It’s time to start thinking about city council elections. No, seriously.
With 17 months to go before the next council is sworn in, should we start the noisy, expensive, sometimes even divisive squabble called a Cincinnati City Council campaign? Well, yeah.
It’s all about a word and a number. It’s all about Issue 6. It’s all about a new opportunity that could change the game, change the players, change Cincinnati. And in the end, it’s all about the money.
Remember Issue 6? It didn’t pass on election night 2001.
But a few weeks later, after some additional ballots were counted, the citizens’ initiative allowing for publicly funded city council elections won without much fanfare or analysis. But it won.
With that victory came our only chance of breaking the corporate oligarchy’s grip on Cincinnati.
It’s like this. If a city council candidate raises up to about $50,000 in relatively small amounts, he or she can get matching tax money on a two-for-one basis up to about $150,000. And trust me, a city council campaign with a $150,000 budget is one that can and usually does win one of the nine seats.
Of course the Pat DeWines and Chris Monzels of the world will never use the Issue 6 provisions. They’ll even decry its use. But then they’ll go out and get even larger piles of dollars from their corporate buddies to counter populist candidates who take Issue 6 funding.
But any political operative with a car trunk full of old yard signs knows there’s a saturation point in political expenditures, a point where more money won’t move any more votes.
If an African-American activist using Issue 6 now has enough money to run, say, $100,000 in television ads and DeWine dumps another $300,000 into his TV buy in response, it could be like pouring 300,000 gallons of water into a flood that has already washed away the neighborhood. It just doesn’t matter. Hell, ask Phil Heimlich, who saw his record-breaking, opulent 1999 city council campaign actually lower his position among the nine elected — instead of catapulting him to No. 1.
The fact is Issue 6 has the chance of changing the face of city council politics just as the visionaries who put it on the ballot intended. Spend not a minute wondering whether voters in understood it or grasped what it will cost them in tax money — hardly anything — or whether they’ll really like its outcome. It’s here.
But do keep an eye peeled over your shoulder. Like anything that can shift the political power equation — the big money boys never share their power with the little people without a fight — there could be a last gasp to stop Issue 6 before a little man or woman ever gets to try it out.
In December a rumor had it that the Republican business community was looking for a known Democrat to join Pat DeWine in leading the repeal of Issue 6. The concept was that if this Democrat helped the Republicans win the repeal, he would be handsomely rewarded with Republican money in future elections.
So far no such public pitch has surfaced, but it’s not hard to figure out why Republicans and their corporate sugar daddies abhor publicly financed city council elections.
The one advantage Republicans have in Cincinnati campaigns is their huge mountain of cash. They certainly don’t have the issues on their side. Trimming cell phone use by city bureaucrats and making sure no city employee can get abortions don’t exactly scream a New Millennium vision.
But if a couple of Republicans can control the media while more populist candidates wave signs along the streets, they think they can stay alive in Cincinnati politics on name recognition alone.
If a more resonant message begins saturating the airwaves during the last few months of a city council election, fewer Republicans will get elected, if you can imagine that; and the one or few who do win will fall even closer to the bottom of the field.
If you’re a lesser-known Democrat, Charterite or independent candidate, can you actually get the $150,000 to make a serious run? Absolutely.
Look: Many contributors hold back money from people they know don’t really have the bucks to win against people with gigantic television buys. To them, it’s like handing two aspirin to someone dying of terminal cancer. Why waste the aspirin?
But now they know that by helping you reach $50,000, you’ll become a real campaign player sitting on $150,000. That makes giving to you sensible.
Without a doubt, if Issue 6 had been in play last council election and 10th place finisher Lakita Cole had used it to its maximum level, she would have won a seat on council.
Issue 6 will help level the playing field regardless of party lines. For example, if you look at contributions in the last council campaign, African-American candidates as a group lagged far behind white candidates regardless of whether they were Democrats, Charterites, Republicans or independents.
Did blacks approach white donors? Of course. Can the black community match Caucasians in economic political resources? No. Only Issue 6 will fix this divide.
But why start the talk of this now, so early? More than a handful of Cincinnatians could raise that $50,000 and get it tripled and go on TV and radio, send mail into homes and blanket the city with yard signs. That’s what that kind of money can get you in a campaign.
But if you really want to affect the philosophy of city council, if you really want to get voices to the place where they’ve been hard to hear, then narrow the number of people who are going to make the run, fund them well with Issue 6 and blow the political top off this town.
PUTTIN’ OUT THE BONE appears monthly.
This article appears in May 29 – Jun 4, 2002.