Ohio
Veteran Ohio elections official selected as Dallas County Elections Administrator
The five-member Dallas County Elections Commission on Tuesday appointed a veteran elections official from Ohio to lead the elections department.
Paul Adams, who has served since 2010 as the director of elections in Lorain County, Ohio, just west of Cleveland, was selected from 40 applicants and four finalists to serve as Dallas County Elections Administrator and oversee 1.4 million registered voters.
Adams will succeed Heider Garcia, who resigned effective Aug. 29 after less than three years in the role to work for elections technology company Hart InterCivic.
“Mr. Adams has a wealth of experience,” County Judge Clay Jenkins said in an interview. “I feel that he’ll do a good job for Dallas County.”
In 2024 while serving as elections chief in Lorain County, population of more than 300,000 people, Adams was selected to serve as president of Ohio’s state association of election professionals during the presidential election year.
Paul Adams, current Director of Elections in Lorain County, Ohio, was selected as Dallas County Elections Administrator on Tuesday Sept. 9, 2025. Paul Adams
In that role he set priorities for resources and programs for state elections officials and coordinated with the Secretary of State’s office on voter registration programs, according to his resume.
He also served as a coordinator for the Ohio Secretary of State from 2009 to 2010, where he oversaw voter registration practices and their implementation across 88 counties, his resume states.
“I’m honored to have been selected by the commission,” Adams said in a statement to The Dallas Morning News. “Though I’ve served as an election official in Ohio since 2003, and a director of elections since 2010, I look forward to the opportunity and challenges this new role presents.”
The Dallas County Elections Commission met in closed executive session on Tuesday to interview the four finalists.
They included Adams; Dallas County Deputy Elections Administrator Malissa Kouba; Dallas County Elections Department Human Resources Manager Robert Heard; and Matt Morales founder of the National Cybersecurity Defense Institute in Mesa Arizona.
Kouba, who has served in her role for four years and has led the Elections Department since Garcia’s resignation, said in an interview she is looking forward to collaborating with Adams.
“Just like an election, candidates don’t always win,” Kouba said. “I trust the process and trust they picked who they felt is best for the position.”
Jenkins said he expects Adams to begin work in Dallas County in about three weeks. Although Adams’ contract will have to be finalized, Garcia was paid $194,670 annually, according to 2025 human resources records.
Adams will be responsible for leading a department with 1.4 million registered voters – far more than the 223,000 registered voters in Lorain County.
He will be arriving as the county is preparing for the constitutional amendment election in November and the March primary.
The elections commission that selected Adams is made up of Jenkins; County Clerk John Warren; Tax Assessor John Ames; Dallas County Democratic Chair Kardal Coleman; and Dallas County Republican Chair Allen West.
Garcia, Adam’s predecessor, came to Dallas County in 2023 after serving as Tarrant County’s elections administrator for about five years, where he faced tremendous personal pressure while fielding death threats, misinformation and unfounded claims of voter fraud. He earned respect in the field and served as a senior subject matter expert for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
In Dallas County Garcia oversaw a crisis during early voting for the Nov. 4 general election, when electronic pollbooks from Election Systems & Software failed, resulting in nearly 4,000 voters casting ballots tied to precincts where they did not live.
He helped secure new devices from St. Louis-based KNOWiNK in time for the May 3 municipal elections.
Although new pollbooks have been secured, Jenkins said Adams will be responsible for monitoring the continued use of the new devices.
It will also be about “getting up to speed on the changes with Texas election law,” Jenkins said, “and winning over the people of the elections department.” Depending on decisions made later this month, Adams could also play a role in overseeing a major change being considered by the Dallas County Republican Party for the March primary.
On Sept. 15, the party’s executive committee is expected to decide whether to hand-count tens of thousands of ballots that will be cast in its March 3 gubernatorial primary, a monumental proposal that elections experts say is prone to inaccuracies and logistical issues.
Chairman Allen West said the party’s executive committee will discuss five “courses of action” that could include hand-marked paper ballots and hand-counting during early voting or on election day — or both. He declined to detail the five scenarios until the party’s Sept. 15 meeting.
Political parties typically contract with counties to run their primaries. A team from the Republican Party began discussing their proposal in July with Garcia and Kouba.
Kouba said the party and her office are still discussing logistics to formalize a contract but have differences in interpretation on whether the law gives the county or party authority to make certain decisions. She said the contract must be in place by December but she would like to formalize it sooner.
Cincinnati Reds legend and well-known gambler Pete Rose was possibly more than just curious about Ohio State football’s 2012 season when he texted Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer.
Appearing on “The Triple Option” show with Alabama running back Mark Ingram May 6, Meyer told a story about his relationship with Rose.
After OSU hired Meyer, the Reds asked him to throw out the first pitch at a game. Meyer threw to his son, Nathan, and walked into the dugout, where Rose, MLB’s all-time hit leader, was waiting to greet him.
