Did Sheriff Vore Delay His Retirement Announcement To Help Montgomery County Republican Party Insiders?

Just read this morning’s Dayton Daily News that Dave Vore (pictured) has announced his retirement as Montgomery County Sheriff. According to the DDN , “Vore said that he and his wife, Teresa, have been talking for two months about his retirement, and she urged him that the time was right to retire.”

It seems to me that, most likely, Vore made his decision to retire sometime before the January 4 filing deadline for the March Primary — but delayed until now the announcement of that decision to the general public. If Vore had announced his resignation before January 4, both Republican and Democratic candidates, no doubt, would have filed to seek their party’s nomination for sheriff. There could have been primary competition. As it was, in the primary, Vore was the only Republican candidate for Sheriff, and there were no Democratic candidates for sheriff. The timing of Vore’s retirement announcement gives the GOP a big general election advantage — it seems unlikely, to me, that the timing of Vore’s retirement announcement was accidental.

The DDN article reminded me of how Vore got the Sheriff’s position in the first place. The paper says, “Vore joined the sheriff’s office in 1980. He became sheriff in 2000 after the death of Sheriff Gary Haines. The day after Haines’ funeral, Haines’ widow and command staff announced that Vore, then a captain, was Haines’ choice. The Montgomery County Republican Party appointed him sheriff two days later. Vore went on to defeat Democrat George Brown, then an investigator with the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office, in the November election. Vore received nearly 62 percent of the vote. He ran unopposed in 2004.”

The fact that a political party has the power to appoint a County Sheriff, I find surprising. But the fact that the Montgomery County Republican Party was empowered to simply name Vore as sheriff as a replacement for Haines, may shed some light on why Vore got around to resigning now, rather than, say, three months ago.

Knowing that the resignation of Vore, evidently, will once again empower the Montgomery County Republican Party to simply name the next Montgomery County Sheriff, gives a pretty clear indication of why the GOP probably asked Vore to wait until now to resign. After Vore resigns, the insiders in the Montgomery County GOP can fill the Sheriff’s position, with their own insider’s pick, and by election day this new sheriff in town will be an established incumbent.

By law, when Vore officially resigns, the Montgomery County Democratic Party is entitled to name a candidate for County Sheriff in the general election. Vore’s decision to resign evidently upsets the arrangement, reported here, between the Montgomery County Republican and Democratic Parties to trade off several offices in the general election. County Commissioner Democrat Debbie Lieberman has no Republican opponent in the general election; Republican Sheriff Dave Vore had no Democratic opponent and Democratic Coroner, James Davis, has no Democratic opponent.

The DDN article is entitled, “Vore finds ‘right time’ to step down, move west.” How the “right time” is defined is interesting. The timing of Vore’s announcement quashed primary competition and, coming after March 3, the Independent filing deadline, it also quashed any potential Independent candidate activity. It is depressing to conclude that a respected public servant, like Vore, would not think that the right time to announce his retirement would be the time that, by encouraging primary participation, would best show respect to democracy and to County voters. It is depressing to think that Vore defined the “right time” for his retirement announcement as the time that would best empower the insiders in the Montgomery County Republican Party to have unfair influence on the next County Sheriff’s selection. Depressing, but, is any other conclusion reasonable?