Saturday at Grammer's: NEIN ON NINE!

Fun Party this Saturday at Grammer's: NEIN ON NINE! all in the effort to defeat Issue 9.

The ville have beear.

Is Cunningham Against Issue 9?

The Phony Coney is reporting that local talk radio host and regular city basher Bill Cunningham is against Issue 9. The Provost links to the podcast with Cunningham's comments. Is this for real? Does Cunningham actually oppose Issue 9? This isn't April 1st is it? I didn't just teleport to Bizzaro World, did I?

The Phony Coney: Miller's Not Home?

The Phony Coney brings to light an important item that allegedly was overlooked by Mark Miller before filing his affidavit in an attempt to smear the Mayor. The question is out there: Where does Mark Miller actually live? Does he even know? Can we trust anything he says if he can't get his address correct?

Council: Handicapping the Race

Predicting who will win City Council is both easy and very difficult. It is easy to get those who are locks to win and likely to win. After that, it is all open ended. It is a fool's errand to try and predict the actual order of finish to any level of accuracy, so don't look for that here. What I have done, instead, is create tiers and grouped candidates based on their likelihood of being in the top nine. Here is my take on the race, two weeks out. Each group is in alphabetical order.

A Lock to Win:
Roxanne Qualls

Likely to Win:
Chris Bortz
Laketa Cole
Leslie Ghiz
Cecil Thomas

In the Mix:
Jeff Berding
Kevin Flynn
Greg Harris
Chris Monzel
Laure Quinlivan
Bernadette Watson
Charlie Winburn


Strong Finish, But Out of the Money:
Tony Fischer
Nickolas Hollan

The Rest:
Anitra Brockman
Amy Murray
LaMarque Ward
Wendell Young
George Zamary


As far as order goes, as I mentioned, there is no way to know. I would say anyone not in the mix could be as high as 13 or 12. A good measure of a candidate that does not win is their placement. If you get anywhere from 10th to 13th, you had a good run and are a contender for 2011.

There are of course two weeks to go, so anything could happen, but usually doesn't.

Minor note: I will go out on a limb here and say the Mayor Mallory will be reelected. The only speculation will be what percentage Wenstrup has to reach in order for Alex Triantafilou to claim the GOP is on the rise in the City. I would suggest that anything less than 50.000001% of the vote would be a sign that the GOP is not on the rise in Cincinnati.

Issue Three Narrowly Ahead in Poll

In a Poll of 800 likely Ohio voters 48% favor Issue Three, 44 Oppose, with a margin of error at 3.5%. This vote is going to be close.

A Question For the Candidates

Had I been at the mayor's debate last week, I'd have asked the following:

Given the choice between laying off fifty police officers, closing half the city's pools, closing some or all of the city's health clinics, or decreasing the frequency of trash collection, which would you choose?

Before you all flay me in the comments: no, I have no idea whether these are actually fiscal equivalents. But if being a reporter covering politics were my full-time job, I'd figure out the equivalents and ask the question with the correct numbers.

Can we "cut our way to prosperity?" Of course not. But absent a massive tax increase, some cuts are inevitable in the 2010 budget. And no one, so far, has told us what they'll cut.

And no, I'm not going to suggest an answer to that question myself.

Random Sports Thought

It just occurred to me that this was a pretty good weekend for former Cincinnati athletes.

Former Red Jerry Hairston scored the game-winning run (after getting on base by hitting a single) in the bottom of the 13th inning, giving the Yankees a 2-0 edge in the ALCS.

And former Bengal Ryan Fitzpatrick led the Buffalo Bills to an overtime victory (albeit an ugly one) over the New York Jets.