Commission candidate wants to engage more of county’s young people

The Republican candidate in the only contested race for Perry County commissioner on the Nov. 5 ballot describes himself as a newcomer to politics.

“I come from a family that puts faith and family first, and nobody was ever really involved in politics in my family,” explained Chase Bennett. “Nobody in my family has ever run for an office. So I come from a background where this is a new challenge for me and my wife.”

Bennett won the GOP primary against Thad Cooperrider to become the party’s nominee. A Democratic write-in candidate, Todd Shafer, who won the Dem primary with a handful of votes, is not on the ballot. After the primary Renee Young announced that she would be running as an independent for the seat. At the time of Young’s announcement The Perry County Tribune ran a short profile of her, which can be read at https://tinyurl.com/5hf4bt2k; in the interests of balance the paper spoke with Bennett about his background as well.

Bennett, who grew up in Glenford and graduated from Sheridan High School in 2011, told the Tribune that one of his motivations to run for the office is to try to engage more young people in the civic life of the county.

“We need new energy,” he said. “We need that next generation to step up and start doing the work in the community. And that’s something that my wife and I both talked about while we were younger, while we were dating.” Now that they’re married and planning to raise a family in the county, he said, it seems even more important to try to build that pipeline of future community leaders.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in Health Service Administration from Ohio University Zanesville Bennett worked for the Genesis healthcare system for a couple of years. But when an opportunity arose in his father’s family plumbing business, he took a position with the company and after a year of apprenticeship, took over running the business.

“It was a trial by fire, but sometimes when we have those challenges, it’s a good opportunity to grow,” he added.

Whether he wins a seat on the commission or not, Bennett said, he wants to pursue his project of encouraging more civic engagement among the young.

“I’ve begun conversations with local school systems and with local government, about the need to bridge that gap to the next generation,” he said. “Trying to bring local government to the high schools, so that our young men and women that are graduating high school and starting lives in the community have a better connection to local government. Because I think there’s a lot of people that are jaded right now, young people as they’re graduating high school, and life is really scary. That’s the scariest time of your life, and if you turn the TV on, it doesn’t really matter what comes on in national politics, it’s pretty scary… So I’ve begun these conversations with our commissioners and with local elected people, and everybody’s interested.”

Email at jphillips@perrytribune.com