Democratic candidate for Ohio Auditor continues a life of learning as she aims for top job

From helping her grandmother on an Alabama plantation, to her career in the banking industry, and now as the mayor of Maple Heights, the Democratic candidate for Ohio Auditor of State has spent her life in the pursuit of learning, she said in a recent interview.

Mayor Annette Blackwell says every opportunity she’s had has come from her ability to ask questions and surround herself with people from whom she can learn.

Her path to the mayor’s office twisted and turned through various jobs and activities. Blackwell worked as a property tax analyst, helped adults gain the skills to transition out of welfare, processed tax bills for major national shopping centers, and led the charge for a school levy to bring Maple Heights five new schools.

“My resumé never said I could do the job,” Blackwell said. “I’ve been given opportunity after opportunity. I’ve got transferrable skills that I can build upon.”

A Clevelander since childhood, Blackwell became Maple Heights mayor in 2014. Before being elected to lead the city, she spent more than a decade with financial companies, also working at University Hospitals, along with many boards and commissions.

Mayor Blackwell

As the first African American and first woman to lead Maple Heights, but even more so because of her roots as the granddaughter of Alabama sharecroppers, Blackwell said she appreciates the importance of hard work.

Her grandmother was a cook for a third-generation plantation owner, and her family eventually became sharecroppers of that land, picking cotton, growing their own vegetables, and raising their own meat. Blackwell and her sister went back to Alabama while her grandmother still worked as a cook.

“We didn’t go to camp, we went back to the farm,” she said.

When her grandmother’s arthritis progressed, making it hard for her to do the daily work, Blackwell stepped in.

“I helped set the table, because if they had seen her not being able to set the table, it would have cost her her housing,” the mayor said.

A family history connected to slavery as well as her career rising the ranks as a woman of color means representation is an important part of her job and her life.

“Representation, because of the way I was socialized, is very important to me,” Blackwell said. “I understand the importance of that because of where I came from: red dirt.”

When she became Mayor Blackwell, she inherited a fiscal emergency that made her very familiar with the Ohio Auditor of State’s office very quickly.

The auditor of state is an elected office that works as a check for local governments, like cities, schools, public libraries, and state boards and commissions.

The state auditor also sits on the Ohio Redistricting Commission alongside the governor and secretary of state, as well as four lawmakers including one member from each party from each chamber of the legislature.

Performance audits are regularly conducted by the auditor of state to ensure local entities are maintaining clean financial books, to investigate potential fraud, and to assist governments in coming back from financial issues.

As is typical for an entity in fiscal emergency, Maple Heights was tasked with putting together a five-year plan to get out of it, a task Blackwell said she took upon herself.

She was told there was the possibility for renewals of the fiscal emergency, something she didn’t want to have to implement.

“Nobody wants to come here if they don’t think you are a good business risk, they can’t get a good return on their investment,” Blackwell said.

So the recovery plan was implemented, and since then, Maple Heights has received several awards for clean audits from the auditor’s office, as recently as February of 2026.

To receive the award, local governments and school districts have to file financial reports on time, and receive an audit report that “does not contain any findings for recovery, material citations, material weakness, significant deficiencies,” and also avoids ethics referrals, questioned costs, or public meetings/public records issues, according to the state auditor’s website.

Having seen the city through fiscal troubles, along with the COVID pandemic and other issues, it wasn’t until the 2026 election was on the horizon that Blackwell thought of anything else.

“I hadn’t given myself permission to think beyond Maple Heights,” she said.

Now, she faces a battle against a known opponent, current Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose.

LaRose is a former state senator, and has been Secretary of State since 2019.

The secretary of state ran to become a U.S. senator in the 2024 election, coming in third in the GOP primary behind fellow former lawmakers Matt Dolan and the winner, current U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno.

A new auditor’s office

Her background of corporate experience, plus her work in local government have brought nuance that Blackwell believes will fit with the auditor’s office.

There’s a return-on-investment demanded from a company, but the same demand comes from town residents, even if it’s in a different form, she said.

“They want to know before they get up to go to work in the morning – got to be at work at 7 o’clock – the streets are going to be clear, right, and that every week waste management is going to pick up their refuse, and the streetlights are going to be repaired if it’s dark,” Blackwell said.

The fact that she’s dealt with the auditor’s office throughout the years in and out of Maple Heights’ fiscal emergency has given Blackwell a perspective on what the office could have under her leadership: more outreach and a positive outlook.

“I just think that the auditor’s office, with this diversity and this huge workforce and it’s regional offices, can become something it has not been seen as,” Blackwell said. “The auditor doesn’t have to be the bad news, maybe the auditor can be good news.”