He turned 60 this month.
Friends and colleagues remembered his kindness, his dry sense of humor, his “steady hand at the wheel” as part of the elections board, and his impact politically and in the legal profession.
“He gave sage advice,” said David Payne, deputy director of the county board of elections, who first met Sinnott more than 30 years ago. “He was a great legal mind, he was a great political mind.”
Josh Jaffe, chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party Executive Committee, called Sinnott a practical conservative who has had an enormous impact on Republican politics in this state and in central Ohio for decades… He’s been one of the people who has shaped Ohio Republican politics over the last 40 years.”
Her last day will be Friday. I think family has to come first. My mom is 92 and in Cleveland, and I ve lost a year not seeing her, she said at the end of Tuesday s commissioners meeting. We don t have much time left. . I can t do the position the way I want to do it and the way I feel I need to do it and take care of my family.
With her departure, Commissioners John O’Grady and Kevin Boyce will appoint an interim replacement, likely naming someone in the coming days. By the end of June, the Franklin County Democratic Party’s Central Committee will appoint a permanent replacement to serve out Brown’s term.
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The Teacher and the Student: Mike Coleman and Shannon Hardin
Mike Coleman is the most successful Black political leader in Columbus history. His career provided a road map for his protégé, Shannon Hardin. Then the world changed.
Columbus Monthly
The two men stand next to one another, each dressed in blue suit jackets and white shirts, standard politician attire. One is the 66-year-old former mayor of Columbus, the first Black man to fill the role, whose 16-year tenure transformed the city. The other is his 33-year-old protégé, the first Black gay man to serve as City Council president, whose career is still taking shape.
The chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party has been hired on a part-time basis to help the Franklin County Board of Elections transition to a new voter registration system.
Josh Jaffe, who chairs the county GOP s executive committee, started his new role this week, working up to 30 hours at $30 an hour, said David Payne, the election board s deputy director.
Jaffe, 32, will oversee the switch from from the Integrity voter registration system to the Tenex system, Payne said. Before we make a complete switch, we re going to run them parallel, and do mock elections to make sure the new Tenex system works, he said.
John Raphael, the former influential Columbus City Hall lobbyist and one-time political ally to several high-ranking local Democrats, has again agreed to plead guilty to federal corruption charges for billing clients success fees that were really intended as bribes in return for securing public contracts, court documents show.
And for the second time since 2016, Raphael is facing prison this time for up to 20 years for his role in a bribery and kickback scheme he devised and carried out between 2013 and 2015 as a member of the Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority, the public entity that owns Nationwide Arena, the Greater Columbus Convention Center, a high-rise hotel adjacent to the convention center and another hotel currently under construction.