A former federal prosecutor and assistant district attorney will challenge Republican Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters in 2020.
Cincinnati Democrat Gabe Davis announced today that he is running for the powerful county position. Davis, who graduated from Harvard Law School, served as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan and in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division under President Barack Obama. Currently, Davis is an attorney with Frost Brown Todd downtown.
Davis faces a formidable, but perhaps vulnerable, foe. Deters began his career as an assistant Hamilton County prosecutor in 1982. In 1988 he was elected Hamilton County Clerk of Courts and in 1992 he was appointed to his first stint as Hamilton County prosecutor, a position to which he was reelected in 1996. After serving five years as the Ohio State Treasurer beginning in 1999, Deters was once again elected county prosecutor in 2004. He has won three reelection bids since.
Deters officially launched his reelection campaign May 30 with a fundraiser that drew big-name local Republicans and raised roughly $500,000.
Despite his popularity, Deters has at times drawn ire from Democrats in a county that is growing more and more blue.
Davis says that reforms are necessary around racial and economic disparities in the county justice system. He has blasted Deters for refusing to make some of those reforms on issues like cash bail.
Some Democrats, including Cincinnati City Councilmember P.G. Sittenfeld, have called for an end to cash bail at the county level for those suspected of most nonviolent crimes. Deters, however, says that’s unnecessary. Davis recently penned an op-ed in The Cincinnati Enquirer challenging that assertion.
“When we see an injustice, we don’t stand idly by – we do something,” Davis wrote in a series of tweets today. “Our current Prosecutor claims that Hamilton County doesn’t need judicial reform. He claims things are fine just the way they are. Not only that, but like our current President, he also makes wild statements and is insensitive to the injustices occurring under his watch. With my experience as an attorney, my commitment to justice, and my pride in calling Hamilton County home, I have to say: The time for a new Prosecutor is now.”
This article appears in Jul 17-24, 2019.
