Abner Orick

Abner J. Orick is an American politician of the Republican party who served as a member of the Dayton, Ohio, city commission from 1979–1983, 1985–1991, and 1997.

In 1989, Orick was the Republican nominee for Dayton mayor, but he lost to incumbent Democrat Richard Clay Dixon. In 1991, Orick chose not to run for re-election to the commission, instead making an unsuccessful bid for the office of clerk of the Dayton municipal courts, losing to Democrat Mark Owens.

In 1997, Orick lost his bid for re-election to the commission.

Orick lost a special election in 2001 to replace Commissioner Lloyd Lewis Jr., who died of cancer. Lewis's widow, Edythe Lewis won that election. Later in 2001, Orick again was nominated for the commission in the primary election, but he lost in the general election.

While a member of the commission, Orick was well known as a populist and gadfly of the Democratic majority. He conducted unannounced, late-night inspections of city services to catch municipal employees napping on the job. When not conducting city business, Orick held court for his admirers at his trophy shop.

Orick is an old-fashioned politician of the good-old-boy mold and he has often run into trouble when talking about issues such as race. In the 1990s, he was widely mocked when he was quoted in the Dayton Daily News as saying that he was not a racist because in his youth he played basketball at public courts against African American boys.