Ohio Senate 3rd District: William Yarbrough

The Libertarian candidate for the Ohio Senate's 3rd district is Bill Yarbrough.  A life long Ohioan, Yarbrough lives in New Albany working as an organization development consultant.  He graduated with his Bachelors degree from Otterbein and received his Masters from OSU.  He's a member of the American Society of Training and Development, and member of the Franklin County Libertarian Party executive council.

Yarbrough has some very detailed position statements on his website.  If you're familiar at all with the Libertarian philosophy, you'll see he's a believer in simplifying the government in order to make things run efficiently--which will then allow for reduced taxes.  His message is more detailed, and more focused on reform first than the others.

Ohio Senate 3rd District: Mark Pfeifer

Mark Pfeifer is the Democratic nominee for the 3rd District Senate seat.  With little prior experience in politics (Ward Committeeman on the Franklin County Central Committee 1988-1992) Pfeifer is running to put the average person back into government.

Pfeifer was raised primarily on a farm in Canal Winchester, and graduated from OSU.  He worked for Tiger Construction, along the way earning an MBA from Cleveland State, and went on to become president of CHBI Inc.  In 2004, he opened Pfeifer Funeral Home in Reynoldsburg.  (Taken from Vote Smart and Pfeifer for Senate).

Some of the issues Pfeifer is campaigning on: creating living-wage jobs by seeking to increase tax incentives for hiring and reduce regulatory red tape; linking state agency and department funding to their performance to cut down wasteful spending; addressing the school funding issues with new approaches such as evidence-based funding.

US Senate Primary Election 5/4/10: The Democratic Candidates

Unless someone else files in the next six days, the competitors for the Democratic nomination for George Voinovich's seat are set.

The candidates are Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and Lt. Governor Lee Fisher. Both are fairly well known across the state as they've held office for several years now. Aside from a considerable lead in fundraising for Fisher, there doesn't seem to be a clear advantage for either candidate, especially when paired against the favored GOP candidate Rob Portman.

An interesting fact to note is that while Brunner is FAR behind in money (usually the key indicator in a race) she's still hanging tough. And with just a couple months to go till the primary, it's the Fisher campaign that's shaking things up with a new campaign manager.

This is already a race to watch!