A Jackson County Commissioner has made the first bid for John Carey’s seat at the Ohio Statehouse.

Republican Jim Riepenhoff filed for the 93rd House of Representative seat Wednesday morning at the Lawrence County Courthouse.

Carey, also a Republican who has served either as state representative or senator since 1994, will leave the House on January 2012 to take a post at Shawnee State University.

The 93rd District takes in all of Gallia and Jackson counties, part of Vinton County and all of Lawrence County except for Ironton, Coal Grove and Hamilton Township.

The House GOP leadership will appoint a successor for Carey; that person will finish out his unexpired term through 2012.

Potential candidates to run for the office in 2012 must file for the March primary by Dec. 7. They must file their petitions at the Lawrence County Board of Elections because it has the largest registered voter total in the district.

Riepenhoff, who began circulating petitions on Monday, had considered running for the Statehouse a decade ago.

“I talked to my party (then) and they asked me not to, but to go to the commission,” he said. “I became a commissioner and have enjoyed my commissioner work. I found out Representative Carey was not running in 2012 so I decided this was it.”

Besides seeking the seat in 2012, Riepenhoff said he is also actively campaigning to get the nod from the House Speaker and fellow Republicans to finish Carey’s term.

Economic development will be on the top of his agenda if elected, Riepenhoff said.

“Everybody looks at how we can get jobs down in this part of the state,” he said. “It hasn’t been easy for anybody. … I want to continue to try to locate jobs to southern Ohio.”

His strategy would be to work closely with state officials to determine who could be potential employers, he said.

“I would keep in close contact with the state development department about who is inquiring about sites,” Riepenhoff said. “That is the best way to do that.”

The retired vice president and CEO of Riepenhoff Distributing cites as accomplishments on the Jackson commission his work on the transition from the tri-county emergency medical service that served Jackson, Athens and Lawrence counties to a single EMS for his home county and a $75 million expansion of the General Mills factory in Wellston that brought in 110 more jobs.

“I think I bring quite a bit of experience not only in the political but private sector,” he said. “I think I have a pretty firm grip on the private sector as well as the public sector.”