Open Seat Reviews

Purpose

To work jointly with the county Farm Bureaus to screen all the legislative candidates with races resulting from term limited incumbents. Term limits is forcing organizations to change their approach to elections to the Ohio legislature. OFBF developed this nonpartisan process to be employed after primary elections. Farm Bureau needs to identify and work to elect "agriculture friendly" candidates if we hope to reach our goals.

Candidate Questionnaires

The initial step in the open seat process is the completion of the Farm Bureau questionnaire.  The questionnaire provides us with some biographical background on the candidate, the organization of their campaign and their position on issues that are important to us. In addition to the questionnaire, candidates will receive some background information to help them educate themselves on our organization and issues.  If the candidates want to be considered for Farm Bureau support in the general election and to move to the second step in the process they must complete the questionnaire by the appropriate deadline.

District Evaluation Meetings

The completed questionnaire will be sent to the appropriate Organization Director so they can organize an evaluation meeting with the candidate and the evaluation committee. This committee, consisting of county leaders, will ask a variety of questions, based in part on the answers to the questionnaire. Once the evaluation meeting has taken place, the committee will then make a recommendation to the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation Agriculture for Good Government Political Action Committee on which candidate they feel is most agriculturally friendly and to what extent we should become engaged in their campaign.