Cincinnati Vice Mayor Alicia Reece addressed the many controversies that surround her, telling her City Council colleagues Wednesday that a lawsuit against her and her father is “a political attack more than a legal attack.”

        Reading from a two-page statement, she also spoke of personal issues — her mother's recent breast-cancer diagnosis, and allegations she threatened a newspaper columnist who, she said, implied that she had incestuous relations with her father.

Alicia Reece

        “The last several weeks have been difficult ones for me and my family. CityBeat ran a column that, frankly, was so nasty and over-the-top that I should have ignored it,” she said. “I felt my family and I were under attack from a number of directions.”

        The column in question, by CityBeat's Kathy Y. Wilson, questioned the business practices of Ms. Reece's father and chief political adviser, Bond Hill businessman Steven Reece Sr.

        In it, Ms. Wilson wrote that the vice mayor “owes us more than her cross-promotional tactics of pushing her father's business interests. ... I'd rather they play out their Joe and LaToya Jackson scenario on their own time.”

        Ms. Jackson, the singer, has accused her father of incest.

        John Fox, editor of the arts weekly, said the vice mayor threatened him when she came to his office to complain about the column.

        “I have 150 firefighters who will do anything I ask them to do,” Ms. Reece said, according to Mr. Fox. “If you won't convince Kathy Wilson, then I'll send firefighters to convince her.”

        Ms. Reece sent an apology to Mr. Fox on Monday. “I never intended to threaten you, CityBeat, or anyone associated with the paper, and if you construed anything I said that way, I apologize.”

        Mr. Fox replied Wednesday, “I'm not looking for an apology, because my feelings weren't hurt. I'm looking for an explanation of the firefighter comment.”

        Ms. Reece also addressed the federal lawsuit accusing her of trying to get Angela Leisure, the mother of Timothy Thomas, to fire attorney Kenneth L. Lawson by pushing a low-ball settlement of her wrongful-death lawsuit. Mr. Thomas's death sparked the April 2001 riots.

        Ms. Reece said the suit was in retaliation for her opposition to paying Mr. Lawson's attorney's fees in a racial-profiling lawsuit against the city.

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