BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Roxanne Qualls
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A dozen years ago, it would have been hard to imagine the Roxanne Qualls of today, on the verge of going to Washington as the representative of Ohio's 1st Congressional District.
There were no limousine rides with the president in those days, no Washington political heavyweights cheering her on from the sidelines, no high-priced political consultants fretting over her image, no 30-second TV spots beaming her face into every home in the media market.
Then, there was just an idealistic young woman, more often in jeans than not, working out of the cramped office of the Ohio Public Interest Campaign (OPIC) on McMillan Avenue, busy turning residents into environmental activists and showing them how to fight both city hall and companies that were polluting their neighborhoods.
It was a long road from there to the mayor's office in 1993 to her candidacy this year in one of the most closely-watched congressional races in the country.
But to the friends and supporters the 45-year-old Avondale resident has made along the way, nothing much about her has really changed.
"From the first time I met her, I have told her that she is exactly the kind of person who ought to be in government," said former Cincinnati Councilwoman Bobbie Sterne, a political ally who has been a mentor to Ms. Qualls.
"She is someone who is passionate about the things she believes in and has the skill and intelligence to know what to do about it," said Ms. Sterne, who has known Ms. Qualls since she ran the OPICoffice in Cincinnati in the early 1980s.
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QUALLS FACTS
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Age: 45
Party: Democrat
Residence: Avondale
Education: Attended University of Cincinnati and Thomas More College.
Career highlights: Former director of Cincinnati Citizen Action. Elected to Cincinnati City Council, 1991; elected mayor, 1993, re-elected mayor 1995, 1997.
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Unlike most who end up on Cincinnati City Council, Roxanne Qualls is not a native. She was born in Tacoma, Wash., the daughter of an Air Force captain. Like most military families, she moved a lot in her childhood, from the Northwest to Japan to Thailand and, finally, to Northern Kentucky, where she went to high school and where her mother and sister still live.
Long before Ms. Qualls came to Cincinnati City Council in 1991, she was building what eventually grew into a powerful political force -- one that began with feminists, gay-rights activists, political liberals and grew to include environmentalists and neighborhood leaders from throughout the city.
Since first being elected mayor in 1993, the core of her support has extended into much of Cincinnati's business community, an area where, back in her environmental activist days, she was often viewed with suspicion.
"There were a lot of people in the business community who were pleasantly surprised with Roxanne after she became mayor," said Brewster Rhoads, a long-time Democratic Party activist in Cincinnati and a friend of Ms. Qualls. "They found out she was willing to work with anybody to get things done."
It was surprising to some of her supporters who had known her as an environmental activist but, Mr. Rhoads said, in the end, most of her supporters realized she was also a pragmatist.
"A lot of us used to see the chamber of commerce types as the enemy, then we realized it's stupid, irrational," Mr. Rhoads said.
By the 1997 council election, when she was top vote-getter for the third straight time, she had become the pre-eminent political force in city politics. Her success was not lost on Democratic Party leaders in Washington who were looking for the strongest possible candidate to challenge Republican Steve Chabot, a member of the conservative GOP class of 1994.
Two years ago, when Mr. Chabot won re-election, his Democratic opponent was Mark Longabaugh, a relatively unknown candidate. Mr. Chabot won with 54 percent of the vote. The Democrats' clear choice in 1998 was Ms. Qualls, who would be unable to run for another council term because of term limits.
Everyone in the Democratic establishment from President Clinton to House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt to a host of Democratic House members wooed Ms. Qualls.
In February, in front of several hundred supporters shoe-horned into a small banquet room in a downtown hotel, the mayor announced her candidacy for Mr. Chabot's 1st District seat.
The themes she sounded in her announcement speech are the same ones she has carried throughout this campaign in 30-second TV spots, stump speeches, head-to-head debates with her opponent and an avalanche of campaign press releases.
It is an agenda that, in most respects, echoes that of the Clinton administration and Capitol Hill Democrats: support for a "patient's bill of rights," walling off federal budget surpluses until Social Security is fixed, more federal dollars for hiring teachers and rebuilding crumbling school buildings, and tax cuts for child care and college education.
It is an agenda that puts Ms. Qualls squarely opposite the conservative beliefs of her opponent. If there is an issue where there is not a clear difference between the two, it has not surfaced yet.
One issue where the two have clashed is abortion, particularly late term "partial birth abortions." Ms. Qualls, throughout her political career, has had the support of feminist organizations that support abortion rights. Mr. Chabot has been one of the favorites of abortion opponents.
Mr. Chabot voted for a bill to outlaw the procedure except when the life of the mother is threatened. President Clinton vetoed the bill. Ms. Qualls has said she would only vote for a partial-birth abortion ban if it contained exceptions for both the life and the "health" of the mother.
While both candidates agree on general, "mom-and-apple-pie" goals such as improving education and saving Social Security, they are far apart on how to get there.
"I respect Steve Chabot for his commitment to public service, but there are some real differences between us," Ms. Qualls said in her first debate with the incumbent last month in Cheviot.
Her opponent, Ms. Qualls says, has a "doctrinaire, ideological approach to everything that he lets get in the way of doing what is best for the 1st District."
One of her primary examples is her support for this summer's federal transportation bill. Ms. Qualls lobbied hard to have local projects -- including money for a study for a light rail system in Cincinnati -- put in the bill. Mr. Chabot voted against it, saying it was "loaded with pork" and "wasteful spending."
"The difference between us is that I see that people in Cincinnati are sending millions to the federal government in gasoline taxes; and I think it is the job of a member of Congress to get as much of that back into the district as possible," Ms. Qualls said.
The debate over the transportation was proof that the two approach government -- particularly the federal government -- from opposite directions.
While Mr. Chabot sees the federal government as a force that interferes in people's lives and holds them back, Ms. Qualls believes government can still be a positive force, helping to improve people's lives.
Her career in politics, she says, has been about "making government work for people."
As mayor, she started a "Mayor's Night In" program where Cincinnatians can come to her City Hall office and seek her help on neighborhood problems that might otherwise escape the attention of the City Hall bureaucracy. She has promised, in a campaign ad, to do the same if elected to Congress.
She also began a "Zero Tolerance Initiative" aimed at giving neighborhoods the tools to battle graffiti and vandalism.
Her political roots -- pre-City Hall -- are in working for public policy organizations that help people deal with government. Before her work as director of Cincinnati's branch of the Ohio Public Interest campaign, now known as Citizen Action, she was the director of Women Helping Women, a Cincinnati organization that helps victims of spousal abuse.
Ms. Qualls' experience is not entirely in the public sector. For a while in the early 1980s, she ran her own business -- a house-painting service that grew out of her being asked by friends and neighbors to work on their houses.
That is how Mr. Rhoads, when he was director of the Cincinnati office of OPIC, first met Ms. Qualls: he hired her to paint his house in Oakley.
"Some of the first images I have of her are of her on a ladder, scraping paint off the ceiling and the chips falling in her hair," Mr. Rhoads said.
"She worked hard then; she works hard now," he said.
