New Franklin County Woman?

In case you haven’t already heard, two of our three Franklin County Commissioners are running for other offices next year. Marilyn Brown was first to announce for Secretary of State and Paula Brooks just announced she is going to challenge Tiberi in Ohio’s 12th district.

I wish both women the best of luck. It’s nice to see Franklin County women moving on to bigger and better things. But it did leave me with a lot of unanswered questions about the Franklin County Commission. It took me a few days, but I finally got some good answers.

Here’s what I know so far:

Brooks’ term ends in 2012 and, as far as I can tell, she has no plans to step down early. So if she loses her race for Congress she can continue on as Commissioner for two more years. But if she wins, then someone will need to fill her seat until 2012.

Regarding the filling of that seat, here is what I was told: “If Brooks wins then her replacement would be picked by the county party’s exec comm. Same process as Ed Leonard replacing Rich Cordray.”

It’s my understanding that Brown’s term ends in 2010. Since she isn’t running for reelection this means the seat will be open next year and the Dems will need to choose a candidate to run for the seat. A primary is possible but hopefully can be avoided.

Which leads me to my final, and yet unaswered, question: who is planning to run for Franklin County Commissioner next year?

Based on recent experience, I’m guessing it’s going to be a woman. Based on even more recent exeperiences, I think it’s going to be Cindy Lazarus.

Not a big stretch, I know, given that she ran a pretty good primary campaign last year against O’Grady.

Still, that’s my guess, for what it’s worth. Anyone else have any thoughts?

I just hope that should Cindy decide to run again some other Ohio bloggers (you know who you are) will get behind her this time. I’d hate to see a repeat of last year’s primary attacks.