BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Democrat Mark Mallory's convincing win over Republican incumbent Janet Howard in Ohio's 9th Senate District last month came despite the challenger being outspent by 3-to-1.
Post-election campaign finance reports filed Friday with the Hamilton County Board of Elections showed that $640,921 was spent in an unsuccessful attempt to re-elect Ms. Howard, who had won the state senate seat four years before.
Nearly 90 percent of her money - $567,390 - was not raised by Ms. Howard's campaign committee. Instead, it came from the Republican Senate Campaign Committee controlled by Ohio Senate President Richard Finan, R-Evendale, who targeted the Howard-Mallory race as his top priority in 1998. Almost all the money Mr. Finan's committee spent went into a TV advertising campaign.
Mr. Mallory, a two-term state representative, spent $207,895 in a campaign in which he ended up taking 59 percent of the vote in the 9th Ohio Senate District, which includes much of Cincinnati and a number of its northern suburbs such as Sycamore and Springfield townships.
The district had been held by a Democrat, State Sen. William Bowen, until Mr. Bowen's retirement in 1994. Ms. Howard, then a Forest Park councilwoman, was tapped by the Republicans to run against Cincinnati Councilman Tyrone Yates for the senate seat. Stanley Aronoff, who was then Ohio Senate president, and Ohio Gov. George Voinovich, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Ms. Howard, who won by a wide margin over the Democrat.
Now that the Democrats have taken back the seat, they fear that by the time Mr. Mallory is up for re-election in 2002, statehouse Republicans will have redrawn the lines of the district to make it more Republican.
The Howard-Mallory contest was the most expensive non-federal candidate election in Hamilton County this year, but hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent in a myriad of other county races.
According to campaign finance reports, Republican County Commissioner Tom Neyer Jr. - a first-time candidate who was appointed to the office in January - spent $163,220 compared to $48,801 for Democrat Marilyn Hyland, who was also a first-time candidate. Mr. Neyer was elected with 56 percent of the vote.
In one of the most hotly-contested judicial races, Common Pleas Judge Ralph Winkler, a Republican, unseated Democratic incumbent Marianna Brown Bettman in the Ohio 1st District Court of Appeals race.
The race was nearly even in terms of money spent. Mr. Winkler reported expenditures of $117,258, while Ms. Bettman spent $124,761.
Another Republican challenger who unseated a Democratic incumbent in a judicial race was lawyer Susan Laker Tolbert, who defeated Democrat Deborah Gaines in the race for a domestic relations judgeship. Ms. Tolbert, an assistant county prosecutor, far outspent her opponent, with $106,526 in expenditures compared to about $23,000 for Ms. Gaines.
Lawyer John Burlew, a Republican who ran with Democratic Party backing, was outspent in his unsuccessful bid to unseat Juvenile Court Judge Thomas Lipps, a Republican. Reports showed that Mr. Burlew spent $27,101, compared to $79,728 for Judge Lipps.
