TREASURER

protecting and investing the county’s money.

“The majority of people we meet have overcome a challenge you can’t see just by looking at them,” Sullivan said.

She’s sure she can do the job. The 60-year-old said she has been a successful real estate agent in three states over three decades. And the 275,000 county residents who voted for her apparently agree.

“People are allowed to have their opinions,” the Democrat said. “And they have the right to be wrong.”

Last week, though, attempts by the country to provide Sullivan with a bond — insurance against officeholder or employee dishonesty — failed. That raised concern that she might not be able to take office on Sept. 4. Ohio law says a county treasurer who isn’t bonded can’t be sworn in, and the office is left vacant. In that case, the Franklin County Democratic Party Central Committee would appoint someone to fill Sullivan’s four-year term.

Unflinchingly direct and candid, Sullivan readily acknowledges that her past causes others concern, but she stresses that’s not who she is now.

“I think the questioning is fair,” Sullivan said.

Her past includes a felony conviction for buying cocaine in Florida in 1997 and passing a bad check in 1999. She served six months in jail for violating her probation in the cocaine case.

She and her first husband also filed for bankruptcy protection: twice in Florida and once in Ohio. She said almost all the debts in the Florida bankruptcies that weren’t discharged, including child support, were his, and the filings came about because of his financial problems.

“I’ve never attempted to go in there and clean that up,” she said of the cases.

Sullivan, who lives in southeast Columbus, said the Ohio bankruptcy case, filed with her current husband, from whom she is separated, did discharge their debts.

“It’s never been a secret,” she said of her past.

But she’d never run for office before 2016, when she challenged the partyendorsed incumbent, Ed Leonard, in the Democratic primary.

She won the primary by 3,650 votes — 60,866 to 57,216, or 51.55 percent to 48.45 percent. She also has since won Leonard’s faith in her.

“She seems to have a genuine respect for what she doesn’t know,” said Leonard, now head of the Franklin County Board of Elections. “That’s the right approach to take.”

Despite spending “less than $5,000” on her campaign, Sullivan easily beat Republican Ted Berry, a Grove City city councilman, by about 31,000 votes — 273,944 to 242,952 or 53 percent to 47 percent — to win the office.

Although the general election was in November, Sullivan, like all other Ohio county treasurers, doesn’t take office until the first Monday in September because treasurer’s offices run on fiscal years, a result of the way property taxes are collected.

Not having to take office sooner helped Sullivan, said Michael Sexton, head of the Franklin County Democratic Party. It allowed her to become acquainted with other elected and party officials, to seek and receive advice, and to build selfconfidence. She also knows that she should expect to be doubted, he said.

“She’s got to earn the trust of the residents of Franklin County,” Sexton said. “You’re an elected official. Everyone’s looking over your shoulder.”

And they should be, said Doug Preisse, chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party.

“We certainly believe in rehabilitation and redemption, but we do not believe she possesses the necessary experience or skills we would hope that the county treasurer in the biggest county in the state would have,” Preisse said.

“I would think the other elected colleagues in elected government would spend a little time looking over her shoulder.”

Sullivan, whose treasurer salary will be $75,860, encourages that. “I’ve never run away from a fight,” she said.

At a news conference called by her supporters Friday after questions about her bond situation arose, Sullivan defended the commissioners and the Democratic Party, saying they “spent quite a bit of money in terms of transitioning me into office.” That includes stationery with her name on it and ordering new lettering to place her name on the office. Sexton “stays in constant communication with me,” she told supporters.

Still, Sullivan is suspicious of the timing of the increase in the bond for the treasurer.

In September 2016, months after Sullivan beat Leonard and appeared to be on her way to winning the office, Commissioners John O’Grady and Marilyn Brown voted to raise the amount of the bond required for the treasurer from $200,000 to $1 million. They said it was to bring the amount closer to that of other large Ohio counties. Cuyahoga County’s treasurer bond is $2 million. It’s $1 million for both Summit and Lucas counties, $300,000 for Hamilton County and $100,000 for Montgomery County.

“I think there are some very legitimate questions in terms of process and procedure,” Sullivan told her supporters Friday.

But Zak Talarek, Franklin County director of management and budget, said the fivefold increase in the bond means nothing.

“The surety decision would have been the same if the public-official bond was at the previous amount of $200,000 rather than the current amount of $1,000,000,” Talarek wrote in an email.

County officials have yet to receive Sullivan’s paperwork to apply for two other sureties they want to try.

Sullivan is the daughter of a Jamaican nurse and an American airman who met in London and married. She was born in the U.S. but lived in England from 6 months old to 6 years old. After returning to the U.S., she worked for years to rid herself of a Cockney accent.

Sullivan has two adult daughters and is a grandmother.

She said she held a “top secret” security clearance while a U.S. Army cryptologist. As a child, she was such a nerd that she and her science teacher used to dig for rocks together.

Twenty years ago, Sullivan bought and used cocaine.

“There was a different mindset back in those days, and I bought into it,” she said. “I thought it would help me graduate into a lifestyle that proved I had made it.”

Now, she said, she’s nothing like that and wonders why others think she still is.

“People have a stereotypical picture in their mind of what somebody who has a bankruptcy or who experiments with drugs would look like,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan holds herself out as an example of overcoming bad decisions and behavior, and she believes others should see her that way. “I’m a good kid,” she said. “I’ve actually never hidden who I am or what the challenges are.”