Republican Seneca County Commissioner Bill Frankart narrowly survived a primary challenge from Jim Distel on Tuesday, holding onto the GOP nomination by 53 votes in one of the closest county-level results in recent memory.

Frankart finished with 3,051 votes (50.4%) to Distel’s 2,998 votes (49.6%), according to unofficial returns from the Seneca County Board of Elections with all 51 precincts reporting. A total of 6,049 Republican ballots were cast in the commissioner race.

The margin — fewer than one percentage point — left the incumbent advancing to the general election while signaling that nearly half of the Republicans who voted in the primary preferred the challenger.

A primary shaped by oversight controversies

Frankart’s first term in office has been dogged by questions over his handling of the Seneca Poultry concentrated animal feeding operation in Bloom Township. Earlier this year, the Seneca Conservation District publicly corrected him after he told voters in an Advertiser-Tribune candidate Q&A that the facility was “locally monitored” by the district. The conservation district confirmed the operation falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s Division of Livestock Environmental Permitting.

A separate timeline document prepared by the Seneca County General Health District, obtained by TiffinOhio.net, showed Frankart called the county health commissioner in January to express concerns about her inquiry into the poultry facility — an inquiry that had been prompted by a Common Pleas judge and a resident worried about a well drilled near a closed landfill.

One day before voters went to the polls, the Advertiser-Tribune published a report based on a deposition transcript in which Frankart acknowledged under oath that some of his past public statements about a regional landfill and the Ottawa-Sandusky-Seneca Joint Solid Waste Management District were inaccurate and had not been corrected. The deposition was taken in May 2024 in connection with litigation involving WIN Waste Innovations.

Frankart’s record and Distel’s challenge

Frankart, a grain farmer from Adams Township, was first elected commissioner in November 2022 and serves as vice president of the three-member Board of Commissioners. Before joining the board, he served 14 years as an Adams Township trustee.

Distel, a Clinton Township trustee, told the Advertiser-Tribune during the campaign that he had heard from residents who “felt dismissed or intimidated” when they raised concerns about the poultry operation, and pledged he would “never bully residents or approach decisions with a predetermined outcome.”

The commissioner race was one of the most closely watched contests in a primary cycle that featured unusually heavy intra-party competition in Seneca County, including contested Republican Central Committee races in 30 of the county’s 51 precincts.

An independent waits in the fall

No Democrat filed for the commissioner seat. Frankart will instead face independent candidate David Ziegler, an Eden Township trustee, in the November 3 general election.

Ziegler has served on the Eden Township Board of Trustees and previously testified before the Ohio Senate Energy and Public Utilities Committee in 2021 in support of Senate Bill 52, the law that gave local governments greater authority over the siting of large solar and wind projects.

Tuesday’s results are unofficial pending certification by the Seneca County Board of Elections.