Tarbell tossed off ballot

Howard Wilkinson reports


The last-minute effort by Cincinnati Councilman Jim Tarbell and two former Cincinnati school board members to become candidates for the Cincinnati Board of Education ended as quickly as it began Friday, when election officials said their petitions were short of signatures.

Tarbell, who is leaving city council early in September, put together a last-minute slate of school board candidates which included Anne Power, who was president of the board in the 1980s, and Sally Warner, who left the board two years ago after serving eight years.

The three-candidate team didn’t start collecting signatures on their nominating petitions until less than 24 hours before the 4 p.m. deadline Thursday. Each of them needed the signatures of 300 registered voters in the Cincinnati Public School District.

But officials at the Hamilton County Board of Elections said Friday afternoon that they fell short, with 264 valid signatures each.

A fourth school board candidate, lawyer Martha Good, who had the endorsement of the Cincinnati Democratic Committee, also fell short and will not be on the November ballot.
That leaves only four candidates running for three seats on the seven-member board – incumbent Rick Williams, Chris Nelms, the director of an inner-city baseball program; former Hamilton County recorder Eve Bolton, and Michael Flannery, a former WCPO reporter.