John Cranley Appoints Top Donor Manuel Chavez III to Port Authority Board

Once again, campaign donations can be tied to John Cranley's actions as Mayor. The Cincinnati Business Courier has the story outlining how Cranley appointed his top donor Manuel Chavez III to the board of the Port Authority.

Cronyism is taking shape and Coranley is flaunting it now.  I guess he thinks the stereotypical low information Trump voter will stick with him. One might conclude he already has the Saylor Park vote sowed up.

Charlie, What's in the Box?

I know you were thinking about this when the stories (Enquirer & Business Courier) broke yesterday about Charlie Winburn's boxes that were sized by the FBI.

What was in them?  Turns out it was a whole lot of Charlie's angst towards Mayor John Cranley and his staff.

Updated List of Current Cincinnati Council Candidates

Here is an updated list of candidates. The GOP still only has two officially named candidates, 1 reported candidate and Smitherman, so they are far from even pretending to get a majority on council.  If everyone on this list runs for office, that will make 25. That is not a record.  It would be a record low for Republicans.


Incumbents:
P.G. Sittenfeld
David Mann
Chris Seelbach
Christopher Smitherman
Wendell Young
Amy Murray

Returning Candidates:
Laure Quinlivan
Greg Landsman
Michelle Dillingham
Brian Garry
Theo Barnes

New Candidates
Ozie Davis III
Kelli Prather
Tamaya Dennard
Tamie Sullivan
Cristina Burcica
Jeff Pastor
Derek Bauman
Cedrick Denson
Tonya Dumas
Henry Frondorf
Manual Foggie
Leslie Jones
Beverly Odoms
Orlando Welborn

If anyone has any other names please send them my way (cincyblog@aol.com) or if anyone named above wants to confirm they are not running, I'll remove them future postings of this list.

Cranley Reportedly to Name His Campaign Treasurer to SORTA Board Seat

Helen "Heidi" Black is being reported by the Enquirer to be John Cranley's next pick for the SORTA Board.

Who is Helen "Heidi" Black, you may ask? Well in the Enquirer article you get a nice bio of a professional who they state is the wife of Cranley's campaign manager, Jay Kincaid. That makes this a controversial pick. It makes this appointment a political favor. It is political cronyism. If anyone else appointed the spouse of their campaign manager, this would have been a banner Enquirer headline with editorials on how ethics matter and the appearance of cronyism is horrible for our political system.  More over the Enquirer would call for Cranley to appoint someone else.

Instead we get an article more puff piece than political story. It has a quote from Cranley in it as if someone in his campaign issued a press release on this. It's like Cranley is knowlingly picking a crony for a political appointment and does not care he is doing it.  It's like he thinks his Trump or something.

What lacking in the article and to this whole story are two things. Firstly it names the appointee as Heidi Black instead of her legal name Helen Black. Secondly it fails to mention one MAJOR element as this screenshot illustrates:

In case you can't read the graphic it states "Paid for by John Cranley for Mayor, Helen Black Treasurer."  This is from the bottom of the front page of John Cranley's campaign website.

Yes, Helen "Heidi" Black is the Treasurer for John Cranley's Mayoral campaign. He's about to appoint a member of his ACTIVE CAMPAIGN STAFF, to a board that governs the Streetcar operation and Metro. Cronyism run amok!

Oh and thanks to the Inquirer who didn't report this fact in their article. Thorough reporting there. Helen also ran for the 17-B seat on the Democratic Central Committee in March of last year, but lost. They didn't report that, either.

Finally, how do I know Helen is Heidi?  A public records search is sufficient to confirm and it's not any type of secret, it was just omitted from this Enquirer article for some reason.