No mayor primary? Save $400K

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

CINCINNATI — Cincinnatians won’t know until the last minute Thursday whether they’ll have more than two choices for mayor. Two candidates have filed with the Hamilton County Board of Elections — incumbent Mayor Mark Mallory and Brad Wenstrup, a podiatrist and Iraq war veteran. If more than those two men file, a September primary will be necessary to narrow the options to two for November.

The filing deadline is 4 p.m. Thursday. Jason Haap, a blogger and activist who has said he plans to run, has scheduled a press conference for 3:55 p.m.

If he — or anyone else — decides to run against Mallory and Wenstrup, the September special election will cost city taxpayers about $400,000, said Sally Krisel, director of elections; the board bills the city for the election. That’s less than it would have been before the board consolidated its number of precincts last month, she said. Cincinnati now has 285 precincts, and an election costs about $1,400 to $1,500 per precinct, she said. No one other than Mallory, a Democrat, and Wenstrup, a Republican, had submitted any signatures to be checked for validity as of Wednesday, Krisel said. Even if another candidate submits signatures by 4 p.m., the signatures till have to be verified.

Haap has said in e-mails to City Council members that he would skip a mayoral run if they would change the current election system to something less wasteful, such as instant runoff voting in the general election. None of the council members acted upon his idea.

In an e-mailed announcement Wednesday about the Thursday press conference, Haap’s friend and fellow activist Justin Jeffre said Haap will “make it official on the mayor’s race.” He wrote that Haap believes in the importance of education about the electoral process. “Toward that goal, Haap hopes to continue raising awareness about the City’s costly, unnecessary, and undemocratic Mayoral primary among other issues.”

In an entry on his Cincinnati Beacon blog Sunday, Haap wrote: “The mayoral primary costs over half a million dollars, and the system also invites big dollar candidates to raise even bigger money after the primary resets the contribution limits. In tough economic times as these, why isn’t anyone on City Council stepping up to end this waste?”

Jane Prendergast, Cincinnati Enquirer, July 1, 2009.

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