Ohio Primary Results

     Hey gang the Primaries are over and now time has come to analyze the results.

     First off I know everyone has been studying and following the presidential race, as with any election the top office tends to define the whole process. Here in Ohio in the Republican race John Kasich our current Governor won the Primary, while Hillary Clinton won on the Democrat side.  What does this mean? Well the thing about the presidency is that it’s really the only position that is elected nationwide. Since the Presidency is in fact voted on by the nation one must look at the rest of the nation to know what is really going on. First off in the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton now holds nearly double the total delegates as opponent Bernie Sanders, and is likely to take the nomination.

     Now John Kasich is a completely different story, He himself has 143 delegates and 66 of those are from his win in Ohio. In my humble opinion John Kasich's only hope of gaining the nomination is a contested convention, which means that when the primaries in every state are over there is no clear winner. That said it would be a great atrocity for the people to give say for example 49% of the vote to Donald Trump, 30% to Ted Cruz and 15% to Kasich, (leaving the last 16% to other candidates who dropped out early) and then all of a sudden you give the prize to third place. #GoldDon'tEqualBronze

     Okay now that we have discussed the national issues let’s not forget the local elections. Two races that I have myself followed closest were the Sharif and Ross County Commissioner races. On the Republican side current Sharif George Lavender, and Dwight Garret won their respective races for nomination. On the Democrat side we had Donald T. Hayburn, II who won the nomination for Sharif and Todd Holdren won the nomination for Commissioner.  

     I will not be announcing all of my endorsements anytime soon but I cannot hide that George Lavender is my pick for Sharif I know him personally and I've never met a member of law enforcement more dedicated to the protection of the citizenry. 

     One final note I'm excited to announce that both Diane Carnes Ross County Republican Committee Chairwoman and Dustin Proehl Ross County Democratic Committee Chairman have agreed to be interviewed on the the results of our local primaries. Look for these posts to come soon.

Primary Season 2016

So for what may be obvious reasons I have been thinking a lot about the upcoming primary elections here in Chillicothe Ohio. Everyone is so focused on the Presidential nominees that they have for all intents and purposes forgotten how many senate seats, congressional seats, governorship's, and local positions are also up for grabs this year. I have included here the list copied from the Ross County Board of Elections website. I must say that I am unfortunately not acquainted with every name on this list but I have taken the liberty of bolding the people I would stake my reputation on.

Local Candidates for the March 2016 Primary

 *Judge of The Court of Appeals-4th District (Non-Partisan)

 -Valarie K. Gerlach -Matthew W. McFarland -Paul Price

*15th US Congressional District

 -Scott Wharton (D) -Steve Stivers (R) -Write-In (Dennis Lambert) (G)

*2nd US Congressional District

 -Russ Hurley (D) -Ronny Richards (D) -William R. Smith (D) -Jim Lewis (R) -Brad Wenstrup (R)

*State Representative (91st District)

 -Cliff Rosenberger (R)

*State Representative (92nd District)

 -Gary K. Scherer (R)

*County Commissioner (Term Commencing 1/2/2017)

 -Brad Cosenza (D) -Todd Holdren (D) -Jan Nusbaum (D) -James E. Barker (R) -Dan D. Cryder (R) -Dwight A. Garrett (R)

 *County Commissioner (Term Commencing 1/3/2017)

-Stephen A. Neal (D)

*Prosecuting Attorney

 -Matthew Schmidt (R)

*Clerk of Court of Common Pleas

 -Ty D. Hinton (D)

*Sheriff

 -Donald T. Hayburn, II (D) -George W. Lavender, Jr. (R) -Gregory Alan McKeever (R)

*County Engineer

 -Charles R. Ortman (R)

*Coroner

 -John A. Gabis (D)

*County Treasurer

 -Jerald A. Byers (D)

*County Recorder

 -Kathy Dunn (D)

*Judge of The Court of Common Pleas

 -Michael Ater (R)

*State Central Committee Man-Republican

 -Phil A. Bowman (R) -James Rosendahl (R)

 * State Central Committee Woman-Republican

 -Wendy Sizemore (R) -Bonnie Ward (R)

Underlined Items: 1st I know both James E. Barker and Dan D. Cryder personally, Dan and I spent the week of the fair manning the Ross County Fair both last summer, while James and I were runners at the Republican Fish Fry last September. Both are good hard working men that I would gladly vote to the position of County Commissioner, Only at the time of this writing I have not decided which one I would vote for and therefore until that time I will endorse both although only one will can win.

