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LISBON -- It was a close race, but a longtime business owner won out over a returning politician for the state Senate race on Tuesday, earning his first chance to represent the 33rd District at the state level.
Republican Michael Rulli who owns Rulli Bros. grocery stores in Boardman and Austintown earned more votes over Democrat John Boccieri, who was hoping to return to the Senate from his current position in the Ohio House of Representatives.
Boccieri is a Poland resident and Air Force veteran representing the 59th District, which covers most of Mahoning County. He served as senator for the 33rd District from 2007-2008.
Rulli previously served on the Leetonia Board of Education for eight years.
The race was decided by voters in both Columbiana and Mahoning counties, with Rulli leading Columbiana County and Boccieri leading Mahoning County.
Rulli earned 68 percent of the vote in Columbiana County compared to Boccieri's 31 percent, according to complete but unofficial results.
In Mahoning County, the race had a much slimmer margin, with Boccieri leading the vote in that county, although he ultimately lost to Rulli once the Columbiana County votes were factored in. With both counties counted, Rulli's total votes were 65,531 to Boccieri's 59,262.
During his campaign, Rulli said that population loss in the valley was his major concern and that fixing that problem comes down to securing more money from the state's capital budget.
He had also said that another way to combat population loss is through introducing local students early on to jobs they could be interested in later on and let them see that those jobs are available where they are instead of only in bigger cities.
He had also said that if elected he would work hard to get businesses to invest locally, and that he felt that local government should be more involved in attracting businesses to available real estate.
Boccieri had said in his campaign that he was running for the Senate seat because he did not like the majority control Republicans have in the state, and blamed that majority for pushing the responsibility of raising revenue to lower forms of government.
Boccieri has served in a political capacity at the state level since 2001 in both the Ohio House of Representatives and the Senate.
kwhite@mojonews.com