The Polls are Closed on the Mayoral Primary; Who's going to win?

More importantly, what is the over-under spread for how long it takes the Hamilton County BOE to tabulate a single race?  Do we think we'll get the final results by 11:00 PM?

If You Can't Run a Meeting, How Could You Possibly Run a City?

That is a question everyone should be asking mayoral candidate John Cranley after watching this video below from 2001 when he was a member of Cincinnati City Council and was the Chairman of the Law and Public Safety Committee.

Annexation: Is it in Cincinnati's Future?

UrbanCincy has an interesting editorial calling on the City of Cincinnati to consider annexing many of the separate communities that are either immediately adjacent to the City or completely surrounded by the city. The idea would add over 77,000 people to the City and provide the opportunity to consolidate expenses for all of those communities. Furthermore the plan would give those communities much better protection from financial ruin brought about by State budget cuts forced on local governments by the current Governor.

This plan is a big variance from other plans that call for a full City/County merger, which would be an action that would have likely an insurmountable number of obstacles preventing it from succeeding.

I don't know what the initial cost outlay that would be on the City's shoulders for the smaller scale annexation plan, but if the numbers are reasonable, I think the long term gains would be worth it, even if only a portion of the communities agree to annexation.

A big problem to this getting any traction now is that we are in an election year, so discussion of this idea would either be dismissed outright or become a political weapon to beat on without serious consideration. I mean the amount of political contributions Cranley would get from the Westside areas under consideration for annexation would be huge. Cheviot, Cleves, North Bend and Addyston are filled with people who don't like the City and far too many living in those communities don't like the race of nearly half of the people who live in the City.

The Arts In Cincinnati Is World Class

LumenoCity - A City Inspired - Cincinnati 2013 from AGAR on Vimeo.

Cranley's Legacy Still Hurting City

Quimbob reports on John Cranley's legacy as a former member of City Council and what we see is financial mismanagement come home to roost.

Cranley Lied at Forum (Gambling! I'm Shocked!)

I am sure it is not a surprise to anyone that Mayoral Candidate John Cranley lied at yesterday's candidate forum, but just in case here's the Enquirer account of his lie:

"Streetcar: Cranley would kill it, says money could be spent on neighborhoods;"

Here is the Business Courier's version of the Cranley lie:

Money for the streetcar is being siphoned away from neighborhoods, Cranley said.

As Cranley knows, the funds beings used for building the Streetcar can't just be spent any pet project he wants. He also knows that the funds to build the streetcar come from grants outside the city budget. This is a whopper of we call Pandering. This one is worse, because it is a lie and John knows it. I guess lying to the public is something he finds normal for a politician.

Reason #341 Cranley is not a good candidate for Mayor.

In other news in the article, there is apparently a fourth candidate for Mayor, Stacy Smith? Based on the article, she didn't come across as credible. That and she reportedly is a Republican. Few thing are more entertaining together in the world of politics.

Cranley Tweets Just a Like a Republican

In a review of John Cranley's 170+ campaign tweets thus far the following breakdown of topics is very enlightening.

21 retweets of Republican politicians, all of them ideological
8 retweets of Democratic politicians, of which 2 are ideological
70 tweets that are critical of Mayor Mallory
16 tweets that announce campaign events
2 tweets that express Democratic ideology
2 stubs
29 retweets of negative news stories (about city Democratic leadership)
15 retweets of neutral news stories
1 retweet of positive news stories
4 retweets of his campaign manager
2 retweets of constituents criticizing Mayor Mallory

And two, on March 10th, "I am proud to be a Democrat and that is why I filed as a Democrat for Mayor".

So, other than the two on March 10th, Greg Hartmann or Brad Wenstrup could have tweeted all of these. Yes, in case you don't know, Hartmann and Wenstrup are Republicans.

I don't know if the person who came up with term DINO (Democrat In Name Only) had some type of vision of the future where John Cranley would be running for Mayor of Cincinnati and claiming to be a Democrat, but a case could be made for that.

Maybe Cranley hired a Republican to run his Twitter feed.  I can't rule that out, but I would hope Cranley is running the feed himself.  I'd hate for him to have sold out more than he already has.  I doubt it, however.

Voters need truth. We don't need Cranley (or Tea Party member Dusty Rhodes) pretending to be Dems when they do nothing, and I mean nothing, but carry on a Republican written and orchestrated campaign for Mayor.