The American Legion Post 97 in Cardington will be sponsoring a Meet the Candidates Night on Tuesday, Feb. 6, for the primary races in Morrow County. The county offices up for election in 2024 are two commissioner seats, prosecuting attorney, recorder, treasurer, clerk of courts, sheriff, engineer, and Court of Common Pleas judge.
The forum will begin at 6:30 p.m., and the format agreed to will allow each candidate to give an opening statement, answer questions from the moderators and audience members (if time allows), and provide a closing statement.
The candidate guide for the evening includes three running for commissioner of Morrow County, two for prosecutor, and five for recorder. All of the incumbents for treasurer, clerk of courts, sheriff, engineer, and Court of Common Pleas judge are running unopposed.
For county commissioner, there are two separate races for each seat: one with incumbent Tim Abraham running unopposed, and the other featuring a race between incumbent Tim Siegfried and Chris Sherbourne.
Abraham is seeking his second term on the Morrow County Board of Commissioners. A former village council member for Cardington, he beat out Warren Davis for the seat in 2020 primary election before cruising to a large victory in November 2020.
Siegfried, the former mayor of Marengo, beat out then-incumbent Burgess Castle and challenger Vanessa Gingerich in the 2020 primary election before his huge win in the general election that fall. His 2024 primary challenger, Sherbourne, has been a village council member in Mount Gilead for over eight years.
The Morrow County prosecutor’s race is a rematch of the 2020 competition between incumbent Tom Smith and Andy Wick. Smith was previously an assistant prosecutor under Charles Howland before succeeding him in the position over three years ago. Wick, in his third time running for the office, moved from being a private practice attorney to assistant prosecutor for Richland County and, now, Licking County.
Jennifer Kimmey, Jerry Newell, Cathie Robinson, Brandon Strain, and Dawn Vanderkooi are the candidates for Morrow County recorder. Incumbent Dixie Shinaberry is retiring after more than two decades being spent in the office.
Kimmey, a native of Mount Gilead, recently came back to the area after living in Florida while working for the U.S. departments of Defense and State. Newell is the co-owner of Bunker’s Mill Winery in Cardington and has experience in the private sector with real estate records. Robinson is the treasurer for the Morrow County Republican Women’s Club. She also works in the field of dentistry as an assistant. Strain has been employed at the Morrow County Engineer’s Office for over two decades. He has also been a member of Mount Gilead Village Council and township trustee for Cardington Township. Vanderkooi has been employed at the Marion County Recorder’s Office for the past five years.
Bart Dennison, county engineer, and John Hinton, county sheriff, do not have any competition as they look to voters to reelect them to a third term to their respective offices. Sheri Clever, clerk of courts, and Jim Jahn, treasurer, were appointed to each of their posts in 2023 and seek to be elected to their first four-year term in their own right, respectively. Clever took over for Kim Bood when she resigned to take the finance director position at the Delaware-Morrow Mental Health and Recovery Services Board. The Republican Party’s Central Committee looked to Jahn to fill the opening at the Treasurer’s Office after Mike Goff resigned in December 2022.
Morrow County Court of Common Pleas Judge Rob Hickson has no opposition as he seeks another term on the bench.
Finally, Morrow County’s OSU Extension Services (4-H) is on the ballot asking for its 0.5-mill property tax levy to be renewed for another five years.
Quinn Maceyko is a correspondent for the Morrow County Sentinel.
