Local mayor set to replace Tubbs Jones

Warrensville Heights Mayor Marcia Fudge has won the Democratic Party nomination in Ohio’s 11th district and is likely to join Congress soon as the replacement for the late Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio).

Fudge, 55, who has also served as Tubbs Jones’s chief of staff, took a majority of the Democratic executive committee vote in the first round of voting Thursday night, defeating a field of candidates and avoiding a runoff.

{mosads}She will replace Tubbs Jones on the general election ballot for a full term. The Republican in the race is Thomas Pekarek, who faces little chance of winning in a Cleveland district that went 81 percent for Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004.

There will also be a special election held Nov. 18 to determine who will hold the seat until January. That race will effectively be decided Oct. 14, though, as no Republican filed.

Fudge is also running in the special election primary, meaning she could join Congress before the 2009 freshman class assumes office.

Tubbs Jones died in August after suffering a brain aneurysm.