Sunday, September 05, 1999
Republicans salivating over council possibilities
BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Republicans have been marking the days until this year's Cincinnati City Council election for eight years now.
The term limits law passed by Cincinnati voters in 1991 has given the GOP its best chance in three decades of capturing a majority on council in an increasingly Democratic city.
Two Democrats — Mayor Roxanne Qualls and Tyrone Yates — have served four two-year terms and can't run again.
That leaves two open seats that the Republicans could pick up and add to their three incumbent members to form a majority on the nine-member city council for the first time in 30 years.
“That's our goal — at least five members of council,” said Hamilton County GOP chairman H.C. “Buck” Niehoff. “And this year is our best chance.”
This election, said Hamilton County Democratic co-chairman Tim Burke, is why Republicans created the term limits law eight years ago.
“They've been waiting for this for a long time,” Mr. Burke said.
Back then, it was Republican council candidate Nick Vehr, an appointed council member, who pushed the charter amendment for term limits, with the enthusiastic backing of the Republican Party. In 1991, Cincinnati voters passed the law while at the same time kicking Mr. Vehr out of office.
Since then, Democrats have held the majority on City Council, although they have only rarely worked together on issues.
This time, though, there are two open seats and two seats held by appointed council members who lost the only other times they have been on the ballot — Jim Tarbell, the only Charter Committee council member, and Paul Booth, a Democrat who may be removed from the ballot if Republicans prove that he still lives in Amberley Village.
This is also the last election under the present electoral system.
In May, Cincinnati voters approved a charter amendment that will, in 2001, create an election for a mayor with enhanced powers. Since 1987, Cincinnati's mayor has been the candidate who finished first in the council field race election.
As a result, a number of Republican and Democratic council candidates who are considered long-shots to win in 1999 will almost certainly be back in 2001 when the mayor's race is taken out of the council election mix.
The field of candidates who have filed for Cincinnati City Council this year fall into four categories:
• The incumbents: Democrats Todd Portune, Minette Cooper and Mr. Booth; Republicans Charlie Winburn, Phil Heimlich and Jeanette Cissell; and Mr. Tarbell, the lone Charterite candidate.
• Those who have run before: Democrats Forrest Buckley, the former firefighters' union president, and Kaye Britton, who finished 13th in 1997; Republican Diane Goldsmith, an aide to county commissioner Tom Neyer; and Theo Barnes, an Over-the-Rhine resident running as an independent.
• The first-time candidates: Democrats Jane Anderson, an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati, Scott Seidewitz, with a background in business and Democratic politics, and Alecia Reece, a producer at WCIN radio; Republicans Pat DeWine, a lawyer and son of the U.S. senator from Ohio, Chris Monzel, a businessman and Winton Place neighborhood activist, and Ken Anderson, a real estate salesman who has run unsuccessfully for the Ohio House; and two independents, Charlie Lee Gardner and Sam Malone.
The fourth category — candidates who have served on council and as mayor and who are making a comeback — has only one member, Democrat Charlie Luken.
After serving as a councilman and mayor in the 1970s and 1980s, and after one term in Congress, Mr. Luken spent six years as the TV news anchorman at Channel 5.
In June, Mr. Luken quit the TV news business and announced his candidacy. As the mayor who has gotten the highest percentage of votes since the top vote-getter system began (63.5 percent in 1989), Mr. Luken's entry changed the shape of this year's race dramatically.
“He immediately became the front-runner for mayor, as soon as he got in,” said Gene Beaupre, a Xavier University political scientist and long-time observer of Cincinnati politics. “It doesn't mean he is the top vote-getter, but he starts out with tremendous name recognition.”
Up until the entry of Mr. Luken, it was assumed by many that the race for mayor would come down to a contest between Democrat Portune and Republican Winburn, with Ms. Cooper and Mr. Heimlich as possibilities.
If the new mayor is a Democrat, he or she will have signed a pledge to work only with the other Democratic council members in organizing the new council.
All the Democrats running for council signed that pledge, along with a party platform. Some of the items in the Democratic platform deal with issues near and dear to loyal constituencies within the party, such as the promise to oppose privatization — the contracting of city services to private firms. Organized labor, a key Democratic group, is vehemently opposed to privatization.
Shannon Walker Jones, executive director of the Hamilton County Republican Party, said the GOP's slate of candidates will not have a written party platform to run on, “but they share a set of Republican values and are working together on them.”
The party, Ms. Jones said, plans to send mailings to Cincinnati voters on behalf of the whole GOP council slate outlining the party's position on a number of issues, including taxes and decision-making on the city budget.
The issue Republican council candidates are already hammering away at is taxes.
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