Female Sexual Perversion and Other Campaign Issues

With just 13 days until Cincinnati voters go to the polls to decide who will sit on the next city council, some noteworthy tidbits about candidates are turning up on the campaign trail, in the blogosphere and elsewhere.

David Crowley: A local political blog, long known for its distortions and outright inaccuracies, reported Tuesday that Crowley, a Democrat, has joined with the mayor's brother, State Rep. Dale Mallory, and local GOP operative Marcus Jenkins to attack council incumbent Jeff Berding and council challenger Charlie Winburn.

In the blogger's conspiracy-laden world, Crowley is supposedly giving campaign money to Mallory and Jenkins to produce two mass mailing pieces that will sharply criticize the records of Berding, a Democrat, and Winburn, a Republican. The blogger says he got the information from his sources inside the Cincinnati Democratic Committee. Sounds juicy, except it's not true.

Rocky Merz, Crowley’s campaign manager, said Tuesday that Crowley’s campaign isn’t planning any such attack pieces and hasn’t given campaign money to anyone.

“Our campaign dollars are going to promote and support David Crowley,” Merz said. “ I don’t know where that item came from, but it’s completely untrue. We would not use our campaign dollars to support or oppose any other campaign.”

Mitch Painter: This first-time candidate, running as an independent, makes his living by buying dilapidated homes in Cincinnati’s University Heights and Clifton neighborhoods and renovating them. It’s somewhat surprising, then, that business owners in those same areas are complaining about Painter’s latest campaign tactics.

Either Painter or someone with his campaign has plastered numerous “Vote for Painter” stickers on the windows of businesses and newly constructed vacant storefronts along Calhoun Street near the University of Cincinnati, as well as on nearby newspaper boxes and telephone poles, in an appeal to college-age voters. In one case, the person even began sticking them on beer glasses while drinking at the new BW3 restaurant on Calhoun.

Despite being a dubious campaign tactic (most college-age voters are registered in their hometowns, and the stickers were put up after the deadline for local voter registration had passed), business owners said the stickers are an eyesore and will have to be painstakingly scraped off the storefront windows. Meanwhile, bartenders at BW3 threw into the trash the glasses that contained the unapproved campaign pitch.

Leslie Ghiz: In what some observers are calling a shameful display of a short-sighted turf war, Cincinnati’s police union is opposing a proposed Hamilton County sales tax increase solely because part of the money generated would be used to continue patrols by the county sheriff’s deputies in the city’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Business owners and city council members credit the patrols for helping spark a dramatic reduction in Over-the-Rhine’s crime rate during the past year.

Ghiz, a Republican incumbent who pegs herself as an adamant “pro-police” candidate, is careful not to publicly criticize the Fraternal Order of Police for its stance. When I was a media panelist at a candidate forum earlier this month at The Greenwich in Walnut Hills, I asked Ghiz if she were disappointed with the FOP’s stated reasoning.

Ghiz sidestepped the question, saying, “The sheriff’s patrols have done wonders in Over-the-Rhine. … It’s no reflection on our police department. We only have so many police officers. Our police department is simply overworked.”

Minette Cooper: Some critics have questioned why this former councilwoman, a Democrat, is seeking a return to City Hall, alleging her primary motivation is to serve enough time to qualify for health insurance that’s provided to public-sector employees after they retire.

Cooper, a Democrat who is a former schoolteacher, didn’t help dispel those doubts last weekend during an appearance on WKRC-TV’s Newsmakers program. In one of several vague and disjointed responses to host Dan Hurley’s questions, Cooper gave this gem when asked what she would do about Cincinnati’s crime rate, if elected: “I believe in the programs they have. I’m not bringing anything special.”

The response begs the question about why Cooper should be elected if she’s not contributing anything that’s not already present on council. Perhaps her new campaign manager, Miles Lindahl, needs to take more time coaching Cooper before TV appearances.

Justin Jeffre: What’s fair comment on a public issue and what’s simply pettiness has been discussed in political circles about one of Jeffre’s many contributions to the Cincinnati Beacon Web site. In an item he posted this summer, Jeffre, endorsed by the Green Party, used 457 words to criticize Deskey, a local marketing firm, for the advertising campaign it developed for Children’s Pepto, an antacid for kids.

In the item, which seemed strangely off-topic compared to most of what’s covered on the Beacon, Jeffre criticized Deskey and Children’s Pepto from not distinguishing the product enough from Pepto-Bismol for adults. Jeffre introduced the topic of Pepto’s possible connection to Reye’s Syndrome and the adverse effects that bismuth salicylate-containing products might have on children younger than 12.

Jeffre quoted from a 2005 press release issued by Deskey employee Amanda Matusak that described, as he put it, Matusak’s excitement for “her style of studying children to better sell them products.”

