Ohio Treasurer Joe Deters, setting his sights on a possible run for Ohio attorney general next year, is shedding his job as Hamilton County Republican Party chairman and handing it over to lawyer Michael Barrett.

        “I did my duty, and now it's time I start worrying about my own election,” said Mr. Deters, who for the past year has been in the unique situation of being a state officeholder and county party chair at the same time.

        He is mulling a run for re-election as state treasurer next year or a run for Ohio attorney general, which would likely set up a 2002 primary election battle with State Auditor Jim Petro.

        Both Mr. Petro and the incumbent Republican attor ney general, Betty Montgomery, can't run for re-election next year because of Ohio's term limits law. Mr. Deters could run for re-election.

        Mr. Deters said he is leaving the party chairmanship now to devote more time to raising campaign money and to decide what office to run for in 2002.

        The Hamilton County Republican Party's central committee is expected to meet Tuesday to elect a new chairman. Mr. Barrett, son of the late physician, philanthropist and businessman Charles Barrett, has the support of most of the party leadership, including Mr. Deters, Hamilton County prosecutor Mike Allen and U.S. Rep. Rob Portman.

        Mr. Barrett, 50, who began his career as an assistant county prosecutor in the late 1970s, said he has been interested in the party chairmanship for several years.

        “I'm looking forward to this,” Mr. Barrett said. “I can tell you that my focus will be on local races, winning local offices, much more than on the national scene.”

        Mr. Deters took over the party chairmanship a year ago, after an uproar over a controversial endorsement process for state representative candidates split the party and forced the resignation of party chairman H.C. “Buck” Niehoff.

        Hard-line conservatives in the party thought the Niehoff endorsement process was designed to keep their candidates from getting party endorsements and favored the party's handpicked candidates.

        Mr. Deters, a former county prosecutor, stepped in to pick up the pieces and vowed to stay in the job only through the 2000 election.

        “Joe did a great job stabilizing the party structure in Hamilton County,” said Ohio GOP chairman Robert Bennett. “But nobody expected him to stay in that job long-term.”

        After the flap over the state-representative endorsement process, the GOP in Hamilton County went through an election that saw it lose a Hamilton County commission seat for the first time in 36 years, when Democrat Todd Portune beat Republican incumbent Bob Bedinghaus, and where the GOP lost one of the county's state representative seats.

        At the same time, Mr. Deters headed a get-out-the-vote effort last fall in southwestern Ohio counties that produced a 138,172-vote margin for George W. Bush and helped him win Ohio's 21 electoral votes.

        In a prepared statement Tuesday, Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political strategist, credited Mr. Deters with running a political operation that “proved once again to be one of the premier Republican political organizations in the United States.”

        Mr. Barrett will face a challenge right from the start — a Cincinnati election that will feature the first direct election of the mayor since the 1920s and a City Council election where the city's term-limits law will prevent two of the three GOP incumbents from running for re-election.

        “The bar is raised pretty high for Republicans in both races,” Mr. Barrett said Tuesday of the mayoral and council races. “But we are going to put together a credible slate of candidates.”

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