffered an embarrassing defeat in the Democratic primary for Youngstown City Council’s 6th Ward getting only 20 votes.

But Hunter spent money on television commercials and billboards to tout his write-in candidacy.

He garnered only 869 votes, but that was more than enough to make him the clear winner of that fourth seat. Among write-in candidates, Tina M. Cvetkovich was second with 417 votes.

Compare those low numbers to incumbents Brenda Kimble and Michael J. Murphy, both on the ballot by name, who received 6,550 and 5,529 votes, respectively.

In Niles, voters backed Democrat Thomas A. Scarnecchia for mayor in the general election race. He received 2,987 votes.

However, you’ve got to be impressed with Barry Profato, a former city councilman, who ran as a write-in and received 2,076 votes in the election.

Other interesting items from Tuesday’s election include an easy win for a Sunday liquor option for Crickets Bar and Grill at 1733 E. Midlothian Blvd, in Youngstown.

What makes it interesting is the board initially rejected the ballot option for a lack of valid signatures. It needed 88 valid and had only 83 good signatures on its petitions. After additional checking, it had 86 valid. It finally got to 89 on Oct. 6.

Voters in Austintown, my hometown, are unpredictable when it comes to ballot issues.

The best example was this last election.

There were three renewal/ additional levies from the township on the ballot.

Two of the issues were for road improvements. The levy for 1.5 mills won by 2.4 percentage points while the other for 2.5 mills lost by 5.2 percentage points.

The third levy for the parks lost by 15 percentage points.

So we were OK with one issue that raises our taxes, but not the other two.