A familiar face is throwing his hat in the ring to become Erie County executive.
County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick is running for the county’s top job, which is up for election next November.
Longtime incumbent Mark Poloncarz has announced he will not seek reelection.
Hardwick says that with President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” more cuts are coming. His goal is to help Erie County residents navigate those cuts to vital resources and preach that county government is not forgotten.
Hardwick said he wants to put his nearly two decades of experience working for Erie County taxpayers to the test.
“For the past 17 years, Erie County has been my laboratory to put what I preach into practice, and I think that the benefits that I brought about for Erie County as comptroller, the audits we’ve done, we made Erie County a better, more efficient government, and I want to continue to doing that,” he said. “I have done a lot as Erie County comptroller. As county executive, I’ll even do more.”