Recent election shows politics are ‘personal’ in Greene County
WAYNESBURG – As the old saying goes, all politics are local. But in Greene County, it’s personal.
Just a year after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump overwhelmingly won the county with 68 percent of the vote, Democratic incumbent Sheriff Brian Tennant matched that number with a similar landslide victory over his GOP opponent.
Meanwhile, the race for county coroner between longtime Democratic incumbent Gregory Rohanna and his Republican challenger Gene Rush came down to a statistical tie, with Rush winning by just four votes.
All of it adds up to a county that appears to favor conservative candidates in national elections, but cares more about the person and not the party affiliation in local elections, said Larry Stratton, a professor of political science at Waynesburg University.
“In Greene County – apart from the national races and state races – it’s so personal,” Stratton said. “The movements these candidates create, they’ve got to go to all the municipalities and churches and spaghetti dinners and civic group meetings. Word of mouth and momentum gets developed.”
The Greene County commissioners, also serving as the county’s elections board, signed the election results Thursday morning giving Rush a four-vote victory. Rohanna has until Tuesday to challenge those results.
He indicated in an email written to his supporters Thursday he would concede the race to Rush, but retracted that Friday and said he would wait until the results were finalized by the elections board Tuesday.
Greg Hopkins, chairman of Greene County’s Republican Party, said the coroner’s race is the “least political” of all local elections, which made campaigning on issues, such as transparency on the opioid epidemic, all the more important.
“It’s the relationships,” Hopkins said. “You need to know your neighbors. That plays a big part in it.”
There have been close elections in the county before, most notably the Greene County commissioners primary election two years ago in which Dave Coder beat Chuck Morris by just 19 votes. But that was a Democratic primary and didn’t include the entire electorate.
Stratton said the coroner’s race shows that every vote does indeed count and plans to use it as a case study to teach his political science students.
“Statistically, (one vote) doesn’t make a difference,” Stratton said. “But in real life, it does.”
It could also change how the local parties react to the 2018 midterm election, in which there will be a special election for former U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy’s congressional seat, along with contested elections for a state senator, governor and U.S. senator.
Maddie Loring, the Democratic Committee chairwoman for Greene County, said last year’s turnout for the presidential election was inspiring, even if it didn’t go her party’s way, and she hopes it will continue into next year’s midterms. Her mother, state Rep. Pam Snyder, D-Jefferson, held off a Republican challenger despite the Trump tidal wave in 2016.
“We were shocked by the long lines at the polls,” Loring said of last year’s presidential election. “It was heartwarming to see that. That’s what we want in every election year. We want people to make the effort, no matter what. Just vote.”
Loring would like to see a larger turnout in municipal elections in the future because “the local offices are just as important as the national races.”
Just one-third of the county’s electorate voted Nov. 7, which was about 9,000 people less than a year earlier.
“These local races, we are a tight-knit community,” Loring said. “Most people know both candidates. And that does pose a challenge for people.”
The message from the coroner’s race, Loring said, is every vote counts and will be compounded by an expected larger turnout in the 2018 midterms.
“I do think this is going to, hopefully, make voters pause and think, ‘I need to show up. If I didn’t vote this time, I have to make sure I do next time,'” Loring said.
Hopkins, Loring’s Republican counterpart, isn’t sure what might happen next year, although he’s adamant the county still holds many conservative values.
“They’re all different,” Hopkins said of local, state and national elections. “It’s too early to make speculations. But it’ll start earlier than normal.”
Whatever happens in 2018 or future campaigns, Stratton thinks Greene County’s electorate will continue to demand to know more about the candidates on the ballot, especially for local elections.
“Everyone knows everyone else. It’s word of mouth,” Stratton said. “It’s not party-oriented. It’s fascinating to see. I don’t quite understand it.
“You got to go somewhere every day to keep your candidacy alive.”