Prosecutor candidate has a house outside Franklin County, says he lives in Columbus condo

Retiring Franklin County Prosecutor Gary Tyack has gone beyond endorsing his chosen replacement in the 2024 election — he's made fellow Democrat Anthony Pierson the face of the office.

Since he left Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost's office and rejoined the county prosecutor's office in May as deputy chief counsel, Pierson has attended news conferences in Tyack’s stead and is often quoted in the office’s news releases.

Pierson is campaigning hard for the job, a role that by law requires him to live in Franklin County.

But The Dispatch found Pierson owns a house in Delaware County in addition to his Columbus condo. Representatives of two nonpartisan election integrity groups said this is something voters deserve to know about, and that Pierson should explain.

According to property records, Pierson and his wife, Crysta, own a 3,500-square-foot house in Lewis Center in Delaware County. Crysta Pierson is registered to vote at that address.

Before rejoining the Franklin County Prosecutor's Office, Anthony Pierson changed his voter registration in October 2022 from his Delaware County house to a condo he owns in Columbus, Franklin County. But he listed his Delaware County house as his mailing address.

Pierson told The Dispatch on Tuesday that the Franklin County condo is his primary residence, but acknowledged he sometimes visits the Delaware County house where his wife and one of his children live. He said he moved a little more than a year ago back to Franklin County into the Columbus condo he has owned since 2011 and occupied on and off over the years.

"I go to Lewis Center. I don't keep track of how often. But that's not my home," Pierson told The Dispatch. "I have one home, and that's in Franklin County."

Pierson said plenty of elected officials own more than one property and said he won't apologize for being successful.

Asked to explain why he lives separately from Crysta, his second wife, Pierson said that question was too personal.

"Plenty of families and married couples live at different addresses. Whether they're going through things — I'm not saying one way or another with my wife," Pierson said.

Tyack told The Dispatch this matter is "very complicated." He said Republican Jon Husted lived primarily in Columbus but got to represent a Dayton-area district as a state senator. (The Ohio Supreme Court ultimately decided in 2009 that Husted could vote and hold office in Montgomery County.)

"I think Anthony can declare his home wherever he declares it," Tyack said. "The Republican party had a person from Dayton who lived in Columbus and held office in Dayton. The suspicion about what your legal residence is for being an officeholder varies from person to person. I'm not worried about it one way or the other."

Tyack: Pierson is the most qualified candidate

Tyack said there is no debate Pierson is the most qualified candidate running.

City Council member Shayla Favor and Delaware City Attorney Natalia Harris have also announced they're running for the Democratic nomination for Tyack's job in the March primary. Local defense attorney John Rutan has announced he is running as a Republican.

Favor worked as a zone attorney in the Columbus City Attorney's Office for five years. Harris has mostly worked in city attorney offices, including prosecuting misdemeanors in Cincinnati and Delaware, but she also spent four years in the Montgomery County Prosecutor's Office working on felony cases. Rutan has been a criminal defense attorney since 2010.

Pierson has worked as a prosecuting attorney on felony cases for about 15 years out of his 20-plus-year legal career.

"I think he’s much more qualified, and I'm still totally backing Anthony under the circumstances," Tyack said.

What records indicate about Pierson's home address

Anthony Pierson married his second wife, Crysta Pierson, who previously went by Crysta Pennington, in 2020. She is a family law and criminal defense attorney who practices in Franklin County Juvenile Court, where her husband oversees the prosecutors.

Anthony Pierson said that he is walled off from cases his wife is involved in and prosecuting attorneys handling her cases bypass him in the office's chain of command. If he were elected prosecutor, Pierson said he would maintain that practice and have a first assistant prosecutor oversee cases Crysta is defending.

On a Delaware County Auditor's Office property records search, the Piersons' names won't be found. Pierson acknowledged they requested their names be delisted. Ohio law allows prosecutors and other similar professionals like law enforcement, along with their spouses, to delist their addresses with the county auditor for safety reasons

The Delaware County Auditor's Office said the information was redacted in May 2023.

Other records show Anthony and Crysta Pierson bought the house in Lewis Center in August 2020. They took out a $465,000 mortgage on the nearly 3,500-square-foot house.

Crysta Pierson is still registered to vote at their Lewis Center address and voted in Delaware County in the most recent election on Nov. 7.

Meanwhile, Anthony Pierson changed his voter registration to Franklin County in October 2022. He registered to vote using the address of a condo on Columbus' North Side and listed his home in Delaware County as his mailing address, according to records from the Franklin County Board of Elections.

Pierson told The Dispatch he doesn't remember listing his Delaware County home with the Franklin County Board of Elections as his mailing address or why he did it.

Property records on the Franklin County Auditor's website show Pierson bought the condo in 2011 for $25,000. Pierson did not have his name removed from the Franklin County Auditor's website as he did in Delaware County.

Pierson said he didn't do so in Franklin County because he has to maintain his voter registration in the county anyway, which makes his Columbus address public.

The auditor's records show that since Pierson has owned the 1,000-square-foot condo in Columbus, the townhouse has been designated as a rental. Pierson told The Dispatch the fact it's designated as a rental was news to him, and said he lived in the condo immediately after buying it.

Election watchdogs call for transparency

The Franklin County Board of Election's staff only checks to make sure candidates are registered to vote in Franklin County before recommending the board put the candidate on the ballot, according to a spokesperson.

Representatives of nonpartisan election integrity groups, including Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, told The Dispatch that voters deserve to know if a candidate actually resides in their community.

"It does make me wonder. This is the kind of thing voters should ask about and the candidate should respond to," Turcer said. "When you are an elected official for the county, you are a representative of the county. It's incredibly important to be connected to the location you’re serving and understand the needs of your own community."

Elizabeth Grieser, operations manager for the League of Women Voters of Metropolitan Columbus, said there's a difference between following the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

"The spirit of the law is that you would actually be a citizen, a resident of Franklin County, and your family would be here and you would live here and shop here and your kids would go to school here," Grieser said. "… Having your life really be in Delaware County and just changing your voting address to kind of an empty shell address, that may be technically following the law, but it's definitely not following the spirit in which the law was intended."

The deadline to file to run for a county office in Ohio's March 19 primary election is Dec. 20.

Pierson has not submitted his candidate petition to run yet, but he has been actively campaigning for months. His campaign has raised more than $60,000, according to a Facebook post in August.

In addition to Tyack's endorsement, Pierson has been endorsed by Franklin County Sheriff Dallas Baldwin and by Carter Stewart, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, which includes Franklin County.

jlaird@dispatch.com

@LairdWrites

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Franklin County prosecutor candidate owns a house in Delaware County