Young, of Washington Twp. was elected to the seat in 2020 and is serving his third term. He is running unopposed in the Republican primary.
Members of the Ohio General Assembly make legislative decisions on behalf of members of their communities and earn a base salary of $73,609 in 2026, according to state records.
Herner and Crippen talked to Dayton Daily News about their priorities if elected, what challenges residents in their district face and what they’d do differently.
Phil Crippen
Crippen, 61, said he wants to represent the 37th District because he doesn’t like the direction the state and country are going — he wants to bring the state’s future “back on the right path” for people like his children and grandchildren.
“It’s important to me that the world they’re going to grow up in and have their careers in is a place that I can feel proud of and be excited about,” Crippen said.
The issue of affordability is top of mind for Ohioans inside and outside the 37th District, Crippen said. That includes everything from how the state collects taxes on income and property, to how utility companies bill customers and more.
Crippen said he thinks the state’s approach to property tax collection should be reevaluated, weighing approaches to lessening the burden on low-income and income-restricted property owners; and a larger amount of funding for public schools should be coming from the state — taking pressure off school districts to ask voters in their communities to approve new levies.
Crippen is in favor of the Fair School Funding Plan passed by Ohio lawmakers in 2021. That plan was not implemented in the 2025-2027 state budget.
“We really just got to focus in on basic things that are preventing people from being able to live and to be able to have a good life, right?” he said.
State lawmakers also need to better prepare for companies wanting to create data centers in Ohio, he said. Crippen said these centers may produce jobs during their construction, but a smaller set of long-term positions will be created to keep them operating after they open. On top of that, the companies building them expend energy and use millions of gallons of water weekly.
“I don’t think we’re getting the cost-benefit from what we’re giving to these data centers to build in Ohio. We’ve got to balance that out and work with those data centers. And those companies are making plenty of money. They can afford to do things in a proper way that benefits the citizens of Ohio, and can still benefit the company,” Crippen said.
Crippen says lawmakers should honor the will of Ohio voters, who passed constitutional amendments about reproductive health care and other measures legalizing cannabis. Honoring voters, to Crippen, looks like passing meaningful regulations around cannabis and opposing legislation that limits reproductive autonomy and criminalizes health care providers.
He’s “semi-retired,” having worked nearly four decades as a human resources professional with companies like Fifth Third Bank, Procter & Gamble, The Iams Company and more, Crippen said.
He has never held public office, but he’s not unfamiliar with the Statehouse, as he has given testimony to lawmakers on legislation related to traumatic brain injury — one of his children is a brain injury survivor.
Crippen is a graduate of Alter High School and the University of Dayton. He resides in Washington Twp. with his wife, Kathy, who serves on the Centerville City Schools Board of Education.
Tom Herner
In Herner’s work as an internal auditor at J.P. Morgan Chase, he often assesses risks and uses data to determine efficiency. He wants to see the Ohio Statehouse run more efficiently.
“I’ve seen how the math in Columbus just does not add up for the families in Dayton,” he said.
The 28-year-old said if elected, he’d focus on issues that most intimately impact residents in his district — the cost to put food on the table, the cost to keep the lights on and the cost to maintain a home.
On the issue of property taxes, Herner said expanding the Homestead Exemption would provide relief to many Ohio homeowners. The Homestead Exemption shields the first $28,000 of a property’s value from taxation, so an eligible owner of a home valued at $100,000 would be billed as if the home were valued at $72,000.
“If we can give $600 million to a billionaire family to build a sports stadium, I think we certainly can find room to give $600 million to the 700,000 Ohioans who utilize the Homestead Exemption,” Herner said.
Herner said the cost of utilities is putting strain on families inside and outside his district. He thinks the addition of data centers to the state could add further strain.
He said Ohio is uniquely positioned for these centers — minimal natural disasters like earthquakes, lots of land ripe for development and more. But Ohio lawmakers need to be national leaders in where data centers can go and how they can operate.
“This time that we’re in is one where Ohio can set the standards of how data centers will interact with our communities, the level of energy efficiency they need to have, the amount that they need to invest in the energy infrastructure to serve their data centers without impacting energy customers that, quite frankly, have nothing to do with the data center,” he said.
Herner also wants to see the state return to the Fair School Funding Plan, saying every dollar going to fund private or charter schools is a dollar taken away from students attending public schools.
“I think it doesn’t reflect the residents of my district, where the majority of our children attend public schools,” Herner said of funding for the voucher program. “I believe our kids’ futures are not for sale, and we need to focus on offering strong public schools throughout all of Ohio.”
Herner said if elected, he would also prioritize measures to protect reproductive health care in Ohio. He said this is a very personal topic for him — without in-vitro fertilization, he wouldn’t exist.
“Despite the fact that we’ve been enshrining these rights in our Constitution, our legislature works every day to change it to tear down those rights because they don’t respect the will of the people,” he said.
Herner is a graduate of Wright State University, where he studied entrepreneurism and computer science. He also graduated from Centerville City Schools.
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