OHIO VALLEY — Three Justices of the Ohio Supreme Court and two judges for the Fourth District Court of Appeals were elected as part of Tuesday’s general election.
Marie Hoover was elected to the Fourth District Court of Appeals defeating Leonard Holzapfel in the race for the term commencing on Feb. 9, 2013.
Hoover, a Portsmouth based attorney, received nearly 54 percent of the 180,622 votes cast in the district.
Holzapfel was slightly favored by Meigs County voters with 51.7 percent of the vote, while receiving nearly 59 percent of the Gallia County vote.
William Harsha was running unopposed for the term commencing on Feb. 10, 2013, a seat he currently holds.
Current Justice Terrence O’Donnell was reelected, while fellow incumbents Robert Cupp and Yvette McGee Brown were defeated in there bid to retain their respective seat on the court.
O’Donnell, who has served on the court since 2003, defeated challenger Michael Skindell nearly 70 percent to 30 percent. Statewide, O’Donnell received 2,715,916 votes of the 3,916,887 cast in the race.
O’Donnell’s next term will begin on Jan. 1, 2013.
William O’Neill defeated Cupp in the race for the term beginning Jan. 2, 2013. O’Neill received 52.31 percent of the almost 3.9 million votes cast in the race.
Cupp had served on the Supreme Court of Ohio since 2007.
In the race for the unexpired term ending Dec. 31, 2014, Sharon L. Kennedy defeated Brown.Kennedy received 57.27 percent of the 3,972,633 votes cast in the race.
Brown was appointed to the court by then Governor Ted Strickland, and began serving in Jan. 2011.
Meigs County voters supported O’Donnell, Kennedy, and O’Neill in there respective races as did voters in Gallia County.
According to the Associated Press, both the Republican and Democratic parties felt opponents to the incumbents who were defeated benefited from “great ballot names.”
Ohio Democratic Chairman Chris Redfern said Wednesday he would introduce legislation following Brown’s defeat to require party affiliation to be listed on the ballot. Redfern is a newly re-elected state representative.
Redfern said Brown’s opponent, Sharon Kennedy, benefited from a “great ballot name” that prevailed even after $1.5 million spending favoring Brown.
Ohio Republican Chairman Bob Bennett felt the same was the case for former Judge Bill O’Neill, who defeated Republican Justice Robert Cupp.
Bennett said in his native Cuyahoga County, “We elect anybody with a good Irish-American name, even if they wind up going to jail later.”
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Both my wife and I are lifelong registered Republicans ourselves and actually voted for these Justices. Our suit charges that FIRSTENERGY, through its top executives, loaded a super majority of Republican Justices up with ILLEGAL (straw donor) campaign cash with the expectation of and in exchange for specific exclusive improper official acts in a specific case redounding to illegal control of the Ohio Supreme Court for their exclusive and otherwise unobtainable benefit. The actual facts in this case lends great credibility to Justice Elect O’Neill’s concern that “MONEY AND JUDGES DON’T MIX”. Justice Elect O’Neill has not minced words on this issue saying that taking money from litigants and then ruling on their case is “WRONG”. Our lawsuit actually provides a clear real world contemporary example of exactly why he is dead on right on this issue. Both Justices Cupp and O’Donnell have publicly mocked Justice Elect O’Neill’s inability to show a single “cause and effect” case. Well now there is one supported by two (2) cases in one year and it is a serious threat to the status quo.
Channel 21 WFMJ did a good and fair story on this case on Oct 18th in which a predicable irrelevant statement of recrimination released by FIRSTENERGY was announced. Other news organizations became very interested and began investigating. The word is the Ohio GOP freaked and was anticipating that the story might break out. With highly questionable judicial conduct of Justice Cupp very compellingly detailed in our suit the GOP needed to counter with adds that question Justice Elect O’Neill’s judicial conduct as well. I am not saying that someone in the GOP did not think about the unprecedented attack before this event, someone may have but they were far from actually doing it. It was our unprecedented lawsuit that had already been on TV once that clearly pushed them over the edge. Look, Justice Elect O’Neill did all the heavy lifting here and he is beyond qualified for the job but how do people know this with no money. One way is to get the other side to do something that educates the electorate on your issue and do it in a manner that backfires at the same time.
I would like to think that we helped to remove a Justice who’s conduct as a judge and as a candidate has been highly questionable at best. When considering the entire picture of what happened to cause this unexpected result our lawsuit simply cannot be discounted altogether even where Justice Elect O’Neill clearly earned his victory in his own right.
Justice Cupp himself publicly endorsed our current system of electing judges on the basis that it supposedly allows the people to hold judges accountable which all judges know is really a farce the way they manipulate and use their power to cover up the truth about their true performance and integrity to the law. It looks like for once, however, accountability may of actually happened. I hope this case acts as a warning to others and it leads to many more removals and real reform!