Challenger topples incumbent sheriff
By Jim Phillips
March 6, 2008
Athens County will have a new sheriff come January, though county voters still have to decide whether he will be Democrat Pat Kelly or Republican Stephen Kane.
By about 800 votes, Kelly, a former deputy under current Sheriff Vern Castle, beat his old boss in the Democratic primary Tuesday.
Over on the GOP side of the ticket, former state investigator Kane ran unopposed, and picked up his party’s nomination with about 2,300 votes.
Kelly said Wednesday that he attributes his primary win to “our positive campaign, and the message we had of change.”
Castle read the results a little differently, citing as major factors both the support of Athens’ daily paper, and what he believes was the covert support of county Democratic Party Chair Susan Gwinn for his opponent.
“I think when you have the party chair against you, and you have the Athens Messenger against you, that carries some weight,” he said. (The Messenger doesn’t endorse in primaries, though it has been critical of Castle.)
Castle acknowledged that Gwinn never came out publicly for Kelly, but said he feels sure she was backing him behind the scenes.
“She’d deny it when you asked her, but her close friends would tell me, ‘Yeah, she’s backing Kelly,’” he alleged.
He added that he believes Gwinn’s taking sides in Democratic primary races – and running against an incumbent herself in the county prosecutor’s race – has severely damaged party unity.
“I think she’s hurt the party terribly,” Castle said. “I think the party is in the worst shape I’ve ever seen it right now.” He said many county residents who have been loyal supporters and hard workers for the party over the years have told him they’re “just fed up” with the chair’s behavior.
Gwinn could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Castle had been prepared to retire without running for re-election, until his chosen successor, an Athens Police officer, pulled out of the race due to military commitments. Castle then re-entered the race, stating publicly that he was doing so because he couldn’t abide the notion of Kelly possibly becoming sheriff.
One big reason Castle has cited for his misgivings about his former deputy has to do with a case in which Kelly was charged with perjury, based on his testimony to a grand jury in a case in which a drug defendant claimed a law-enforcement officer might have stolen money during a raid.
Kelly, who was not involved in the drug raid in question, ended up pleading to a much-reduced charge in 1999 of failing to cooperate with an investigation. He has always insisted he did nothing wrong, and was railroaded into a plea by an over-zealous special prosecutor.
In unofficial vote counts from Tuesday’s election, which don’t yet include a hefty number of late absentee and provisional ballots still to be counted, Kelly earned 6,617 votes to Castle’s 5,780, about a 53/47 split.
Kelly did much better than the incumbent within the city of Athens, winning 19 of its 23 precincts. Even in the four city precincts that Castle narrowly carried, his combined margin was only 50 votes.
Castle did better in the rest of the county, but still won only 18 of 46 precincts. He did best in Alexander, Carthage and Lodi townships, and in New Marshfield, where his portion of the vote ranged from 55 to 72 percent. Kelly won all the precincts in Nelsonville.
Asked whether Castle’s flip-flop on whether to run or retire may have hurt him with voters, Kelly said he doesn’t know.
“That would be pretty much up to how each person would look at that,” he suggested. “But I think the performance of the sheriff’s office over the past seven years has been something that people certainly took a look at.”
Castle insisted that he’s not engaging in sour grapes when he says he simply cannot support Kelly for sheriff, and believes that if his former deputy is elected, he will have to overcome the suspicions of officers in other local police agencies about his trustworthiness.
“I can’t support a liar,” he declared. “You’ve got to be able to trust each other in this job, and you’ve got to have respect for each other.” Asked whether he believes Kane has a credible chance to win in November, Castle replied, “He does if my vote counts.”
Kelly said he’s not overly worried by an endorsement statement from the Fraternal Order of Police lodge that represents Athens Police and Ohio University Police, in which the union supported Castle and raised questions about Kelly’s past. He said he’s not worried about being able to work with the APD and other agencies effectively if he’s elected sheriff.
“Absolutely not, because the bottom line is, that wasn’t the FOP speaking, that was the lodge speaking,” he said. “I have talked with many officers of the Athens Police and OU Police, who are very dissatisifed with that endorsement.”
Kane is a former agent for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation. He said he’s hoping for an issues-based campaign against Kelly in November.
“I’m glad (the primary) is over, because it was a pretty ugly primary on the Democratic side,” Kane said. “There was a whole lot of negative campaigning, and what I’m interested in is the issues. How do we make the Athens County Sheriff’s Office into a professional organization, respected by the law-enforcement community and the public? I don’t know what Kelly’s going to attack me on. I hope all that’s over.”
Kane added that he believes both Kelly and Castle “have a bit of controversial history” in the county, and thinks his own professionalism will win him support from both county Democrats and other county sheriffs around Ohio.
“I was asked by both parties to run,” he confided. “I think you’ll see a lot of support letters from sheriffs from all over Ohio… and I think there’s going to be a lot of crossover votes.”
One factor that probably didn’t help Castle any is the numerous and well-publicized lawsuits and grievances that his own officers have filed against him over the past four years.
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