Tuesday, February 01, 2000
Leis likely to run unopposed
Democratic opponent ruled unqualified
BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Hamilton County Sheriff Simon L. Leis Jr. will run without opposition this year, after the board of elections ruled Monday that his Democratic opponent was not qualified under Ohio law to be a sheriff's candidate.
After a two-hour hearing Monday, the two Democrats and two Republicans on the board agreed that Brian Watson, a former sheriff's patrol officer from Springfield Township, did not meet the requirements regulating who can run for sheriff.
The law, adopted by the Ohio General Assembly in 1997, requires a sheriff's candidate to have two years supervisory experience at the rank of corporal or above, or two years of college education.
Mr. Watson, who resigned from the sheriff's patrol in December after nine years working for Mr. Leis, testified Monday that he had neither.
But his lawyer, Tim Mara, argued that while Mr. Watson never held the title of corporal, he performed numerous supervisory functions in his years with the sheriff's patrol.
“It's not the title which counts; it's what you actually do,” Mr. Mara said.
But the other board members agreed with Republican board member Eugene Ruehlmann that the Ohio law “means what it says.”
The protest against Mr. Watson's candidacy was filed with the board of elections by Saundra Stehlin, a Democratic voter from Mack who testified to the board Monday that she was asked to file the complaint by an officer she knows in the sheriff's department.
Elections board chairman Tim Burke, co-chairman of the Hamilton County Democratic Party, voted to keep Mr. Watson's name off the March 7 primary ballot, but said he was “bothered by the actions of the sheriff's department in this matter.”
Mr. Ruehlmann said he wasn't “bothered a bit” by the fact that the sheriff's office initiated the complaint against Mr. Watson, saying “that's politics. Politics is a tough business.”
Mr. Mara said Mr. Watson's only alternative is to take the matter to court, but said no decision has been made on that.
The ruling means it is unlikely that Mr. Leis will have an opponent when he runs for re-election this year, unless an independent candidate who is qualified under Ohio law files petitions with the signatures of nearly 3,000 county voters by the March 6 deadline for independent candidates.
It will be the second consecutive election in which the Republican sheriff has had no Democratic opponent. He was re-elected without opposition in 1996.
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