Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I have noticed, both on this forum and in person, that there is a lot of dislike for mayor Cranley from the left end of the democratic party in Cincinnati. During his campaign I may have agreed with many of his critics, but my opinion now is that he is the best mayor the city has had since I was old enough to vote. Here are some of the experiences that have won me over.
1- I have two close friends who are lawyers who work downtown, one of them in city hall. One of them is a die hard liberal and the other is in deep right field. The only politics they agree on is that the current leadership is more smart, efficient, and has the best working relationship than any in recent memory. While still highly critical of certain council members and politics, they agreed that this council was able to disagree on key issues yet still work together, a trait that previous councils lacked and caused them to fail miserably.
2- Now that I am married to a woman with west side heritage, I find myself in Price Hill and Sayler Park a lot more frequently. The mood of slow decline has been replaced with a cautious optimism on the street, and the business climate seems to be improving quite a bit as well. For an area of the city that has suffered quite a bit the last few decades, it is refreshing to see investment and revitalization moving eastward down the hill rather than westward into old cow pastures off of I-74.
3- I had the opportunity to speak with him briefly in a non-political setting recently and I found him likable and practical, with an ego a tiny fraction of the previous mayor, Mallory.
4- As someone who is expected to do service myself, I am incredibly impressed with his service record before becoming mayor. From his highly relevant work with the Ohio innocence project to his seat on the board of a charity that I support, I think that he did a great job helping an incredibly diverse demographic swath of the region.
I am not a resident of Cincinnati, so I won't be voting in the 2017 election unless I happen to move, which is a possibility since my wife is currently in love with Columbia-Tusculum. Still, I am in the CPS school district and I work in the city, so I'll be paying attention to it. Any thoughts that Cranley will be anything but a prohibitive favorite are merely wishful thinking by his opponents. He has support from wide regions of the electorate, rich and poor, old and young, black and white, and he will be able to raise more corporate donations than any mayor in history. No promising candidates on the left or right will want to run against him because a double digit loss margin could torpedo their own career.
He remains sort of vaguely embarrassing to me, although it is difficult to pinpoint why. I think it is because I believe a mayor of a relatively large City should be more of a statesman, someone who fits the City into the larger national context. He feels more like someone who pushed the ship's captain overboard only to spend his time fooling around in the boiler room.
I have heard the exact opposite of your first point. I guess we don't have the same source!
I can't stand the guy. Giant ego. He's a cry baby who throws fits when it's not going his way. His continuous assault on the streetcar is disgusting. He needs to man up and do everything he can to make it a huge success. Instead, he sits and pouts and complains. I do not know a single Democrat other than him in this country who is against public transit.
Cranley might have grown up on the west side and he owns some buildings at the Incline but he lives in Mt Lookout.
Thankfully the 5 Democrats on council and from time to time Kevin Flynn can stop Cranley's non-sense.
Luckily, Yvette should win if she chooses to run against him.
Last edited by cincydave8; 05-11-2015 at 12:56 PM..
I'm a big fan of Cranley. I didn't think I'd like him but he's actually grown on me. I'm glad we have a Mayor who is now willing to branch out and pay attention to neighborhoods that have for decades been completely ignored by City Hall. The way I see it, as long as Simpson isn't our mayor there will be hope for the "entire" city.
For a person who help negotiate a Cincinnati company to move to neighboring suburb. I have no idea who he got elected in the first place. Always drama when his name is mentioned.
Within legal reason, I WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO GET MAYOR CRANELY NOT ONLY OUT OF THE MAYOR'S OFFICE NEXT ELECTION, BUT OUT OF POLITICS ALTOGETHER!!!
That man is is a microcosm of not only what is wrong with politics in Cincinnati, but what is wrong with politics in the USA.
Narcissism and revenge have no place in politics.
He is the ONLY politician I have ever witnessed that does not have an agenda beyond himself.
He does not care about Cincinnati.
He does not care about people in the east side, or west side, or downtown, or anywhere.
He does not care about the city of Cincinnati progressing through the 21st century in a better position than it was in the 20th.
He does not have any sense of responsibility or ethics.
In short, he is a disgrace to the City of Cincinnati, the State of Ohio, and our nation.
He needs to be in a different field. Preferably not one where leadership is required.
I respect the ability to have ideas and have an agenda that solves problems. He has neither.
His only agenda revolves around his own head and his own needs.
He is the definition of a narcissist.
Because of this, here is what I personally will do.
I will donate as much money as I can financially withstand to his opponent.
I will come to Cincinnati and campaign on behalf of his opponent.
I will spread the word of his misdoings and misgivings through whatever channels I can.
I will solicit national support against his agenda from any group willing to listen.
And I Will do whatever it takes to not only get him out of office, but keep him out of office too. I'll even campaign on behalf of his opponent against him for the smallest possible positions imaginable.
His breed of politics has no place in Cincinnati, no place in Ohio, and no place in our nation.
United we stand, divided we fall.
And I'm not about to get behind an egotistical agenda.
There is decades of management and leadership research characterizing Cranley's leadership style and exactly how it destroys an organization. If I have time after Thursday I'll pull some of it up.
Basically, we can either keep pace or we can become Detroit.