Later in the item, Jeffre noted that Children’s Pepto doesn’t even contain bismuth salicylate. Still, Jeffre told readers, “While the kids’ Pepto does not contain this potentially life-threatening ingredient, branding confusion brought to us by strategists like Amanda Matusak could cause some parents not to understand the difference.” Nowhere in the item does Jeffre take aim at Procter & Gamble, Pepto’s manufacturer and who hired Deskey.

As luck would have, Jeffre was taken to task just days earlier on some local blogs for his investments in Wal-Mart, Viacom and General Electric by a blogger who happened to be Greg Matusak, Amanda’s husband. Greg, a frequent worker on local Democratic campaigns, had criticized Jeffre for railing against those corporations publicly while continuing to profit off them privately. Was the timing of Jeffre’s item on Pepto coincidental? That’s for voters to decide.

Charlie Winburn: This former councilman, a Republican, is poll-obsessed, as any local reporter who’s covered him can tell you. But even media types are taken aback by Winburn’s insistence that his “private polls” show Republican Sam Malone and Charterite Melanie Bates winning seats on city council — in addition to himself, of course.

With no open seats on the nine-member council, that means three incumbents would have to lose on Nov. 6 and a surge of voters would have to select Malone and Bates, an event that appears unlikely, given the disorganized nature of the pair’s campaigns.

Winburn, though, is a man of faith. As a preacher at his College Hill church, he’s performed exorcisms in which he’s allegedly purged demons from possessed people and then — conveniently — produced photocopied bio sheets describing the individual demon he just cast out. (Did you know, for example, that Malakos is a demon that is an “ancient spirit of female sexual perversion”? We convey that information to you as a public service here at CityBeat.)

Maybe Winburn’s connection to God has given him special knowledge about a Truman-esque election upset that will happen. I’m praying for similar guidance and insight.

— Kevin Osborne

Comments

[The Dean of Cincinnati]

Who is Greg Matusak? How do you know he was leaving comments on the blog? I can't find that name anywhere!

[Caleb]

What a great crew we have running for council this year. Are these clowns the best this city can produce?

[Fathead Jenkins]

Dale Mallory and Markus Jenkins have been involved in many scams in the past, so Nate's blog piece was plausable.
Examples include Jenkin's "asset mapping" scam with Dale at the Cincinnati Empowerment Corp. Kevin....you have their invoices. Look them up.
Other scams include Dale's lawsuit to try to get his WECC job back after he was impeached and removed from office. Jenkins was Dale's co-plaintif and lied when he swore that he lived at Dale's boarded up 925 Dayton Street.
To top it off.....Nate submitted the suit to Judge Davis because drugged out Kenny Lawson was indisposed. All of these players committed a crime when they filed this obviously false legal document.
Kevin, all the players mentioned are the kings of dirty tricks.
Who knows Nate's motivations?
Did the Mallorys stop paying him to spead his venom?
Nate has worked to trash all Mallory foes in the past. What's behind this twisted tale?????

[JFD]

Mitch Painter also has problems with respecting our public right of ways. He illegally advertises his business with his WE BUY HOUSES signs all over our city. If elected does he intend to put a sign up on City Hall?

[Not the Mamma Cass!]

great stuff, Kevin!

Democrats disgraced themselves by endorsing Cooper. In addition to her sole motivation being publicly-funded health care for life, I suspect Dwight Tillery needs her there to help vote in that $300,000 Dwight Tillery Income Disparity Study this council wouldn't pass for his Closing the Dwight Tillery Income Gap Initiative, and she makes Laketa Cole, another philly in Dwight's stable, sound intelligent by comparison.

[MARKUZ]

There is no conspiracy, Winburn cooked this up so that when I moved to take him out for all the dirt he’s done to other Republicans, fools would think it’s a big conspiracy and he couldn’t be taken out by one person. Look at the politicians listed, anyone one of them could beat Winburn in a one on one race. These are the same deceptive tactics Winburn uses when he pays for polls that show him winning.
What people should be concerned about is Domestic Violence against WOMEN. Rev. Winburn stated “Men should train women”. When it was brought to light that Sam Malone, (a high ranking member of the encampment) had chocked, beat, and verbally abused his mother, WINBURN publically defended Sam Malone. Most did not concern themselves with Sam’s incident with his son; it’s the woman beating and domination that appears to be promoted at the ENCAMPMENT, which now concerns most citizens of Cincinnati. For more go to www.lowdownwinburn.com.
Markuz Jenkins

[Daywalker]

Why do you spell your name "Markuz" as opposed to "Marcus?" Has it got anything to do with the fact that you are driving under a DUI indictment and you don't want to use the correct spelling of your name for fear of getting caught? Just a thought.