Crockett runs for 84th District

Connie Crockett is running for the Ohio House of Representatives seat from the 84th District, currrently held by Chris Widener.

By Virgil Hervey

For the second time in as many elections, Connie Crockett has filed her petition to be the Democratic candidate for the Ohio Statehouse. She will run for the Ohio House of Representatives from the 84th District, a seat currently held by Chris Widener, who will not run for reelection. Widener will seek the State Senate seat currently held by Steve Austria, who is seeking the open U.S. House seat held by David Hobson, who is retiring.

In her last campaign, because she was not considered to have a serious shot at defeating an incumbent Republican in a hugely Republican district, Crockett viewed her role as being one of helping Ted Strickland get votes in his race for governor.

“I got 17,000 votes last time,” Crockett said in a recent interview. “I can’t just walk away from that. I did achieve a certain amount of name recognition.”

But things have changed since then, including the Democratic sweep across the nation in November 2006, and the declining popularity of President Bush. This time, Crockett believes she has a legitimate shot against one of two Republicans, Madison County Commissioner Bob Hackett and Greene County Assistant Prosecutor Craig Saunders, who will compete in the May primary.

“This being a presidential election year, it is going to be an exciting election,” Crockett said. “You have seen those bumper stickers that say ‘Think globally, act locally.’ I’m saying, ‘Think globally, act regionally.’”

Crockett, who grew up in western Pennsylvania and graduated from Antioch College, has lived in Yellow Springs for more than 35 years and raised her two daughters, Mariah and Lily, here. She is married to Mike Groeber. While known as Connie Gahagan, she was a two-term Village Council member in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and has been a delegate to several Democratic national conventions and a precinct captain, along with managing some political campaigns for others. Crockett gave up politics after her first husband, Jim Gahagan, died while she was on Council. Before her last campaign, she legally changed her name back to Crockett. She is currently employed as a public education research associate at the Kettering Foundation.

When talking about her accomplishments on Council, such as bringing the bike path to fruition and converting the old high school to the current day Bryan Center, she is careful to point out that whatever success came from her efforts was the result of the hard work of others as well.

“I didn’t do anything alone,” she said.

Crockett feels she is at a stage where she has to reintroduce herself, because she was out of politics for awhile and changed back to her maiden name.

“I hope people will remember me,” she said. “I feel that while I was on Village Council I helped introduce a better quality of life.”

The issues she hopes to address include eliminating the kind of statehouse lobbying that allowed the mortgage foreclosure fiasco to occur; coming up with a plan for school funding; stopping the pollution from megafarms; retaining business; and keeping the young people we have educated from moving out-of-state. These last two she sees as related.

“We grow smart adults and export them,” she said. “We need to nurture their ideas to keep them here.”

While Governor Strickland has made some gains in higher education, she said, there are other issues, especially funding public education, in which the Republican majority has stymied his efforts to bring about change. According to Crockett, these goals could be accomplished by changing the balance in the statehouse to provide the governor with the votes he needs to get his programs through.

“Statehouse decisions impact us,” Crockett said. “There needs to be a mechanism set up for people to be heard.”

Crockett said that when she was on the Village Council she went door-to-door to solicit the public’s voice in order to form a base of “socially constructed knowledge.”

“It’s about understanding what we can do together, having people at the table who can move things forward,” she said.

However, working against Crockett in this election is gerrymandered district lines. The 84th District, which covers Madison County and parts of Greene and Clark Counties, while including such Republican strongholds as Jamestown, does not include mostly Democratic Wilberforce. According to Crockett, now that Democrats control the executive branch of state government, that will change after the census in 2010. She hopes that the lines will be drawn equitably.

“This is a chance to seize the moment and make all districts competitive,” she said. “Districts should be fair for all, not just for a favorite son. Yellow Springs is not served by the way the current lines were drawn.”

The last time around her opponent had a serious advantage in funding. This year, Crockett hopes to be able to raise enough money to do some TV and radio spots.

“I would win, if people could see how their interests would be furthered,” she said.

When asked if she had anything she wanted to say to local voters, she said, “I need your help. With Yellow Springs behind me, I can’t lose.”

Contact: vhervey@ysnews.com