Sunday, September 12, 1999
GOP plays hardball and strikes out
BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
We now know where Cincinnati City Councilman Paul Booth and his family live: In a two-bedroom apartment in Oakley. Well, most of the time.
In an eight-hour hearing Wednesday before the Hamilton County Board of Elections, we learned more about life in the Booth household than we really wanted to know — about their “continental” breakfasts (that means “doughnuts” to you), about the color scheme of their bedrooms (black and tan for Mom and Dad, burgundy and gold for the boys), about how the councilman has to rent cars all the time because his Mercedes keeps breaking down.
We also learned that the singularly American phenomenon of “cocooning” is alive and well in Cincinnati, after hearing from a half dozen or so neighbors of both the apartment in Oakley and the four-bedroom house the Booths own in Amberley Village — none of whom seemed to have a clue whether the Booths lived in those respective locations or not.
As unseemly as this spectacle turned out to be, it was rather important to sort out just where Mr. Booth lives before placing him on the ballot as a candidate for Cincinnati City Council.
It doesn't seem to bother many city voters that a considerable number of their council candidates are financed by people who rest their heads on pillows in Indian Hill and Madeira every night. They would like to know, at least, that the candidate is a city resident.
But it was up to the Republican Party in Hamilton County to raise this issue, filing a challenge to Mr. Booth's candidacy saying that, after being appointed to council last December, he had not really changed his address from East Aracoma Drive in Amberley Village to Stonebridge Drive
in Oakley.
They went gunning for Mr. Booth, hoping that a ruling in their favor would keep him off the ballot and open up a third council seat in November's election. Concerned that it would not look good for the Republican Party to go after an African-American member of council — although it is hard to imagine how the GOP could end up getting fewer votes from black voters in Cincinnati than they do now — an African-American party official, Markus Jenkins, actually filed the challenge.
They were hunters; and hunters know this: You are in the woods. You have one bullet in your rifle. You encounter an unfriendly bear. You have one shot. You better not miss.
The GOP scenario was this: The two Democrats on the elections board, Tim Burke and Dan Radford, would vote to put Mr. Booth on the ballot. The two Republicans, former party Chairman Eugene Ruehlmann and current party Chairman H.C. “Buck” Niehoff, would vote to kick him off. Then the issue would go to a Republican, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, to cast the deciding vote.
What happened, though, was that the Republicans overplayed their hand. Republican operatives spent the two weeks leading up to the hearing giving the media the impression that theirs was an airtight case.
They labored mightily in the hearing, but brought forth a mouse. Some documents indicated Mr. Booth and family lived on Aracoma. More documents said Stonebridge. Nothing was clear.
About halfway through the hearing, we noted a sort of scrunched-up look on Mr. Ruehlmann's face, like someone had let loose a very bad smell in the room. “Clean Gene” Ruehlmann is not above a bit of political hardball, but one could see Mr. Ruehlmann did not think this was quite cricket; and he ended up voting with the Democrats, leaving Mr. Niehoff to hold the bag.
Before the hearing, Mr. Booth's chances of getting elected this fall were doubtful, at best. Despite his incumbency, he is not a household name. Walk around Fountain Square some afternoon showing people a photo of Mr. Booth and most will think he does Metabolife infomercials on the UPN network.
But what the Republicans managed to do is make him something of a cause celebre,possibly doing what we thought impossible — making a Cincinnati City Council member into a sympathetic figure.
If we were in Mr. Booth's shoes, we'd be having a big pool party this weekend at the apartment complex.
Howard Wilkinson's
column runs Sundays. Call him at 768-8388 or e-mail at hwilkinson@enquirer.com
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