FREMONT – The three-way race among Republicans for Sandusky County Commissioner was won decisively by Rich Farmer.
Richard J. Farmer received 3,671 votes (50.89%), while opponents Paul Lotcz received 2,655 votes (36.80%) and Timothy D. Newman received 888 votes (12.31%) in the May 5 primary. There were 7,214 votes cast.
Asking if this means he has “a six-month hall pass,” Farmer answered himself, “We still have to win in November.”
Farmer is running in the general election against Democrat Kurtis Kuhl, who won his uncontested primary race.
Farmer noted he also won a three-way race with a majority of the vote when he won his Ballville Township trustee race.
He noted the early research he did on the county and sent an email to every county, township and city elected official, asking about inefficiencies they might see in the county.
“I also sent out questions to, I don’t want to say the more important nonprofits, but the more community-engaged nonprofits, like the United Way, Economic Development, the Chamber of Commerce, the Visitor’s Bureau, the ones who are like ‘boots-on-the-ground’ type nonprofits,” Farmer said. “You learn a lot and I just started putting it together, and I started putting a plan forward. It was a lot of things that stood out.”
He plans to keep having conversations with a lot of people over the next six months. He says he’s going to “pretty much every committee there is,” and he wants to continue that.
“A large part of what I worked on was budgeting. I’m a numbers guy. So, I’ve taken the Sandusky County budget, the Seneca County budget and the Huron County budget, and I’ve started laying them all together,” he said. “What that’s doing is painting a picture. Are we running over in certain areas, or are we under in certain areas? Is Seneca or Huron doing it with eight people and we’re doing it with 12? Why?”
Farmer didn’t say that he wants to trim budgets, rather “I’d say I’m monitoring budgets to see if they need trimmed. I don’t know that there’s money there to trim.”
He noted that, compared to nearby counties, “We have the least amount of carryover and the second highest amount of debt. There’s not enough funding in the county carryover to fund the budget for a month. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine running a household and you don’t have enough money to pay the bills for a month?”
He said that, right now, there is a $1.7 million carryover, and it takes a minimum of $2.3 million to run the county.
Farmer thinks that numbers-based message is what resonated with voters the most.
“I’m not saying the other people have done a bad job. There’s people that could come into my business and look at things with a fresh set of eyes and find inefficiencies,” Farmer said. “That’s the great thing about bringing in a new set of eyes. They think about things differently and bring a different perspective.”
Contact Roger LaPointe at 419-332-2674.
This article originally appeared on Fremont News-Messenger: Rich Farmer wins Republican Sandusky County Commissioner primary
Reporting by Roger LaPointe, Fremont News-Messenger / Fremont News-Messenger
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