First-time GOP candidate wins three-way race
FAIRFIELD COUNTY
LANCASTER — Republican David Scheffler, a first-time candidate for public office, is the new Lancaster mayor, according to final, unofficial results from the Fairfield County Board of Elections.
Scheffler drew 46 percent of the vote to Democrat Greg Russell’s 43 percent. Independent Clayton Lunsford received 794 votes, or 11 percent.
Scheffler will serve the remaining two years of the four-year term of former Mayor Brian Kuhn, a Republican elected in November 2015 who resigned under pressure in February after being convicted of misdemeanor charges of attempted failure to file a state income-tax return and amid revelations of casino gambling.
The candidates, which included Lunsford, an 18-year-old Lancaster High School senior, all said they would work to rebuild public trust and run a transparent administration in the city of nearly 40,000 residents.
Russell, 59, the managing partner of Tiki Bowling Lanes and a former city council member who lost the 2015 mayor’s race to Kuhn, had vowed to use his business and marketing experience to work with the city’s economic development director to attract more businesses.
Scheffler, 68, who has been executive director of the nonprofit Destination Downtown Lancaster for three years after retiring from a career as a certified public accountant at Plante Moran, sought his first public office.
He said he wanted to do for the entire city what he has helped to do in the downtown business district, which has been transformed in the past three years from empty storefronts to streets lined with new or not-yet-opened restaurants, bars and apartments in some of the historic buildings.