Kieran Cartharn Goes Again
Will the Columbus Republican crash and burn again?
In exclusive The Rooster breaking news, Columbus resident Kieran Cartharn has launched a second run for Columbus City Council. Let me introduce you the history of Cartharn’s first run for office and the aftermath. If his second run is anything like the first, strap-in for a true Columbus tale.
In May of 2017, the local news ran a puff piece on a new candidate for city council. The kicker here is he was younger than anyone else running, and therefore somehow interesting despite being a Republican.
As he described himself, he’s a 19-year-old, “black, young, Republican,” and he miraculously advanced in a primary for a Columbus City Council seat. Out of more than 10 candidates, and many hopeless Republicans, Cartharn snagged just a hundred votes for a spot in the general election.
He had a pull yourself up by the bootstraps story, which Republicans love for whatever reason, and he discussed the struggles he faced growing up in Linden. To his credit, not living in Marble Cliff is a step-up from most of the council right now. Working with his childhood best-friend as his campaign manager, he set out on a quixotic campaign for council.
Cartharn’s campaign headed into the November General Election hoping that being the lone Republican could coalesce votes around him and narrowly get him a council spot.
To assist with that in the Republican way he recruited some friends from the FOP, being the only FOP endorsed candidate for council. How impressive!
When you have real powerbrokers like the FOP behind you in Columbus, what could possibly go wrong?
Well, in the six-candidate general election only the top-three win council spots, and unfortunately for Cartharn’s quixotic campaign he came up about 30,000 votes and 12% short.
This was a staggering yet unsurprising loss. Republicans in Columbus don’t win city council seats, but he could seemingly build off that and climb up from there.
Conceivably the county party would groom him for some leadership spot and tout him as a new guard of Republicans who can “connect” with people. Obviously, that’s a lie and they all suck, but he had a path for a lucrative career.
Cartharn laid low for a few months, with no mayoral run announcement or anything, and got engaged to his girlfriend and had a kid. Normal stuff. He wouldn’t come up in the news again until after April 13th, 2018, when he got on my radar.
Back in college when I apparently had nothing better to do, I volunteered at city council candidates’ forums. Nothing college girls like more than guys who know their city council.
Anyways, after one of the forums Cartharn came up to me and struck up a conversation. We were both the only people under-30 there and we talked for a few minutes about politics. We became Facebook friends after, and though I never actually talked to him again I knew who he was and what he looked like.
This came into play when I got an OSU public safety email the afternoon of the 13th. At the end of the email were these pictures:
To summarize, a girl was walking home at 1:15am, coincidentally going to the same dorm that I lived in at the time, and was across the street when she got approached by a weird dude in a suit. The guy told her he was a cop and asked to walk her home for safety but didn’t show a badge or anything. He apparently made her uncomfortable and asked to go to her door with her until she made the very smart decision to go to the dorm front desk and check-in with them.
That finally chased him off, but not before those security pictures were taken. The smug look on his face, the untucked shirt, the suit jacket, just an all-time police photo. Having met him previously I instantly recognized the photos the police sent out as Kieran Cartharn himself.
Life pro-tip, if you run for city council and meet lots of people wear a disguise or before pretending to be a cop to get into a girls dorm room.
I called into the tip line immediately saying I knew who the suspect was, not that I like involving the police but this was a pretty fucked up crime and I didn’t want this happening to anyone again.
I called in about five minutes after the alert went out and the conversation went something like this,
Me: “Hey I know who the guy in the email is.”
Tip line guy: *Starts laughing*
Me: “It’s Kieran Cartharn.”
Tip line guy: “Thanks for the info buddy, you’re the twentieth guy whose called in his name so far.”
This guy was such a shitty criminal that within five minutes, 20 lazy-ass OSU students had turned him in. Thanks in part to my stellar detective work Cartharn was apparently quickly apprehended and had a summons issued for him the next week.
In the process of their investigation, OSU PD found out this wasn’t even the first time he’d pulled the I’m a cop schtick; it was apparently the third. This man really dressed up in a suit at night and patrolled High St. looking for girls walking alone.
This guy was a serial predator, with a wife, kid, and political ambitions at home. The investigation eventually led him to plead guilty to three counts of impersonating a police officer. This cleared the way for the story to almost come full circle, a takedown piece by the local news only two-years after his puff piece.
As they say, that’s politics, kid.
As part of the plea deal, he avoided a six-month recommended prison stint and instead got off with just a year of probation and an order to stay away from Ohio State campus.
His Facebook, unsurprisingly, went quiet after this. His last post, which was four days after his final impersonation incident, was hinting of a new run for office. After the news came out about him though the comments took a dark turn for young Cartharn.
During his yearlong probation, I didn’t see any activity on his Facebook, that post’s comments were the last trace of Cartharn’s political ambitions.
That was until last week a friend tipped me off to a new Facebook account of Cartharn’s. I sent a friend request, having a feeling what it would lead to, and was accepted almost instantly. The next day it happened, an invite to like the brand new Cartharn for Columbus page.
After serving his probation, Cartharn is attempting one of the most improbable comebacks in Columbus politics. Despite his sexpest conviction being relatively recent, young Cartharn is determined to embarrass himself even more.
I tried my best to get a The Rooster exclusive interview for this piece, but unfortunately Mr. Cartharn is not available for comment because he is, “working on houses and booked up.”
After sending over several questions to him about his run including, “What do you have to say to your detractors, and how are you going to address your 2018 arrest?” I was blocked by him on Facebook.
A savvy PR move for Cartharn, blocking me on Facebook when all the information is public record really puts a bow on this story.
Cartharn will not be winning his race for City Council; that much is evident. What’s incredible is he literally is an even worse candidate than the establishment rubes running for reelection. That’s somewhat of an accomplishment in this city, and a moral victory to kick off a Cartharn campaign that will have no other victories.
Now that I’ve been blocked on Facebook, the only thing left to do is break the news about his new run for office and leave with this old meme.
Let’s just hope for the sake of OSU coeds that Cartharn doesn’t pull his same shit after his newest upcoming loss.
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