Dayton will have special runoff election: Here are mayor, commission candidates

The Montgomery County Board of Elections this morning certified the mayoral petitions of Jeffrey Mims Jr. and Rennes Bowers.

Mims is a current city commissioner, while Bowers is a retired Dayton firefighter. Ex-Mayor Gary Leitzell already had his petitions certified in February.

The board voted not to accept mayoral petitions submitted by Larry Ealy and Keiana Davis.

Mayor candidates needed to submit 500 valid signatures from registered Dayton voters.

But Davis had only 416 valid signatures, after submitting 840, the board said.

Ealy turned in 954 signatures but less than 10% were determined to be valid (91).

Signatures aren’t valid if they belong to unregistered voters or people who live outside of the jurisdiction in question, in this case Dayton. Signatures must match board of elections’ records.

Petitions aren’t valid if they don’t contain dates associated with the signatures, officials say.

Seven people are running for two Dayton City Commission seats.

The candidates are incumbent Commissioner Darryl Fairchild, former police officer Jordan Wortham, faith leader Scott Sliver, labor leader Stacey Benson-Taylor, former city employee Valerie Duncan and former city employees and community activists Jared Grandy and Shenise Turner-Sloss.

The May special election will decide who will advance to the November election.

The top two vote-getters in the mayor’s race and the top-four finishers in the commission race will compete in the fall. The city commission has two open seats.