2. I am a Republican and as such it takes a great deal for me to endorse anyone with a D next to their name that said Steve Neal though maybe not a personal friend has been in my sphere for a very long time. You see Steve's parents have been the greatest neighbors my grandparents could ask for and his daughter Sarah and I graduated high school together. Steve is a good man from a good family and though I know I may catch some flak for crossing party lines I would like to see Steve continue to serve our community.

City Council; Ward vs. At-large members

     Okay so I know I'm a couple weeks behind on this one but we all know how crazy this time of year can be. Good news however is this post is one I've been want to write since a conversation I had with local pastor Mike Jones of Chillicothe's Agape Fellowship. Mike asked many good questions regarding Chillicothe's local government, but there was one that stood out for me. "What is the difference between a council-at-large and what you did in the 4th ward?" Many in local politics take this very important difference for granted, some cities only have one or the other we in Chillicothe are fortunate to have both.

     I have included here a picture taken from the Chillicothe website which shows the divisions of the City's Ward system. With the new council taking effect in January many of the names of council members will soon be out of date the divisions however will remain the same for several years to come. Here's the important things, each the 6 wards have their very own representative, every citizen can call on their representative when they have an issue pertaining to city ordinances operations within city government as well as any questions or requests you can think of. Now the entire City can if need be contact one of our city's three Council-at-Large representative.

     Much like the Mayor, Law director, and City Auditor, Council-at-Large positions are voted on by the entire city where as Ward positions are only voted on by their respective wards. Example I ran for election in the fourth ward against incumbent Dave Tatman. This meant that I only asked for votes in that ward, I had many friends say they would vote for me but they lived in other wards and so could not vote for or even against me. My friend Bill Betson however ran for an At-Large position, he needed votes from the entire city of Chillicothe from the first ward to the sixth ward.

     Now I mentioned how fortunate we are to have both forms of Council representative, and I will tell you why. Take a look at cities like Columbus which have only At-Large positions for City council members. That means that you could possibly have all your council representatives from the same neighborhood, when that happens council will work very hard for their own area of the city but not the rest of the city. Say though that you find a city with only representatives and now they each want what's best for their own neighborhoods but no one watches out for the city as a whole.

     Since Chillicothe has two types of council members we can balance both extremes, in an ideal setting each ward representative would work to better his ward and each At-Large member would work for the city as a whole.

Presidential Term Limits

     As I sat trying to think of a new topic to blog about I happened to overhear a conversation about Obama running for a 3rd term and a young man telling his friends that he (Obama) wanted to be the first president to do it. The list of problems with this statement was so long it took everything in me not to walk up to the young man no more than 20 years of age and slap him so hard he ended up back in his high school government class where he belonged. Luckily for me the young man's friend looked at him and informed him of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's election to a fourth and unfinished term. This second young man continued to tell his unbelieving friend that it was shortly after that in which congress passed a constitutional amendment which limited the number of terms a president could serve. The first young man responded that "he's gonna try it anyway." at this point I placed my headphones on my ears and ignored the rest of the conversation.

 

     This is precisely the reason I launched this blog there I was sitting in Ohio University Chillicothe, and still misunderstandings of this magnitude are all around us. For the record and according to heritage.org in response to F.D.R.'s unprecedented four elected terms the U.S. Congress passed the twenty-second amendment in 1947 which limits each President to two elected terms or in some case's such as my favorite President, Harry S Truman who served all but three months of FDR's fourth term as President due to the untimely death of his predecessor. Under the new requirements anyone serving more than two years of an unexpired term forfeits one elected term. Pres. Truman therefore having served three years and nine months of an unexpired term was technically disqualified from a second elected term. Special thanks to Great Grandma Truman's family records and trumanlittlewhitehouse.com for the information on Pres. Truman. also one last item according to whitehouse.gov and heritage.org Truman did have the option to run for a second elected term as the twenty-second amendment says that it  "shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by Congress." which basically means that the rule only applies to people elected after Truman. I used Truman as my example simply because of my personal connection with him.

Works Cited

http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/amendments/22/essays/184/presidential-term-limit

http://www.trumanlittlewhitehouse.com/key-west/president-truman-biography.htm

What Does City Council Do?

     One of the most common questions I get asked is "What exactly does city council do?" This is something I myself was unsure of as most of my government classes in high school had focused on the national level with the President, the Supreme Court, and Congress. So I have done some investigating and I believe I have a brief explanation of what city council is responsible for. To begin though I would like to include a short review of my high school government class. As many people know the U.S. federal government is split into 3 branches of government.

