Cincinnati Endorsement Compendium

Update (November 15th, 2009): The link below doesn’t seem to be working; so, on the off chance that anyone is still looking for the election results, you can find them here instead.

Update (November 3rd, 2009): A local news station offers running tallies of today’s election results.

If you happen to be a Cincinnati voter, and if you’re planning to vote in this fall’s off-year elections (coming up next month, Tuesday, November 3rd, polling places open from 6:30 a.m to 7:30 p.m.), at least if you’re like me, you’re wondering, How am I supposed to choose among all these candidates I don’t know anything about?  If you occasionally listen to the radio or watch TV or read anything even somewhat related to current events, it’s easy to have an opinion every four years or so about the presidency, etc.  Unfortunately, unless a candidate aggressively mails me multiple fliers about himself (which one of them is doing two of them are doing!), I find it more difficult to form an opinion on Mr. Smith J. Smithson of North Avondale, not only because I’ve never heard of him, but also because the areas of public policy he has “positions” on aren’t things like war and abortion but things like how the city should collect unpaid parking fines and whether the public schools should continue “CGCS benchmarking”, which I’ve also never heard of.

So, to help you and me both, I’ve put together several different organizations’ endorsements in one convenient location (namely, here).  My idea is this:  These other organizations must know more about the candidates and their positions than I do.  (They must.  It wouldn’t be difficult.)  If an organization sounds more or less sympathetic with my point of view, its endorsement should make me relatively more likely to vote for a candidate; if the organization seems antithetical to my views, less likely.  Either way, the endorsement is useful information.

The League of Women Voters (LWV) also has a convenient Web site that will tell you all the candidates and ballot issues that will be on the ballot in your particular locale.  Come to think of it, this could be useful even if you’re not in Cincinnati.

Here’s some of the information they have on the candidates for mayor, and a LWV candidate questionnaire.

Likewise: LWV information on the city-council candidates, and their answers to a questionnaire.

Lastly: LWV information on the school-board candidates, and their answers to a questionnaire.

On any of those LWV pages, click on any candidate’s name for some more information about the candidate, on another page within that LWV Web site.  I’ll try to find the candidates’ own pages and link them to their names below.  (A few candidates don’t have a Web site, as far as I can tell.)  To avoid distracting you with my own point of view, I’ll list the candidates in strictly alphabetical order.  The forms of the names here (inclusion of a middle initial, etc.) are as they appear on the LWV Web site.

And now, without further ado, the endorsements:

For Mayor (choose one)

Mark Mallory Ð A CP E W

Brad Wenstrup ® C F P

  

For City Council (choose nine)

Jeff Berding CP P

Chris Bortz CP E P

Anitra Brockman G

Laketa Cole Ð A E T W

Tony Fischer Ð A CP T W

Kevin Flynn E P

Leslie Ghiz ® CP E P

Greg Harris Ð A CP E T

Nicholas Hollan Ð A E T W

Chris Monzel ® C F P

Amy Murray ® CP (C) P

Roxanne Qualls Ð A CP E T W

Laure Quinlivan Ð A CP E T

Cecil Thomas Ð A E T

LaMarque Ward (C)

Bernadette Watson Ð A T W

Charlie Winburn ® C F P

Wendell Young Ð A T W

George Zamary ® CP (C)

 

For School Board (choose four)

Ceair J. Baggett Ð A T W

John Banner C

Melanie Bates CP

Jason Haap CP G E

Joyce E. Hooks Ð A E T W

Catherine Ingram Ð A CP E T W

Christopher McDowell ® C

Eileen Cooper Reed CP E

Lisa Schare Ð A T W

Mary Welsh Schlueter

Curtis A. Wells

Vanessa White

  

Legend and Sources

Ð endorsed by and/or a member in good standing of the Democratic Party of Hamilton County

® endorsed by and/or a member in good standing of the Republican Party of Hamilton County

G endorsed by the Green Party of Southwest Ohio

A endorsed by the Cincinnati AFL-CIO Labor Council

CP endorsed by CincyPAC (“educating city official candidates and holding them accountable to moving Cincinnati forward, ensuring that the city appeals to young professionals”)

C endorsed (or more ambivalently “liked”, indicated here by parentheses) by COAST (Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending & Taxes)

E endorsed by Equality Cincinnati (“to work for full equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in Greater Cincinnati”)

F endorsed by Family First (“Pro-Life, Pro-Marriage, School Choice, Fiscal Responsibility”)

P endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police

T endorsed by the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers

W endorsed by the Cincinnati Women’s Political Caucus (“dedicated to the eradication of sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, ageism, violence, poverty, discrimination against the disabled and discrimination on the basis of religion, and to ensuring reproductive freedom and freedom of sexual orientation”)

Minor edit (October 27th, 2009): Now with twice the redundant mass mailings!  See first paragraph.

Update (October 28th, 2009): At the suggestion of one of the candidates, I have added CincyPAC (above).  If anyone thinks some other group’s endorsements should be included as well, don’t hesitate to suggest it!

Minor edit (October 29th, 2009): I gave every endorsing organization a unique symbol again.  This way, even if you copy and paste the text somewhere or print it out in black and white, you don’t lose any information.