Folks... let's get ready to rumble
The mayor's decision to run for re-election has put him on a collision course with two younger rivals, and that realization has exacerbated his worst qualities in recent weeks.
A gremlin toiling under Mayor Suburbs told The Columbus Dispatch earlier this year that our beautiful mayor plans to run for a fourth term in 2027.
The news was somewhat astounding, considering Suburbs is a far cry from former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, let alone former mayor Michael Coleman, who might be in his eighth term if he hadn’t flown too close to the Chinese sun for the meddling FBI’s liking.
I didn’t want to believe the Mayor would run in 2027, especially with City Council President Shannon Hardin and Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein eyeing respective challenges to the throne. I thought it was bluster to avoid becoming a lame duck in the last two years of his term.
But it’s become clear that the mayor knows what he has. Why wouldn’t he run for a fourth term? No other job would allow him to pursue his true passions: Playing golf with syncophants and traveling internationally for free.
To give him something upon which to hang his hat, Team Mayor Andy Ginther (MAG), as they’re colloquially known in Columbus political circles, put together a slapdash $500 million bond package for affordable housing that’s on the 2025 ballot.
On the surface, it's something the city desperately needs. But one business leader, who spoke to The Rooster over the weekend, expressed concern that the bond package, as written, doesn’t detail the application process for how that money will be spent.
“It’s not hard to envision,” the leader said, “how this newly created pot of money could be dolled out to the real estate developers that line the mayor’s campaign coffers.”
Having a new slush fund to reward his political cronies ahead of his re-election campaign, which could be sold to the public as doing his part to fight the housing crisis, would be enough to seal his re-election—if the 2027 mayoral race wasn’t promising to be unlike any the mayor has faced in his tenure.
According to four sources with direct knowledge who spoke to The Rooster over the weekend, the Mayor’s re-election campaign has been hampered by the realization that Council President Hardin isn’t backing down from solidifying plans to run for mayor in 2027.
The mayor’s visceral anger, which has extended to City Auditor Megan Kilgore over what he perceives as an inadequate amount in the forthcoming city budget, has had a chilling effect on city stakeholders.
For example, multiple workers within Columbus’ industrial non-profit complex revealed that their organizational leaders have been advised that even taking a picture with Hardin would be enough to draw the ire of the mayor.
According to one such source, the mayor is “furious” with Hardin, and the two Columbus leaders haven’t spoken in weeks.
Another private-sector source revealed that the mayor is likening Hardin to Zohran Mandami, the ascendant socialist candidate who is the betting favorite to become New York City’s next mayor in two weeks.
The comparison would fall short for anyone familiar with Hardin’s legislative career, which began 11 years ago this month. Hardin did not go from being an appointee under then-Mayor Coleman to City Council President by being a bomb-throwing radical.
Not in a city like Columbus.
And the mayor knows that, if he were being honest with himself.
Ironically, if the mayor continues down that road born of his insecurities, it would be a gift to Hardin, as it would solve his biggest electoral hurdle: How to differentiate himself from the mayor with whom he’s worked, hand in glove, for nearly a decade.
In my opinion, the nonsensical comparison to Mamdani isn’t about policy. It speaks to what the mayor ultimately fears: Having to campaign against a deep-rooted, charismatic opponent who also has credibility with the city’s business and non-profit community.
Especially when the mayor’s credibility is waning thin among that same crowd.
Hardin being cast as Mamdani reveals that the mayor realizes he could easily become the Andrew Cuomo of Columbus, despite lacking the well-documented history of sexual harassment: An unlikable, wooden bully who has nobody to blame but himself for his ultimate embarrassment because he failed to read the room.
And what of ‘Hollywood’ Zach Klein?
Columbus City Attorney Klein is currently on a free ride to re-election in November.
Despite rebuffing heavy pressure from the Ohio Democratic Party to pursue statewide office in 2026, Klein oozes ambition.
But if he’s not going to run statewide, where would he go?
Former city councilwoman Shayla Favor became Franklin County Prosecutor in January. Despite a rocky start (more on that later), she could seemingly have that job for as long as she wants.
Klein’s only logical political promotion, other than a federal appointment, would be the mayor’s office.
