YOUNGSTOWN — Despite the appearance that Geno DiFabio was among three Republican candidates for countywide office whose victory Tuesday was unexpected, DiFabio said the late surge of votes that put him over the top in defeating three-term county commissioner Dave Ditzler was not a surprise.

DiFabio, a Youngstown truck driver who narrowly lost to Commissioner Carol Rimedio Righetti two years ago, said he realized after the first set of results were posted Tuesday that he was doing better against Ditzler than he had done against Rimedio Righetti, who beat DiFabio by only 130 votes in 2022.

“Two years ago, when the first numbers came out, I was down by almost 10,000 votes. Last night, I was down by 7,000,” he said Wednesday morning by telephone.

He said the early voting results are posted first, followed by results from Youngstown precincts and then the voting precincts “further out” into the more rural areas away from Youngstown where a larger percentage of Republican voters live. He noted that it takes longer for the results to be brought to the Mahoning County Board of Elections from the rural parts of the county, so they arrive the latest.

DiFabio said knowing that he was doing better than two years ago was reassuring, but he was still nervous when the earliest results were posted. He and Lynn Maro, the Republican candidate for county prosecutor, were similarly behind their Democratic opponent as several sets of results were posted.

“I was nervous. I thought Geez, here we go again. It was going to be close but I was sure happy when we won,” he said. Maro similarly won her race at the end after trailing DeGenova as most of the results were posted.

“Mine and Lynn’s numbers were almost identical … through the whole night with 60-70 percent of the (precincts) reporting,” he said of being behind their opponents.

“We knew where our votes were in the western part of the county and the southern part of the county, so (I said) ‘Just stay calm. We’ll be alright. And that’s how it came out.”

He said the final results were for the last 13% of voting precincts.

“I picked up 4,000 votes,” he said. “Wherever those votes came from — I got all of them, and Lynn as well.”

Though DiFabio defeating Ditzler may have been surprising to some people, DiFabio said “Absolutely” he thought he was going to win.

He said he had a goal of winning the election, and “I am going to set a goal and work to those ends. It’s not just all talk. It’s not just all blather of what you are going to do.”

He said the goals he has as county commissioner are going to be based on taking action, not just talking about it.

“That’s what we have had for so many years,” he said. The county commissioners “talk about the different problems, and as long as they talk about it, they think it’s solved and move to the next one. Well I’m not going to do that.

“That’s not how it works in the real world, in the world of business. In our shop, we can’t see a problem and look at it and say that’s hard. We’ll put that aside and we will go get something else that is easier” and “just tell them we will fix that later. People depend on having their stuff repaired and fixed.”

He said the current commissioners “have a press conference, and they say ‘That’s solved. We had a press conference.'” He mentioned this criticism of the current commissioners during the campaign in regard to areas of the county not having adequate ambulance service.

DiFabio said Wednesday that he has “an idea to bring a lot of different entities together and see what we can do. It may be a crazy idea, but if we can do it, I would like to try that.”

He also said he thinks being a new commissioner will make him better able to provide the public with what it wants. The public is “exhausted from the same old, same old, nothing changes,” he said.

DiFabio said he was surprised by some of the election results he saw in Tuesday’s election and said it could be described as a “red wave,” which USA Today defined Wednesday morning as “when Republicans sweep the elections and gain or retain control across government.”

DiFabio said he does not have an “exact answer” as to why it happened, “But I just think people are tired of seeing the same faces over and over again and said ‘If we don’t change anything, nothing will change.”

Because of the lawsuit filed two years ago regarding DiFabio’s “best friend,” Ricky Morrison, being fired and then rehired to his job as a county maintenance worker, allegedly over Morrison’s support for DiFabio against Rimedio Righetti, DiFabio said he plans to meet with county department heads and county employees.

He said he is going to “speak to as many employees as I can and tell them that they don’t have to look over their shoulder, worried about who they support. They’re just there to do their job. There’s people who walk on pins and needles … think somebody’s watching them,” he said.

“That’s not the way to spend your day when you’re serving the public, worried about someone thinking you are supporting someone else. Just do your job and serve the public, and you should not have to be worried. They try to put the fear of God into the 1,500 employees.”

Ditzler did not respond to a request Wednesday to comment on his election loss.