Warren man resigns job with state to run as write-in for Trumbull commissioner
Staff report
WARREN
Certification of Trumbull County’s only local write-in candidate in the November election, Pastor Todd Johnson of Warren, was delayed because Tuesday’s Board of Elections meeting was canceled. No new date has been set.
Johnson, pastor of Second Baptist Church on Main Avenue Southwest, filed to oppose longtime incumbent county Commissioner Dan Polivka, a Democrat who is also county Democratic Party chairman.
Johnson learned recently that he could not run for commissioner while working for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, so he resigned the job effective Friday.
Johnson worked out of the Warren JFS office and served as a caseworker for the Office of Workforce Development. He worked there nearly 10 years, he said.
Johnson said he had been planning to leave his job at JFS this fall, but learning that he could not run for commissioner and work in a classified position in state government caused him to move up his resignation.
Johnson, in a letter to JFS that he also gave to the board of elections, said the primary reason he was leaving JFS was “to assume full-time pastoral responsibilities at Second Baptist Church in Warren, OH, where I oversee a large congregation that requires daily attention and ministry.”
Polivka also has a Republican opponent in November, Mary Williams of Cort-land, a Lakeview Board of Education member.
Johnson has been with Second Baptist one year and before that was a pastor at AGAPE Assembly Church on Nevada Avenue Southwest for three years.
Johnson said he is running for commissioner because he believes there is a “need for a new generation of public servants – someone to represent young families.”
He said his priorities are job opportunities, quality of life issues, fairness in hiring, and “development in the county as far as attracting next-generation jobs and new industries.”