Greene elections take shape
WAYNESBURG – While the four candidates for Greene County commissioner will vie for three seats this fall, two other county row offices also will be contested at the Nov. 4 general election. District Attorney Marjorie Fox will have a Republican challenger, after Tim Logan ran a successful write-in campaign just weeks before the primary. According to elections director Frances Pratt, Logan received 422 write-in votes on the Republican side, besting Fox’s 106 Republican write-ins.
A recent canvass of the voting in the May 20 primary also revealed that county controller candidate Connie Cramer also might appear on the November ballot, to challenge incumbent John Stets. Stets defeated Cramer in the primary by 391 votes to earn the Democratic nomination, but Pratt said Cramer received 112 write-in votes on the Republican side, topping Stets’ 81 votes.
In a press release, Cramer announced that she will run for controller as a Republican, though she is still a registered Democrat.
“I feel that we need to make incumbents and public officials accountable for the taxpayers’ money,” she said. “When elected, I will be a full-time office holder with an open-door policy to the press and taxpayers of the county.”
Cory Grandel captured both the Democratic and Republican nominations over Beverly Kerr for treasurer, while incumbent register of wills and recorder of deeds Tom Headlee won both nominations for his position, as well.
Incumbents Shirley Stockdale, clerk of courts, and Susan Kartley White, prothonotary, ran unopposed in the primary, and both received enough votes on both tickets to ensure their return to their row office positions for another four years in January.
Democrats Pam Snyder and Dave Coder and Republicans Scott A. Blair and John R. Gardner are the four candidates for county commissioner in the November election. Coder and Blair are incumbents, while Gardner is a former commissioner. Snyder, an aide to former U.S. Rep. Frank Mascara, was the top vote-getter in the primary.
Pratt said that when reviewing write-in votes, election officials work to determine the intent of the voter when he or she wrote a person’s name.
In many cases, she said, a letter is added or deleted from the correct spelling of a person’s name, though entries that just listed a person’s last name were not counted.
She said her staff is still working to determine the turnout for the primary, though she estimated it at around 40 percent of the county’s registered voters.
She said she is hopeful that all of the people who came out in the primary will remember to do so Nov. 4.
“Everything went fantastic,” Pratt said. “We had a great election.”