Curiously, however, the mayor’s ire currently seems reserved for Hardin.
If that’s because he thinks Klein, for whatever reason, isn’t planning to challenge him in 2027, that would be a mistake, according to multiple sources familiar with Klein’s thinking who spoke to The Rooster over the weekend.
Klein, according to his latest filing report, has $968,269.38 on hand.
That’s an eye-popping number, which dwarfs Hardin ($171,427.76) and the mayor ($436,242.27).
Klein’s campaign would be saying, “I sued Donald Trump” a thousand times while pounding the table on “safety,” a topic that he often discusses with Trump superdonor Martin Savko, who has also donated $23,500 to Klein over the past two years.
If that last part surprises you, it shouldn’t. Klein was a lifelong Republican, right up until he decided to run for office in Columbus.
The days of having a Republican mayor are ancient history in Columbus. Still, Klein could become a palatable option to the city’s Republicans by pounding the table about “crime” and “safety.”
If those voters can never have a Republican mayor, then having a former Republican mayor might be their best opportunity for the next 20 years. Not that Klein could solicit that support publicly, but there are ways to do that behind the scenes—if that were something Klein were interested in doing.
In a three-way primary (that could become a four-way contest if a leftist candidate emerges), adding disaffected Republicans to the coalition could be a political masterstroke that sends Klein through to the head-to-head primary.
An election worthy of the Big City
Anyone familiar with The Rooster knows my long-held disdain for “the Columbus Way,” a meaningless feel-good city slogan that I co-opted to describe the cozy relationship between the city’s corporate interests and government.
It’s not new. It stretches back to when Republicans ran the city, and the Wolfe family helped propagandize reactionary interests through the pages of The Columbus Dispatch, which it owned.
That trend has continued to the present day, with the Columbus Partnership, which still lists Jeff Epstein’s best friend, Leslie Wexner, as chairman emeritus, and the Franklin County Democratic Party.
Not that long ago, these decisions and grievances would have been worked out behind closed doors to prevent the type of mayoral campaign we looked poised to witness in 2027.
And that, undoubtedly, has played into Mayor Suburbs’ anger. He probably feels like Hardin should wait his turn, even if a white man telling that to a gay Black man wouldn’t play well among the city’s electorate.
The mayor, somewhat unbelievably, is only 50 years old. And he probably feels like changing war horses midstream would be the last thing a booming city like Columbus needs. That he, and only he alone, can understand the mental strength it takes to govern a city of nearly a million people from the golf course or far-flung places like Morocco and Amsterdam.
But the city is changing, and so are its old political norms.
We could see the first blow in two weeks, if City Council District 7 candidate Jesse Vogel defies history and institutional gravity arrayed against his campaign to defeat machine candidate Tiara Ross.
The mayor’s sudden disdain for Hardin would explain why he, unlike Hardin or Klein, hasn’t donated a penny to Ross’s lackluster campaign. Ross currently works under Klein, and city council members have donated a staggering $155,000 to her campaign to defeat Vogel’s insurgent bid.
A Ross loss would, theoretically, undercut the mayor’s two chief rivals while only sacrificing a single seat on a nine-member council. But it’s hard to envision a city council race mattering in a mayoral contest two years down the road, at least among the voting public.
In that regard, the mayor’s usual tactics of bullying and bluster will prove futile in preventing the kind of brutal, free-for-all election that the city’s corporate interests have long stymied.
To which I say: It’s about damn time.
THOSE WMDs. I tried to toughen up my son, and things didn’t go as planned… The Real Housewives of Moscow… Sex, rage, and video: The making of an incel hero… These red Vermont towns wanted “America First;” they’re getting more than they bargained for… The strange, strange story of the gay fascists.
Ginther can best be described as center-left on social issues while far-right on economic issues. His tax abatement policies are like trickle-down economics on steroids.
"Klein was a lifelong Republican, right up until he decided to run for office in Columbus."
This is false. I moved to Columbus because my girlfriend worked on the 2008 Cordray AG campaign. Guess who Cordray's body man and closest adviser was? Before that he worked for VP Biden. All years before his 2011 council appointment.
This is pretty sloppy, IMO!