There will be two contested races and six newcomers campaigning for Athens City Council positions in the May 2 primary, according to the Athens County Board of Elections website.
Of those six newcomers, five are Democrats and one is a Republican. The five Democrats are Sarah Grace, Karie Whitman, Arian Smedley, Eric Gunn, and Samuel Emerson Crowl. Abe Alassaf is the only Republican running.
Four candidates, all Democrats, are running for an at-large seat on city council. They are Peter Kotses, an incumbent Democrat; Grace, a local businesswoman who ran for State Representative in November; Whitman, a graduate student at Ohio University and Smedley, director of Integrating Professionals for Appalachian Children, a local non-profit.
Councilwoman Jennifer Cochran, D-At Large, will not run for re-election.
John Haseley, chair of the Athens County Democratic Party, said Grace and Smedley were “outstanding” candidates.
“They are women who’ve really been involved in the Athens community,” Haseley said. “Both of them are committed to doing what’s right for the City of Athens.”
Alassaf, vice chair of the Athens County Republican Party, is challenging incumbent Jeff Risner, a Democrat, for the 2nd Ward. Alassaf briefly ran for the 94th District seat in 2016, and said he hopes to represent Republicans in Athens. There are no Republicans on city council.
The Athens native and Ohio University graduate said the current council is “regressive” and said he wanted to represent millennials.
“They don’t embrace the 21st century technology of the sharing economy,” he said. “We have a chance to utilize the young talent of the university, but we don’t take advantage of it.”
Pete Couladis, Athens County Republican Party chair, said Athens lacks diversity due to the lack of Republican representation and noted it was sometimes hard to find someone to run as a Republican due to fears of backlash.
“They’re afraid of repercussions,” he said. “This is not a very tolerant community, contrary to what all of the liberals say. We’re not tolerant and we’re not diverse.”
Alassaf and Couladis both said local businesses need a voice on city council.
Eric Gunn, a Democrat running for the city’s 3rd Ward and owner of The Union Bar and Grill, 18 W. Union St. said he hopes to be a representative for businesses. He said he first became interested in being on city council after The Union was destroyed in a fire in 2014.
“I feel that city council could use some more business people on council,” Gunn said.
Michele Papai, the current 3rd Ward councilwoman, will not run for the seat again.
Gunn’s challenger, Crowl, is OU’s sustainability project coordinator. Crowl said his ties with both the university and the city, where he grew up, would help him in office.
“I have a lot of tie-ins between the community and the university and I’d like to see that relationship continue to grow and prosper.”
Council President Chris Knisely and council members Chris Fahl, D-4th Ward and Kent Butler, D-1st Ward, are running unopposed in the primary.
