Saturday, October 16, 1999
Columbus mayor's race starts to heat up
Republicans have held office for 28 years
BY JOHN McCARTHY
The Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The mayoral race is drawing unusual attention, and not just because it will give the nation's 15th-largest city its first black or first woman mayor.
The fact that there's a real race at all is news in a city where Republicans have held the office for 28 consecutive years. If Republican Dorothy Teater wins on Nov. 2, it will continue a GOP tradition dating to 1971.
If Democrat Michael Coleman wins, his party could control the government of a capital city where Republicans hold all the statewide nonjudicial offices. Democrats already have six of seven seats on the Columbus City Council and are likely to keep a majority with four seats up for election.
“The big thing is the diversity issue, a black man against a white woman. There's never been a woman run before,” Ms. Teater said Thursday when asked what the city's 670,000 residents would remember most about the campaign.
Ms. Teater, 68, a Franklin County commissioner, and Mr. Coleman, 44, the City Council president, emerged as the top two finishers in the May 5 nonpartisan primary.
Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in Columbus, but thanks to a large number of independent voters, the Democrats have come close only once in the past 16 years to winning the mayor's office. In 1987, they failed to even field a candidate.
Mr. Coleman, however, is given a good shot. A mail poll conducted by the Columbus Dispatch from Sept. 24-Oct. 1 found that 47 percent of the respondents favored Mr. Coleman and 40 percent supported Ms. Teater, with 13 percent undecided. The random sample of 2,649 registered city voters had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
The closeness of the race, and a general lack of high-profile races in Ohio and across the nation, led the state and national political parties to make the campaign a priority.
Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson appeared at a fund-raiser for Teater in September, while Democratic National Chairman Joe Andrew has been in town twice for Mr. Coleman.
Each candidate expects to spend at least $1 million, the bulk of it for advertising down the stretch.
Ms. Teater's television advertising has been typical of candidates who are playing catch-up late in the race: focus on the opponent and make it negative.
The first ad criticized Mr. Coleman for voting to give pay raises to Police Chief James Jackson, who has been criticized and suspended by Mayor Greg Lashutka, but has civil service protection.
Under Chief Jackson, too many officers are behind desks and not on the streets, and the community is fed up with slow response times to crimes, Ms. Teater said. Mr. Coleman isn't crazy about Chief Jackson either, but he said the mayor has no choice but to coexist with the chief.
“It's very important to keep poli tics out of the Division of Police,” Mr. Coleman said Friday.
One of the few other issues sharply dividing the candidates is a plan to use property tax generated by a planned suburban mall to finance road work and other improvements for that area. Ms. Teater supports a ballot issue to repeal what she considers a tax break for a wealthy developer that would devastate an older mall closer to the center of Columbus. Mr. Coleman says the city must keep its promise on the tax deal.
Before they got into politics, Mr. Coleman was a lawyer and Ms. Teater was a teacher in high school, college and adult education. She worked in consumer affairs for a bank and the city, and did not run for office until her four sons were grown.
She won a City Council seat in 1980 and her first race for county commissioner in 1984. She was re-elected three times.
“She spent a lot of years on consensus-building,” said Ohio House Speaker Jo Ann Davidson, a fellow Republican and a friend of Ms. Teater since the '70s. “She had to learn to work under those group dynamics. Those are very good talents.”
Mr. Coleman, as the council president, must summon many of the same talents, said fellow council member Maryellen O'Shaughnessy, a Democrat who's known Mr. Coleman since 1991, when he was first elected. She said his deliberateness has been known to cause stress.
“His decision-making process is sometimes — at least in my book — infuriatingly slow,” Ms. O'Shaughnessy said with a laugh. “It might drive you crazy, but once he makes a decision, you know it's his decision.”
Ms. Coleman said he sees the election as a great opportunity for whoever wins.
“I do believe we live in a good city. But at the same time, we've got a lot of work to make the city a better city.”
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