Blair County Sheriff Candidate Sam McClure addressed the media Thursday in regards to sexual assault allegations and his campaign. In his statement, McClure claims that the allegations and the decision to discharge him were politically motivated. 

McClure says that the events between him and the alleged victim were consensual, off duty, and trivial. He claims that his opponent, Jim Ott, is best friends with the woman and that she waited to complain until Ott was the only candidate to face him. He says this was all in an attempt to smear him.

Ott told WTAJ that he had nothing to do with incident at all and wants to focus on his merits and qualifications for the job.

He said that up until this point in the campaign, his name wasn’t involved so he didn’t want to be involved and made an effort to stay away from this topic.

Ott says he’s shocked by today’s development but his campaign is unaffected. He said, “Quite honestly, it doesn’t change my focus. My focus is on my campaign and I can’t let other things especially false, misleading information be brought into it that’s going to make me distracted in any way.”

The primary elections take place less than three weeks from now on May 16th.