Narcissistic and fear driven politics largely destroyed Detriot, and that could just as easily happen in Cincinnati too.
The effects of a leader's policies are normally not felt until a couple years after they are gone. Right now we are still riding the Mallory wave. I live in fear of the long-term effects of the Cran the Man Tart's agenda.
He needs to be voted out.
Within legal reason, I WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO GET MAYOR CRANELY NOT ONLY OUT OF THE MAYOR'S OFFICE NEXT ELECTION, BUT OUT OF POLITICS ALTOGETHER!!!
That man is is a microcosm of not only what is wrong with politics in Cincinnati, but what is wrong with politics in the USA.
Narcissism and revenge have no place in politics.
He is the ONLY politician I have ever witnessed that does not have an agenda beyond himself.
He does not care about Cincinnati.
He does not care about people in the east side, or west side, or downtown, or anywhere.
He does not care about the city of Cincinnati progressing through the 21st century in a better position than it was in the 20th.
He does not have any sense of responsibility or ethics.
In short, he is a disgrace to the City of Cincinnati, the State of Ohio, and our nation.
He needs to be in a different field. Preferably not one where leadership is required.
I respect the ability to have ideas and have an agenda that solves problems. He has neither.
His only agenda revolves around his own head and his own needs.
He is the definition of a narcissist.
Because of this, here is what I personally will do.
I will donate as much money as I can financially withstand to his opponent.
I will come to Cincinnati and campaign on behalf of his opponent.
I will spread the word of his misdoings and misgivings through whatever channels I can.
I will solicit national support against his agenda from any group willing to listen.
And I Will do whatever it takes to not only get him out of office, but keep him out of office too. I'll even campaign on behalf of his opponent against him for the smallest possible positions imaginable.
His breed of politics has no place in Cincinnati, no place in Ohio, and no place in our nation.
United we stand, divided we fall.
And I'm not about to get behind an egotistical agenda.
There is decades of management and leadership research characterizing Cranley's leadership style and exactly how it destroys an organization. If I have time after Thursday I'll pull some of it up.
Basically, we can either keep pace or we can become Detroit.
Narcissistic and fear driven politics largely destroyed Detriot, and that could just as easily happen in Cincinnati too.
The effects of a leader's policies are normally not felt until a couple years after they are gone. Right now we are still riding the Mallory wave. I live in fear of the long-term effects of the Cran the Man Tart's agenda.
He needs to be voted out.
Since I'm not a resident of the city, I can't say I've followed the Mayor more than what's on the evening news. Some of the things he's done, I've liked. He seems less of a showman than Mallory, but having experienced the showman of all showmen (Kilpatrick, in Detroit, now in Prison) - personally I think a less flashy work horse is better than a show pony.
As far as your feelings on him, well - to be honest - that level of extremism (in any form) usually makes me want to hear the OTHER guy's side to get a non-biased view. So I'm not sure that level of hyperbole is going to be useful to you as a tactic. Though, I may just be more skeptical by nature than most.
If you can't tell, I'm really not much of an extremist either, normally. 99.9% of stuff im fairly chill about. This I'm not.
But yeah, I encourage you to listen to what he has to say, his reasoning behind his actions, and his side of the story. Then come back and I can tell you (and others) more. No point in discussing this with someone who has no background on the issues.
Basically, there hasn't been a thing on his agenda outside of these categories below:
1. Personal revenge against losing the streetcar battle
2. Personal revenge against his political opponents, both on council and outside of it
3. Initiatives no one asked for, undertaken only to make himself "look good"
(and really only his Drunk-Driving Biergarden in Mt. Airy and the $50 million ramp to nowhere out by Cincy State the City is paying for fall in this category)
4. Taking credit for the previous administration's work (The 84.51 Center today)
5. Inciting fear and unnecessary divisions via whatever media channels he can access (700 WLW)
6. Crancelling stuff
I think Cranley would be quite a bit more effective if he more proactively courted consensus rather than controversy. I just read an op-ed he wrote on WCPO, where he refers to the parking plan he vetoed as "reckless". I think it is that kind of bombastic and antagonistic behavior that rubs me the wrong way. In no way was that plan "reckless", it was just a plan he disagreed with. He could have left it at that, "I disagree with this plan, because I don't believe it is an effective means to regulate parking in the area". That would have been a far more reasonable response, but he felt a need to demonize the efforts of his opponents. They aren't just opposed, they're reckless. We as a society should try to move past this us vs. them mentality that is so contrary to good governance and kind communities. The mayor should be a paragon, not a pariah. I fear that is what he is portraying to those like me, who have valid concerns regarding his vision for Cincinnati.
As someone who now lives out of town, it seems like he wastes alot of public resources for grandstanding. As others have mentioned, he seems to bring negative controversy to everything. Part of a mayor's job is to talk up the city and make it seem like a place people from out of the area will want to visit and perhaps relocate to. If I were looking into Cincinnati for the first time today, any article that this mayor has been quoted or cited in would make make me less likely to move to the area. I really don't think he has done anything but hurt the regions reputation nationally.
That being said, it's very interesting to read first post on this thread. Hopefully things are running efficiently inside the Council itself.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
