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Photo By Jymi Bolden
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Roxanne Qualls says she’s finished with elective
politics.
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In post-riot Cincinnati, many people's thoughts turned to its former mayor, asking, "What's Roxanne doing?"
Former Cincinnati Mayor Roxanne Qualls has been purposely quiet since she left City Hall two years ago due to term limits. She's been busy, but she also wants to avoid armchair quarterbacking.
Qualls, who spent eight years on city council, including six as mayor, left in late 1999 to lecture at a seminar on politics at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Then came a second seminar.
At the same time, her application for a one-year fellowship in Harvard's Graduate School of Design came through, and she began taking classes in leadership as well as foundation classes in statistics, economics and other subjects. All this will lead to a master's degree in public administration by June.
In return for the fellowship, Qualls must perform three years of public service -- broadly defined as any work outside the private sector. She expects this will be the end of her studies.
"I think it's time to get a paycheck," she says. "I think I've kind of played out my savings."
While Qualls was in town last week for a holiday break, she made something abundantly clear.
"I do not have any intention of returning to Cincinnati to run for office," she says.
Nor does she have an eye on political races in other cities. Qualls considers politics a closed chapter in her adult life, which began by studying history at Thomas Moore College and studying planning and urban design at the University of Cincinnati.
After about three years split between the two schools, she took a job with a rape crisis center in Northern Kentucky, then with Women Helping Women, which counsels domestic violence victims. Her last job before joining city council was as Cincinnati office director for Ohio Citizen Action, a non-profit political watchdog group.
"I basically viewed running for office as an extension of the work I had been doing," Qualls says.
Her sole political defeat came at the hands of U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Cincinnati) in the 1998 race for his seat. What did she learn in eight years on city council?
"I learned just how complicated and difficult effecting real systemic change is," Qualls says.
In order to have meaningful change, she says, an officeholder has to understand systems and where the levers or power are.
"I think that's (Mayor Charlie Luken's) challenge now," Qualls says.
She says she thinks Luken's up to the task.
Forgetting our history
People pay too much attention to little decisions, such as adding 75 officers to the Cincinnati Police Division, without considering the background, according to Qualls.
For example, Cincinnati is living with the results of a 1970s police hiring freeze, a 1990s policy of two police recruit classes a year and the fact that many police officers don't live in the neighborhoods they patrol. The result? The city has a less experienced police force, with some officers who don't feel at home where they work.
Near the end of her last council term, Qualls spoke to a number of groups about the biggest problem facing the region -- race relations. The suburbs can't continue to believe the issue ends at the city limits, she says.
Qualls breaks the problem into three parts: an inability to talk constructively about race relations, an inability to face the history of racism in the Tristate and an inability to come up with meaningful solutions.
"You can't have a real dialogue on these issues if you don't know the past," she says.
She gives more examples. Coney Island wasn't fully integrated until 1961. In 1957, when it became clear Theodore M. Berry had the support to become the city's first black mayor, the Republican Party supported ending proportional representation on council.
Racial problems aren't unique to Cincinnati. Mayors and former mayors from other cities have told Qualls they feel lucky riots didn't break out in their cities.
"No one around the country thinks they are holier than thou," she says.
On the other hand, the Tristate has some of the worst qualities of northern and southern cities, she says. The region is the eighth most segregated in the United States and, it has some of the patronizing attitudes southern cities have.
When race relations and police/ community relations boil over into violence, as in April, Tristate residents tend to focus on the violence and bad publicity instead of what led to the violence, Qualls says.
Qualls learned about the riots through e-mail. In April, she received a few letters ending with words to the effect of, "Aren't you glad you're not in Cincinnati?" Wondering what that meant, she turned on the TV and read the newspapers.
Qualls says she wasn't surprised by the riots. Tension was mounting. There had been a few questionable shootings of unarmed black men by Cincinnati Police during and after her tenure -- although they don't justify the type of violence that happened in April, she says.
Qualls believes the police generally do a good job but says the police division doesn't get the level of scrutiny citizens expect any public institution to receive.
She was dismayed, but not surprised, when she heard Luken was taking over responsibility for hiring and firing members of the Citizens Police Review Panel. Keith Borders, the panel's chair, quit within weeks of the decision.
"From my perspective, people just don't get it," Qualls says. "When you undermine the medium, you can't stand in front of the general community and be believed as speaking the truth."
The panel's powers have been limited ever since council created it in 1998, after three years of negotiations. Council did not give the panel subpoena power. Qualls believes the panel should be able to call witnesses as other public bodies do.
But Qualls' hands are free of these decisions now, and she worries about how her words will sound. She doesn't want to come off as a second-guesser when she isn't directly responsible for making these decisions.
After she graduates, Qualls might work for the United Nations, a non-profit organization or a foundation. It's very much up in the air.
"My priority is to find a career that allows me to use the skills I have to make a difference," she says.
Living in Cincinnati isn't out of the picture, but neither is anywhere else. The only thing for certain is a return to politics, which she was so successful at, is not in her plans.
"I view this as my last career," Qualls says. ©
