The Rooster's April Mailbag

Answering burning questions about what makes a good mayor, city council campaign finances, and the best all-time bust ups.

The odious Mayor Suburbs.

Welcome to the April Mailbag!

We were cutting it close this month, but we’re getting to press right before the buzzer.

As always, questions are presented in bold text, with some lightly edited for grammar, syntax, or clarity.

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DJ, you love to drag Ohio's big city mayors. What makes a good mayor, in your opinion? Are there any you admire, in Ohio or elsewhere?

The irony of our situation is that Mayor Suburbs is the best big-city mayor in Ohio. He’s enthralled by local real estate barons like Cleveland’s Mayor Résumé and Cincinnati’s Mayor Aftab Pureval because he wasn’t desperately looking for a federal appointment to the Biden administration like those two.

But in America, mayors are generally set up to fail—especially if they’re mayors of moribund or, God forbid, shrinking cities. That’s why I prefer a soft mayor system with a city manager. It eliminates many of the dirty hijinks and patronage powers that a lot of big-city mayors abuse.

Generally speaking, you want somebody with deep roots in the city, somebody with thick skin, somebody who is willing to make unpopular decisions, somebody who doesn’t hold higher ambitions than being the mayor, and somebody who cares and can relate to people who make less than $40,000 a year.

My favorite Ohio mayor is Wade Kapszukiewicz of Toledo because he checks most, if not all of those boxes.

My favorite mayor in the world is Ann Hidalgo of Paris, primarily because she’s waging a war on cars to great success in the world’s most famous city:

I thought about Mayor Hildalgo while reading about the American Lung Association disparaging the air quality in Columbus. Gee, it turns out there might be some health risks to surrounding your city with six-lane highways for the comfort of suburbanites.

Somebody like Mayor Suburbs doesn’t have the stones to lead Columbus in that direction because he is a guy who would rather die than board the bus.

Why haven’t you written anything about Vogel’s campaign finance reports — all the out-of-state money and donations from key HB-6 players?

Well, I am but one man. And I can’t comment on everything, even if I’m a professional opinion-haver. And these reports only dropped like 72 hours ago.

But since you asked! Here we go.

Vogel raised $500 in two $250 donations from Daniel McCarthy, Mike DeWine’s former legislative director, and Laurel Dawson, DeWine’s former Chief of Staff.

While they both played “key” roles in the scheme, these two names are not known to more than two percent of Ohioans.

If you know anything about how professional fundraising works, you can see that McCarthy and Vogel both attended Oberlin, and Dawson lives in Bexley, where Vogel is originally from.

Their names were probably on the list, and Vogel called them like anyone else. I don’t fault him for not knowing those names off the top of his head.

But if it were my campaign, I would donate that money to charity.

But I also understand the desire not to turn a one-day story into a two-day story by giving hyperbolized accusations more oxygen.

The people throwing these jabs at Vogel would not give him any credit if he did return that money. And it’s not like we’re talking about some game-changing amount, either. It’s peanuts.

Establishment Democrats have tried to make hay over Vogel’s out-of-state donations, but he has more Columbus-based donations than anyone else in the race.

The Franklin County Democratic Party designed this system. As Senator Bill DeMora admitted to me last month, it’s a “fake ward system.”

Columbus is a massive city, and council candidates must run citywide. Kate Curry-Da-Souza, who has the deepest roots in the 7th District, is disadvantaged because she only has roughly $8,000 on-hand.

Da-Souza, like Vogel, can’t depend on $60,000(!) in donations from incumbent politicians like City Attorney Zach Klein, City Council President Shannon Hardin, and councilmen Rob Dorans and Emmanuel Remy, like Tiara Ross did.

Thanks to the campaign finance rules in Columbus, establishment politicians can cut checks in any amount that their campaign coffers will allow.

So, what is somebody like Vogel supposed to do? Not rely on his personal network and professional fundraising apparatus like literally every other candidate and put his candidacy at a decisive disadvantage?

Honestly, it speaks to his character that, days away from the primary vote, this try-hard criticism is the best the establishment can do.

Don’t hate on Vogel for playing the game as designed by the city’s Democratic apparatus.

How much money have Zach Klein and Shannon Hardin received from Les "Fun and Funder with Jeffy Epstein" Wexner?

Since 2016, Wexner has given $10,000 to Council President Hardin and $17,500 to City Attorney Klein.

Also of note, Wexner has given $66,400 to Mayor Suburbs and $5,000 to council member Remy.

As I wrote on Monday, it’s disheartening that our Democratic leaders can’t say “thanks, but no thanks” to Wexner. There's plenty of evidence as to why they should.

Rate your top 5 favorite bust-ups, and where would you rate Kenn Dowell?

Oh man. That’s tough. Off the top of my head:

1. The Blowjob Brothers

2. John Kasich at the Holocaust memorial

3. Ohio Right to Life president Michael Gonidakis on why a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry her baby to term

4. Jon Husted on HB-6.

5. Riley Gaines, the professional bigot.

6. Jean Schmidt about her aide paying for his mistress’ abortion.