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Endorses Hanni

The race

One seat on Ohio's Seventh District Court of Appeals — eight eastern Ohio counties (Belmont, Carroll, Columbiana, Harrison, Jefferson, Mahoning, Monroe, and Noble) — for the seat Judge Carol Ann Robb (R), on the court since 2014, is retiring from. Roster verified against the CSV's compilation source: Mark Anthony Hanni (R) against Katherine Rudzik (D). A fact voters should know up front: Hanni is not an outsider to this court — he is a sitting Seventh District judge (on the bench since February 2023, his own term running to February 2029) running for Robb's seat, because Ohio's judicial age limit will make him ineligible to run again when his current term ends; he turns 65 in September 2026 and is moving seats to serve as long as the age rules allow.

Mark Anthony Hanni — Incumbent judge of this court, challenger for this seat. Born and raised in Mahoning County; a path to the bench unlike any other in this batch — military school, married young, raised four children as a single father, worked as a union laborer, ran an asphalt pavement company, and spent 16 years at the Mahoning County Board of Elections, 10 as deputy director, before Duquesne University School of Law (law review), then more than two decades as a general practitioner representing, by his count, over 6,000 clients across criminal defense (misdemeanors to high-level felonies), personal injury, employment, civil rights, and federal cases in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Elected to the Seventh District in 2022. His campaign claim, stated as his claim: he runs on "a record of reforms that took the court from last to first in the state in efficiency and productivity." He brings, in his own words, "a criminal defense attorney's point of view to the court" — the other judges being former judges or prosecutors — and describes himself as "very traditional": "A handshake still means something." Memberships documented in the Youngstown Daily Legal News profile include the Buckeye Firearms Association and the National Rifle Association, the Knights of Columbus, and the Freemasons. Dirt search: no discipline, scandal, or reversed-signature ruling surfaced; the efficiency claim is campaign-sourced and not independently audited in this pass, and we label it that way.

Katherine Rudzik — Challenger. The Democratic nominee for the Robb seat, verified on the certified ballot and in the compilation table. Beyond the roster, the deep pass — web search under her full candidate name, Vote411/Judicial Votes Count questionnaire indexes, Toledo- and Youngstown-area news, and ballot-guide listings — returned no campaign website, no questionnaire answers, no practice biography, no endorsement list, and no news profile. We print that absence rather than invent a résumé: Rudzik may have a full legal career, but none of it is documented in any source a voter can check, and no claim about her — favorable or unfavorable — can be sourced. Her candidacy is therefore unproven in the strict sense: a watch posture, not a demerit.

Pros and cons

Hanni: Pros: A sitting judge of this very court with three-plus years of appellate judging, two decades and 6,000 clients of ground-level practice including criminal defense — due process seen from the defendant's table, which appellate panels rarely have — plus 16 years administering elections. Self-described traditionalist; documented gun-rights-organization memberships. Cons: His headline efficiency claim ("last to first") is his campaign's own, unverified by any independent source retrieved; the seat-switch itself is legal and disclosed, but voters should know he is extending his tenure past the point his current seat's term would have allowed him to seek again. Rudzik: Pros: The Democratic nomination on the certified ballot — the only verified fact in her file. Cons: No inspectable record of any kind: no philosophy, no platform, no biography in any retrieved source. Voters are asked to elect a blank file to an appellate court.

Record gaps

OUR CALL

Our call: endorse Mark Anthony Hanni. The evidentiary basis: one candidate in this race has a record a voter can judge — a sitting appellate judge of this court, a defense-side due-process perspective no prosecutor-judge brings, a traditionalist self-description backed by documented affiliations, and an efficiency claim we print as his claim, not as audited fact. The other candidate's deep pass returns a ballot line and nothing else. Unproven is never a demerit, and we do not price Rudzik's silence against her character — but an endorsement contest between a documented incumbent judge and an undocumented file is not close under any evidentiary standard. Vote Hanni.

For the complete Election 2026 breakdown — every race, claim by claim — see the full coverage on our website.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

Result pending. No verified call (Associated Press or official) as of November 4, 2026. This page will be updated when the race is called or certified. The original article above is unchanged.

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

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