Experience the issue with Probate/Juvenile Judge race

by Chuck Bowen
Staff Writer

Two active Athens County residents are competing this fall for the soon-to-be vacant Athens County Probate/Juvenile Court judgeship.

With Judge Edward Robe retiring at the end of the year, the seat for judge will be open for Democratic candidate Lisa Eliason or Republican candidate Robert Stewart.

Stewart is currently the magistrate for the Athens County Probate/Juvenile Court. He has held the part time position, what he calls a “junior judgeship,” for 22 years. As a magistrate, he said, he hears the same kind of cases that Robe hears.

“This is what I do every week,” he said.

As magistrate, Stewart has served for three different judges. “I’ve demonstrated the ability to be fair and impartial,” he said. “The citizens of Athens County deserve a judge with knowledge of and experience in Juvenile/Probate Court.”

Stewart said experience is the key to the race, and his opponent lacks it. “(Lisa Eliason) has had a little experience in juvenile/probate law nearly 10 years ago,” he said. “She doesn’t have any experience as a magistrate. That’s a stark comparison.

“If you needed surgery, you’d want someone who’d done it before.”

Eliason replied, “My experience is different experience. I’ve got different, fresh perspectives that I bring to the job. I’ve got a different background. I won’t do things like they’ve been done for years and years.”

Eliason has been the prosecutor for the city of Athens since 1996 and served in the same position from 1990-1993. In between, she was a private attorney in the juvenile/probate courts and the prosecutor for the city of Chauncey.

As the city prosecutor, Eliason prosecutes all misdemeanors that occur in Athens and in places in Athens County that have no prosecutor.

For eight years, she was a teacher throughout Ohio. For one year, she said, she was a special education teacher at Trimble Elementary in Jacksonville, and for three years she taught at the Western Ohio Youth Center near Dayton.

At the youth center, she taught juvenile delinquent boys, ages 12-18, Eliason said.

“It was like a one-room schoolhouse,” she said.

Qualifying her to be the juvenile/probate judge, she said, are her years of service. “I have 26 years of public service and a lifetime of community service,” she said. “This is just a natural progression in my career.”

Stewart recently sold his interests in Paw Purr’s, Inc., a corporation that owned Paw Purr’s Bar, 37 N Court St., and the liquor license for a local restaurant.

He sold his interests at the same time he began running for judge, he said. “There was never a conflict, never an issue,” said Stewart of his involvement with both liquor licenses and presiding over juvenile alcohol and drug cases. He sold his interests, he said, “to remove any appearance of any impropriety.”

Responding to claims that Paw Purr’s Bar had been cited for after-hours consumption by the Ohio State Liquor Board and for tax problems, Stewart said he had no knowledge of those events.