Staff Photo / Ed Runyan Lynn Maro hugs a supporter after results came back indicating she was the winner of the Mahoning County District Attorney’s race Tuesday night.

YOUNGSTOWN — Gina DeGenova lost her primary election to remain Mahoning County prosecutor on Tuesday as late results swung the race in favor of Republican challenger Lynn Maro by about 800 votes.

DeGenova was leading 53% to 47% with 80% of precincts counted, but final results showed both with 50% of the vote. DeGenova had 52,830 votes and Maro had 53,645, according to incomplete and unofficial results from the Mahoning County Board of Elections.

DeGenova completed the final two years of her boss Paul Gains’ final term.

Gains served as Mahoning County District Attorney for 26 years, beginning just after a mob hitman tried to kill Gains on Christmas Eve 1996. He retired as county attorney at the end of 2022.

DeGenova, 50, of Canfield, was part of a large election watch party Tuesday night at Double Bogey’s Bar and Grill in Boardman, where DeGenova took a solid early-voting lead.

She said this campaign “was an amazing experience for me to talk to members of the public and just be there for them. I like the job.”

Maro, 57, of Poland, also sought to be appointed to fill the final two years of Gains’ final term, but that appointment went to DeGenova, who worked for Gains for 17 years, especially in the civil division of the prosecutor’s office.

After decades as an independent defense attorney in Mahoning County, Maro had plenty of complaints about Gains’ handling of the prosecution — from failing to turn over evidence to the defense in a timely manner to letting people accused of murder plead until manslaughter. . She is a 23-year-old defender.

When Maro was asked Tuesday night at MVR Cassese in Youngstown what voters told her during the campaign, she said voters mostly want one thing: “They want to be safe. They want to be home with their families and get jobs. It didn’t matter if they were Democrats, Libertarians, Independents, or Republicans. The comments, the concerns are the same. It didn’t matter if I was knocking on doors in Canfield or Austintown, everyone has the same concerns and wants the same thing.”

During the campaign, Maro said her research showed the prosecutor’s office was allowing too many felony cases to be dismissed or found not guilty.

“Fifteen percent of (Mahoning County) felony cases in the last four years have been dismissed or not guilty,” Maro previously said, adding that number is zero in Trumbull County. Trumbull officials confirmed that for at least the past two years, the rate has been zero.

Maro has been a defense attorney in 50 felony cases in her career, including the 2020 slaying of 4-year-old Rowan Sweeney. She and another attorney represented defendant Kimonie Bryant in the Rowan, and Bryant eventually pleaded guilty to aggravated murder. and was sentenced in July to 20 years to life in prison.

When asked about Maro’s complaints about the number of felony cases brought, DeGenova said Maro “rejects that manslaughter convictions are still just that, convictions. They mean closure for victims’ families and prison sentences. These defendants did not simply walk out the door back into society.” She said the changes from murder to manslaughter “happen all over Ohio and are not unique to Mahoning County.”

DeGenova provided statistics showing that of 16 homicide cases that have been solved since he became prosecutor in 2023, half (8 of 16) have been reduced from murder to involuntary manslaughter.

“What Ms. Maro is saying is that we should never settle cases (through a plea) and we should go to trial for every case. Justice would stop at the nose. There are a lot of factors that go into this. Are there resolutions in some cases? Of course. But these are convictions with heavy penalties.”

Maro also criticized murder cases in which the prosecution was late in turning over evidence to the defense, including one case in which Maro’s defense attorney. In that case, Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge John Durkin called it “inexcusable.”

At the time, DeGenova said the prosecutor’s office was enforcing a new policy “where we review files 30 days (from trial) and make sure those requests are compiled.”

After Gains promoted DeGenova to chief deputy prosecutor in January 2021, and during her 21 months as prosecutor, she has increased the public’s knowledge of the operation of the prosecutor’s office.

She and her staff have provided classes to the public on how to stay safe and provided annual reports and other information about the office on its improved Facebook page, she said.

She has “almost quadrupled the programming we have,” DeGenova told The Vindicator. She has spoken to 55 groups on scams and fraud, juvenile justice and bullying. And it set up a special victims’ unit to focus more attention on vulnerable victims.