     The first is called the Executive Branch, more commonly known as the President and his cabinet, which include the Attorney General, the Vice-President, the Secretaries of State, the Treasury, and Homeland Security just to name a few. The Executive Branch is responsible for the enforcement of the law, example the most powerful Law enforcement agency in the world is our own FBI whose director is selected my none other than the President of the U.S.A. The President corresponds most closely to our Mayor in local government, like the President our Mayor is responsible for the appointment of local officials such as the Chief of Police, the Director of parks and recreation, and the city engineer.

     Second comes the Judicial Branch which is made up of all federal courts most famously is the Supreme Court in Washington D.C., the job of the Judicial Branch is to interpret the law for example if 2 laws appear to be in conflict the courts can decide which law supersedes the other. In the case of Gideon verses wainwright 3 separate laws came into effect, 1st was the 6th amendment to the constitution, 2nd was the Florida law guaranteeing citizens facing a capital offence a lawyer and finally 3rd the supremacy clause of the united states constitution. For more information simply search Gideon vs. Wainwright on Google or You-tube.

      Of course here in Chillicothe we have our own local judicial side of things from Judges Eddy and Street our elected Municipal Court Judges, to Sherri Rutherford newly reelected City Law Director. Their jobs as you may have guessed is to ensure fair trials and legal interpretation of the law, not unlike our national Supreme Court.

     Third is called the Legislative Branch, this Branch is made up of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the U.S. Senate, together they make up what is often referred to as the U.S. Congress. The Legislative Branch is responsible for the making of laws, examples include drug policies, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and the approval or ratification of treaties with foreign nations. Now we come to it and City Council is most like to the Legislative branch of government. City Council decides the laws here in Chillicothe recent changes to the Codified Ordinances(the List of laws here in Chillicothe) include the inability to park cars in one front or side yards, the changing of parking in Chillicothe's downtown to angle parking.

      One last thing that I would be remiss if I forgot to mention is that both Congress and City Council both hold something called the power of the purse, meaning that just like your spouse at home they decide when and where money is spent, example here in Chillicothe there was a major leak in the water system beneath Water St. funds to perform the repair had to be set aside by the Council in order to afford parts and labor for the much needed fix. the power of the purse is likely the most important thing exercised by Chillicothe's City Council every year millions of dollars are divided up and voted on, despite the budget being suggested by the Mayor of Chillicothe Council always has the power(though its use is becoming a rare thing) to vote no.

Who am I?

     My name is Steven Truman, many of you may know me from my 2015 Chillicothe City Council run. Or perhaps we have worked together, seen each other in Wal-Mart, been in a home school group(back before it was all online) or even attended the same high school. The point being that I have been around most often in some form of school. Education has as you may have noticed is a big part of my life, from my home school background to a public high school diploma, and a christian ministries masters degree, and finally my current status enrolled in Ohio University-Chillicothe attempting to achieve a business degree. I deeply value knowledge believing heartily in the old adage "knowledge is power."

     If indeed knowledge is power then the coils which produce this fantastic form of electricity are hard work, and time. Time i will be the first to admit I do not posses in great measure, and by this i mean to say I am a very young man the youngest in fact on the City Council ballots this past election cycle. However hard work has never been something I have shied away from, working first in the fast food industry then in logistics and now managing shifts for Wendy's on Bridge St. and this not to mention my efforts in my own education. I worked in order to pay both my own tuition and part of my wife's as well, I have felt for a long time that to be called lazy and stupid are the greatest insults one can receive, a lesson well learned from my father.
     Roy M. Truman Jr. is the man i have always looked up to, especially following the 3 years i spent working along side him in an environment where willingness to give your all without question was the single most valued trait. Maybe the single greatest gift I was ever given was to have a father who worked so hard, and a mother who loved learning so much. My love of learning was imparted into me by my Tina J. Truman my mother and the first person who told me i could do whatever i put my mind to. My parents did a wonderful job raising myself and my four siblings, but nothing ever truly prepared me for when my wife Amanda walked into my life 6 years ago. We have now been married for over 4 years now and i still can't believe that when i asked for her hand she said yes.
     Through the story of my life i can see God working through every aspect from my second and third chances at love to my run for council and eventual loss. As I made my run for Council it shocked me just how much actually happened on a local level here in Chillicothe, and in addition how many people truly had no idea how their local government actually worked. That is why I've launched this Blog I feel that people have a right to know and now they will.
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