Nate Livingston is a smart man with a talk-radio talent for making the ridiculous sound reasonable. He's running for city council on rhetoric that's as smooth and shock-proof as new Nikes, and he's good at it.

        Listening to him, you can almost forget that this is the guy who once urged radio listeners to “kill the prosecutor.” The one who did time in the slammer for drowning out the mayor on Fountain Square with a bullhorn.

        Mr. Livingston has made his name as a semi-professional protester out on the ragged edge where free speech meets
the smell of smoke in a crowded theater.

        But that was then. This is now: “I don't think we should tolerate people who are disrupting meetings,” he said.

        The New Nate shakes his head about “lack of respect on both sides.” He complains that “people have pigeon-holed me into a one-dimensional cartoon — I'm mad, I'm protesting, I'm anti-police.”

        And if he is somehow elected, “I'm going to have to change to be an insider,” he says with the kind of smile that sold a beanstalk to Jack.

        Tom Jones is running for council, too. Both men are black. Both are long shots. Both are “outsiders.” But they are as far apart as bin Laden and Bush. The cities they live in are not even on the same map.

        Mr. Livingston has a criminal record; Mr. Jones has been shot at while fighting crime as founder of the Avondale Public Safety Task Force.

        Mr. Livingston represents himself; Mr. Jones has represented thousands as president of Avondale Community Council.

        Mr. Livingston says the police target black men; Mr. Jones says the plague in poor neighborhoods is criminals, not cops.

        Mr. Livingston is a radio talker; Mr. Jones is a neighborhood walker.

        “It seems like the direction this city is beginning to go in is leaning toward the pressure groups that took over City Hall (in April),” Mr. Jones warns.

        He says the “self-appointed, so-called leaders” of the black community try to squelch his views. Such as:

        • “My problem in Cincinnati is not caused by white people. Period. It's caused by my own people, and a lot of people can relate to that.”

        • “We need a more aggressive police department. Criminal activity is what's keeping this city from moving forward . . . But for some diehards, everything a police officer does is brutality, every arrest is racial profiling. And that handcuffs a police department.”

        • “You have a very large, quiet majority but they don't come forward unless someone steps out there. Cincinnati is going to hell in a hand-basket, and somebody needs to stand up and say it without fear of who's going to put a foot on your neck.”

        Mr. Jones is volunteering.

        He has been called a “sell-out,” and worse, for contradicting the dogma of victimology that wags its tail behind nearly every demand and solution to race problems.

        But if he's right, there's a voice that is not being heard and it's talking about personal responsibility. If he's right, this is not just a black vs. white contest for mayor — it's also a struggle within the black community between loud protesters who ride the riot tiger and a quiet majority who are sick of crime and want safer neighborhoods.

        There are many good candidates in this race. There are also a few whose experience in local government comes mainly from disrupting meetings and shouting insults at the council they hope to join. Anyone who thinks City Hall can't possibly get any worse should think again.

        Neither Mr. Livingston nor Mr. Jones is likely to win a council seat. But the way the two men finish could tell us a lot about which way our city is going.

        E-mail: pbronson@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/bronson

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