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  4 th place is first priority in race
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ContributorThomas Walker 
Last EditedThomas Walker  Oct 10, 2003 12:30pm
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News DateSunday, October 5, 2003 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0
DescriptionThe following article is from the Columbus Dispatch. Instead of registering and paying to read it, have posted it here.

4 th place is first priority in race
Opposing ‘teams’ develop voting strategies in effort to win school-board seats

Sunday, October 05, 2003

Bill Bush

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

In the horse race for seats on the Columbus Board of Education, competitors make it to the winner’s circle whether they win, place or show — or finish fourth.

That reality has prompted strategies this election season in which two competing groups of candidates are advising voters not only about whom to choose, but also about how many of their four votes to cast.

On Nov. 4, district voters will select from a field of seven, with the top four vote-getters winning office.

The team of school-board President Stephanie Hightower, incumbent members Jeff Cabot and Karen Schwarzwalder, and newcomer Terry Boyd is urging voters to vote four times — preferably for them.

Meanwhile, firebrand board member Bill Moss has teamed with journalist and political science professor Bob Fitrakis. Moss’ fliers urge supporters to "vote for just two" — him and Fitrakis.

If Moss’ supporters do that, they will ensure that their ballots help Moss and Fitrakis make gains while the other candidates stand still.

Denny White, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said Moss’ strategy makes sense.

"He understands how to count in field races," said White, former head of the Franklin County Democrats.

By contrast, Fitrakis said, if Moss supporters vote for four candidates and one is Boyd, it benefits the Hightower team’s ticket at Moss’ expense.

Moss’ core vote in 1999 came from heavily black precincts, and, like Moss, Boyd is black.

But if supporters of the Hightower team don’t use all four votes, that could benefit Moss, especially if their fourth choice would have been Boyd, who is running without the benefit of strong name recognition.

"The important thing for the average voter to realize is that they need to vote for all four candidates; otherwise, their vote can be diluted by other voters who only vote for one or two," said Gene Pierce, a political consultant working for the Hightower team.

"A small group of (single-shot) voters can make things difficult for people who want to see a strong unified team in place."

Fitrakis doesn’t deny that.

"It’s an old tactic," he said of encouraging supporters not to use all their votes. "We used to call it the rifle shot," because voters target particular candidates.

Jon Krosnick, a professor of political science at Ohio State University, finds the campaign issue "really bizarre."

"It’s unprecedented in my memory for competing candidates to be disagreeing publicly about how many votes a particular citizen should cast in an election," he said. "Rarely is this sort of strategic voting behavior the purview of candidates to discuss."

Although the foursome won’t say they’re running against Moss, Cabot acknowledged that Moss wasn’t invited to run with the team. Boyd has said that he was recruited and initially hesitated.

Getting the low-profile Boyd past the high-profile Moss would effectively oust a controversial, outspoken thorn in the sides of Cabot, Hightower and Schwarzwalder.

Moss effectively shut down a school-board meeting this year by refusing to stop shouting while pounding a shoe on the board table.

The foursome plans to raise about $350,000 — double the total spent by the four winning candidates in 1999 and 30 times what Moss spent for that election.

The seven-candidate field in this campaign is far shy of the 16-person field in 1999, the last time four schoolboard seats were up for a vote.

The race is nonpartisan, but the Franklin County Democrats and Republicans each endorsed two members of the foursome. The GOP is backing Cabot and Boyd while the Democrats are supporting Hightower and Schwarzwalder.

Moss and the seventh candidate in the race — Bill Buckel — are both Democrats but did not seek the party endorsement. Fitrakis is backed by the Green Party.

Both Franklin County GOP head Mike Colley and former county Democratic boss White said they didn’t cut a deal to support the Hightower team. Each said his party didn’t endorse a full four-person slate this election because no one wanted to run for the image-poor job.

But Cabot said that the parties were asked to limit their endorsements to two each.

"I asked my party not to recruit and field a full set of candidates, and the Democrats asked their party not to recruit and field a full set of candidates," Cabot said.

The reason, he said, was because he, Hightower and Schwarzwalder had worked well together. They decided they should "find a full team" and talked to a variety of people before asking Boyd to join their group.

White said there was even some "fantasizing" among team supporters that the Democrats would endorse the team’s Republicans and vice versa, but both parties rejected that.


bbush@dispatch.com


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