YOUNGSTOWN Nothing is going to change the outcome of the write-in Democratic primary for Youngstown council president: Tom Hetrick is the winner, election officials say.
Hetrick had 1,347 votes to 1,092 for incumbent council President DeMaine Kitchen and 92 for Lee David Pupio. All three ran as write-in candidates.
The 255-vote lead is too great for Kitchen to overcome, said Director Joyce Kale-Pesta and Deputy Director Thomas McCabe of the Mahoning County Board of Elections.
“DeMaine can’t catch him,” McCabe said.
There were 205 votes “not assigned” during Tuesday’s primary and 79 provisional ballots in the city are to be counted.
But McCabe said election officials went through the 205 “not assigned” votes and “there aren’t any that are going to add to the count.”
YOUNGSTOWN If incumbent Youngstown council President DeMaine Kitchen would have been successful in collecting 50 valid signatures on his nominating petitions
YOUNGSTOWN If incumbent Youngstown council President DeMaine Kitchen would have been successful in collecting 50 valid signatures on his nominating petitions, there wouldn’t be a contested Democratic primary for his seat.
But because of that failure, Kitchen, who’s in his first four-year term as president, is running in an unusual race against two other candidates all as write-ins.
His two challengers in the May 4 Democratic primary are Tom Hetrick, a nutrition educator for Mercy Health-Youngstown and a former neighborhood planner for the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp.; and Lee David Pupio, a retired city wastewater collections system maintenance operations employee.
⢠The marquee race in the area is the Democratic race for Youngstown mayor.
That primary pits incumbent Mayor Jamael Tito Brown, who is seeking his second four-year term, against Councilman Julius Oliver, D-1st Ward, and businessman Ryan Kelly.
Turnout should be very low, which makes it difficult to predict who will win the primary.
In the 2017 Democratic primary, 8,298 people voted in the mayoral election. But that also included contested races for council president and a municipal court judge. Not that people come out in droves to vote for council president or a local judicial candidate, but there were three items on the ballot four years ago.
A COUP ATTEMPT | Valley reflects on insurrection at U.S. Capitol
As Congress went about its ceremonial business of certifying election results Wednesday afternoon, a mob of pro-Trump rioters invaded the U.S. Capitol, resulting in the death of at least one woman.
Jan 7, 2021 3:52 AM By: Mahoning Matters staff
From left: U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th; Youngstown 6th Ward Councilwoman Anita Davis; Youngstown State University politics professor Paul Sracic; and attorney David Betras.
WASHINGTON As insurrectionists invaded the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday afternoon, Youngstown State University Professor Paul Sracic was thinking about a U.S. State Department-sponsored lecture he gave to an Afghani delegation in 2016.