“I couldn’t get enough talking about ‘Big Red Machine,’ and he wanted to talk college football,” Meyer said on the podcast, explaining how the two spoke for hours and exchanged numbers.
Meyer said that during his first season, Rose texted him early on. He wanted information about the team, like news on Braxton Miller’s shoulder injury.
“I told that to someone, and they said, ‘You’re an idiot. Do you know he’s trying to get information from you for gambling, and you could get in trouble?’ ” Meyer said.
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Though Meyer asserted that he never disclosed much, he started to steer the conversations clear of college football after he realized Rose potentially wanted information for gambling.
The two had another conversation in Las Vegas, where Rose told Meyer he gambled daily after retiring.
Rose was banned from baseball for betting on the sport, something he admitted to in his 2004 autobiography. Rose was reinstated in 2025 and so is considered eligible for the Hall of Fame.
Still baseball’s most prolific hitter (4,256 hits), Rose died in 2024.
GIRARD, Ohio (WKBN) – Over 100 athletes came together for the 5th Annual Trumbull County Special Olympics Invitational Saturday morning in Girard.
These athletes represent five different schools across Trumbull County to compete and spread the message of inclusion, achievement, and sportsmanship.
The Invitational continued its long-standing tradition of honoring the legacy of Randy Suchanek while celebrating the dedication and accomplishments of Special Olympics athletes throughout the region.
“You can hear all the excitement for this, for the athletes that are here today,” said superintendent Bryan O’Hara. “They work hard all year long to participate. We’ve always worked hand in hand with the rotary to get this accomplished is a lot of work behind the scenes.”
Participating schools included Ashtabula, Geauga, Columbiana, Kent-Portage and Trumbull Fairhaven
“There’s a lot of nice participation from girard students as you see behind us, and a lot of participation from the community helping out,” Girard-Liberty Rotary co-president Andy Kish added.
O’Hara added that the event keeps everything in perspective, seeing the athletes compete in the spirit of fun, along with the courage and determination that they show.
Alex Sorrells contributed to this report.
Out of prison, Indiana’s caviar king back on Ohio River to find fishing holes taken
David Cox, of English, Indiana, says once he began setting his nets again after a two-year prison sentence and a three-year ban on commercial fishing, all of his once-secret spots were taken.
Can you eat fish from the Ohio River?
In 1975, future presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, then governor of Massachusetts, bet 20 pounds of New England cod that the Red Sox would defeat the Reds in the World Series. If things went south for Boston, Ohio governor James Rhodes promised to send Dukakis 10 pounds of Lake Erie perch and 10 pounds of Ohio River catfish. The Reds ended up winning and the cod was sent to the Convalescent Home for Children, in Cincinnati.
At the time, people were still eating catfish from the Ohio without too much concern. The fish were also served at several restaurants along the river.
There were warnings in 1977
But two years later, in 1977, The Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission released the results of a study of contaminants found in the tissues of Ohio River fish. They warned anglers in cities such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Wheeling and Gallipolis that man-made chemicals known as PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, had been discovered in the river fish. Later, high concentrations of mercury were discovered in the fish, too.
Thanks to the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the environmental regulations that followed, the river is now cleaner than it was in the seventies. And it’s still teeming with a variety of fish, including catfish, striped bass, drum and black bass, among other species.
But even though PCBs were banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1979, they are still found in fish, since they remain in the sediment in the bottom of the river. “Organisms live in the sediment and fish feed on them,” Rich Cogen, the executive director of the Ohio River Foundation told The Enquirer. Mercury is also a big problem, according to Cogen.
So the question is: Can you eat fish caught in the Ohio River?
The short answer is yes. But it depends on what species you are eating and where along the river you caught it.
There are also very strict limitations on how frequently you should eat them, according to the web site for the Ohio Sport Fish Consumption Advisory, part of the Ohio Department of Health.
In areas of the river between the Belleville Lock, located 204 miles downstream from the river’s origins in Pittsburgh, to the Indiana border, the advisory agency currently recommends consuming Ohio River fish no more than once a month max. That area includes Adams, Brown, Clermont, Gallia, Hamilton, Lawrence, Meigs and Scioto counties.
Here’s where to check
Recommendations change throughout the year, but you can keep up by visiting the Ohio Department of Health’s Sport Fish Consumption Advisory page, which provides updated information on when certain fish, usually bottom feeders such as carp, are deemed too dangerous to eat at all.
Here’s who should take a pass on Ohio River fish
The agency also warns that people who are more likely to have health effects from eating contaminated fish, includingchildren younger than 15 years old, pregnant women and women who are planning to become pregnant to avoid Ohio River fish altogether.
Just because you have to limit the amount of fish you eat, doesn’t mean the river is a bad place for fishing, as long as you limit your intake or do catch-and-release fishing. Just make sure you have a proper fishing license before casting your line.
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