Athens’ new House district will have two primaries

The newly drawn 15^th Congressional District includes the majority of Athens County, excluding only the two southeastern-most townships, which are located in Ohio's newly drawn 6^th District. The 15^th also includes Morgan, Perry, Hocking, Vinton, Fairfield, Pickaway, Clinton, Madison counties and parts of Franklin, Ross and Highland counties.

A mid-December compromise in the Ohio Statehouse reunited two planned 2012 primaries back into one, effectively ending a standoff over recently drawn redistricting maps. Population declines revealed in the 2010 U.S. Census lost Ohio two congressional seats, with the state going from 18 down to 16.

Ohio taxpayers faced a potential $15 million bill for holding two primaries instead of one, which will now be avoided. A compromise bill was passed in December that rolled the June U.S. presidential and congressional primaries back to March 6, along with the rest of the elections in the state.

Current 15^th District U.S. Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Upper Arlington, will face a primary challenge from two other Republicans. Charles Chope and Ralph A. Applegate both filed petitions with the Franklin County Board of Elections before last Friday's 4 p.m. filing deadline.

Both Chope and Applegate have filed to run for the seat previously, in 2008, but both were also dropped from the ballot before the primar after failing to gather enough valid signatures on their nominating petitions.

Stivers won the 2008 Republican nomination but fell to Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy in the general election. He ran again in 2010, getting the Republican nod with over 82 percent of the vote, including over Applegate. He went on to defeat Kilroy in the general election. Stivers is now running for his second term in office. Both Chope and Applegate have been perennial candidates for the U.S. Congress in Ohio.

On the other side of the ballot, Athens Law Director Pat Lang will square off against Scott Wharton of Amanda, a small town southwest of Lancaster. Wharton had originally filed to run in the Democratic primary for Ohio's 10^th Congressional district before the compromise and the final map was put into place. He has since filed for the 15^th District.

In announcing his bid for the 15^th District seat, Lang vowed to focus on job creation and fight for middle-class families. He referred to Stivers as a "career banking lobbyist whose extreme agenda protects Wall Street but ends Medicare as we know it."

Lang cited his biography in announcing his bid for the seat.

"I'm running for Congress because I grew up in a small Appalachian town – as a child, my parents could sometimes afford to heat just one room of the house in wintertime," he said. "When the coal mines closed and neighbors got laid off, I saw things go from tough to tougher. That's why it is so frustrating to watch Congress and see a whole lot of nothing."

Lang said that Congress is doing "nothing to create jobs, nothing to invest in middle-class families or small business, nothing to reassure us that we have the right tools to get out of this economic mess.

In Ohio's 6^th Congressional District, which includes Carthage and Troy townships – the Coolville and Hockingport area – everything stayed the same as it had been before the new maps were drawn.

U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Marietta, will face a primary challenge from Republican Victor Smith of Waterford, Ohio. On the Democratic ticket, former U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson, of St. Clairsville, will square off against Steubenville's Cas Adulewicz for the nomination.