Three candidates are battling it out for votes to be the next state representative for the Ohio 94th District.

District residents will cast their vote for Athens lawyer and mediator Wenda Sheard, Washington County Commissioner Kevin Ritter or Syracuse Army veteran and substitute teacher Andrea Neutzling.

Republican Ritter is currently serving his second term as a Washington County Commissioner and his campaign is “in really good shape … I’m very, very pleased,” he said.

Ritter taught American history for decades, he said, and one of the reasons he decided to run for state office is because his “students encouraged me to do it.”

He also said he was asked to run by State Rep. Jay Edwards – who is the current representative for the 94th district but who cannot run again due to term limits – and Ohio House Speakers Jason Stevens.

“This part of the state is often forgotten by Columbus,” Ritter said, and he wants to make sure that doesn’t continue to be the case.

If Ritter wins the election there are “specific areas I am interested in addressing,” he said, and one of those areas is energy.

Right now the state is making the transition from traditional sources of energy to newer sources of energy “at a breakneck pace,” Ritter said, and he is concerned about producing enough energy going forward.

He said Ohio is blessed with abundant natural resources, but there is high demand for those resources due to data processing centers. He also said some people are looking solely at solar and wind power to produce energy for this demand, but he is “much more of an all of the above sort of person” and he does not want to give up on oil, gas and coal.

Another issue Ritter is concerned with, he said, is who profits from injection wells used in the oil and gas industry. He said the people in the counties where injection wells are located do not see any of the tax revenue and these counties should benefit financially from the wells.

“If that risk is going to be ours then I want the benefit as well,” he said.

Ritter wants the legislature to “carve out some of the revenue for the county where that well is located” and then the county could use the money for cleanup, community centers, etc.

Another issue important to Ritter is “tackling the need of our volunteer fire departments and EMS organizations in southeast Ohio,” he said. Ritter said he wants to pass legislation to encourage people to volunteer by giving them an education credit or tax credit to reward them for giving their time.

Ritter also expressed his view on issue 1, which would remove politicians from the redistricting process and instead create a resourcing commission made up of Ohio citizens.

He said people should “vote no on issue 1 because it removes accountability from the process” of redistricting and because it would cause districts to look “like spokes on a wheel” where people who don’t have a lot in common would be in the same district.

Sheard, the Democratic candidate in the race for the Ohio 95th, lives in Athens and has not held a political office before, but she has been a mediator and lawyer for many years.

Sheard said her campaign is going “very well.”

She said she “is looking forward to representing” all the people in the 94th district in Columbus.

“I want to use all my educational skills .. to help all people in the district,” Sheard said.

Sheard said she decided to run for office because “our severely gerrymandered Republican state has lost the ability to focus on the difficulties facing Ohioians.”

If she wins the election, Sheard said she wants to move forward on property tax relief bills. She also said she wants to address the fact that millions of dollars in taxpayer money is being used to help parents whose children are already in private school while the public schools in Ohio are not adequately funded.

Another issue Sheard is concerned with is the legislature and its handling of the Larry Householder/FirstEnergy corruption scandal. She said the Ohio legislature failed to pass an anti-corruption bill to stop Ohioans having to pay on electric bills related to the Householder scandal.

Sheard also wants to address Ohio’s education system. She said the Ohio constitution requires the state to have “an efficient system of common schools” and “for decades Ohio hasn’t been effectively meeting that Ohio constitutional requirement.”

She said the state needs to seriously consider different ways of funding schools.

“A child’s education in Ohio differs depending on where the child lives,” Sheard said. “I want all children in Ohio to have the same educational opportunities.”

Sheard also expressed her opinion on Issue 1. She said people “need to vote yes (for issue1) to stop gerrymandering.”

Sheard also shared her view on abortion. She said she agrees with her opponent Ritter on abortion, that it should be as rare as possible. Sheard said she plans to do this “by improving access to birth control, child care, health insurance, health education, affordable housing and living wage jobs so that abortions are as rare as possible.”

Syracuse resident Neutzling is running as an independent write-in candidate in the race. She said her campaign is “going pretty good.”

She pointed out that she feels she can reach across party lines because she is an independent.

“I’m not 100% Democrat,” she said. “I’m not 100% Republican.”

She said the Ohio state government is “stuck in the mud” and she can “slip that board in there to get us out of the bog into better legislation.”

One key issue Neutzling wants to work on if she is elected is education reform.

She said a lot of school districts in the Ohio 94th district cannot pass their renewal levies and the Ohio Lottery Commission gives a portion of their sales to the state for public education every year, which was $1.4 billion in 2022.

She said that would be $2 million for each school district with some left over if it were split evenly, but the money is split up by school population, which means some city school districts barely use their property taxes because they get so much money from the state.

Neutzling said she wants to use a phased-in approach to make the distribution of the money more equal where each district gets the same amount and the remainder gets put into a lottery system and once a school district is drawn in the lottery they would not be able to enter it again until every district has been drawn.

She also said she also wants to do away with the Ohio Report Cards because rural school districts are judged against districts that get more money that helps them afford technological advantages.

She also said she wants to let teachers teach instead of them “teaching to test standards” and students “being forced to learn the same way.”

Neutzling would also like to get rid of state testing, according to her.

“If it’s not a federally mandated test, we get rid of them,” she said.

Neutzling said she wants to “fix” the homestead property tax exemption for homeowners that are age 65 because right now it is income based.

“We need to get rid of that income base,” she said.

Neutzling, who is a veteran who served nine years and nine months in the Army and Army Reserves, said she also wants better state benefits for veterans and this would bring more people to Ohio and that would help the state’s economy.

Kevin Ritter

*Age: 57

*Address: 1494 Glendale Rd., Marietta, OH 457510

*Party: Republican

*Occupation: President of Coast to Coast Athletics, Founder of Veritas Classical Academy

*Past Offices: N/A

Wenda Sheard

*Age: 70

*Address: 13499 Dutch Creek Rd., Athens, OH 45701

*Party: Democrat

*Occupation: Attorney, Mediator,

*Past Offices: N/A

Andrea Neutzling

*Age: 44

*Address: 2440 Union Alley, Syracuse, OH 45779

*Party: Independent (write-in candidate)

*Occupation: Substitute teacher

*Past Offices: N/A