Meet the 10 candidates running for Cincinnati City Council in the nine-person field race
Ten people are running for Cincinnati City Council in November, the fewest number of candidates in at least 32 years.
Compare that number to the last council election in 2021 when 35 people ran. Just last year 37 people applied to be appointed to former Councilman Greg Landsman's seat when he departed after being elected a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Cincinnati Democratic Committee already endorsed candidates, selecting the eight current Democrats on council and Anna Albi, a Madisonville Community Council member.
Councilwoman Liz Keating is the lone Republican running.
Citizens elect nine members in a field race of the top vote-getters for a two-year term. Council members are paid $60,000 a year.
Here is the list of candidates:
The new candidate
Anna Albi
Party: Democratic.
Age: 31.
Neighborhood: Madisonville.
Albi is a first-time council candidate. She is a Madisonville Community Council member who works on behalf of gun control group Moms Demand Action. She is a senior strategic communication consultant for Aon PLC, a global management consulting firm. She is a ward chair and precinct executive.
Current council members running for election
Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney
Party: Democratic.
Age: 67.
Neighborhood: North Avondale.
Kearney was appointed to council in March 2020. She ran and won in 2021 and serves as vice mayor. She is chairperson of council's Healthy Neighborhoods Committee and has brought those meetings out into the community. Kearney has prioritized community engagement, which was added to the Planning Department. Kearney has also spearheaded moving the city's police gun range away from Lincoln Heights, where it impacts citizens' quality of life. Kearney, a lawyer, is the co-founder and president of Sesh Communications, which publishes the Cincinnati Herald.
Victoria Parks
Party: Democratic.
Age: 65.
Neighborhood: College Hill.
Parks was elected in 2021. On council, she was part of increasing the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and expanding the Girls in Government program, which introduces young women to public service. She previously served as a Hamilton County commissioner, appointed to replace Todd Portune before Portune's death in 2020. Prior to that, she was Portune's chief of staff. She served in the U.S. Air Force from 1976 to 1980. She is the executive director of West College Hill Neighborhood Services, a private nonprofit agency serving the residents of West College Hill and its surrounding communities.
Reggie Harris
Party: Democratic.
Age: 41.
Neighborhood: Northside.
Harris was first elected in 2021. He is the chairperson of council's Budget and Finance Committee and past chairperson of council's Equitable Growth and Housing Committee. He led residential abatement reform, updated the city's nondiscrimination ordinance to include gender expression and gender identity and prioritized spending federal housing grant money to serve more affordable housing developments. He is a retired professional ballet dancer, trained clinical social worker and licensed therapist. He is currently a senior fellow at the Children's Funding Project, a nonprofit social impact organization that helps communities and states expand equitable opportunities for children and youth.
Mark Jeffreys
Party: Democratic.
Age: 53.
Neighborhood: Clifton.
Jeffreys was first elected in 2021. On council, he has made pedestrian safety a priority. Pedestrian-vehicle crashes are at the lowest level in nine years after a $7 million investment in traffic calming measures, including speed humps, bump-outs and new crosswalks. He also led the effort to add crossing guards at schools and increase their pay. He is CEO of 4Sight Advantage and formerly worked at Procter & Gamble for 16 years.
Meeka Owens
Party: Democratic.
Age: 44.
Neighborhood: North Avondale.
Owens was first elected in 2021. She is the chairperson of council's Climate, Environment and Infrastructure Committee. She worked to pass the 2023 Green Cincinnati Plan, which focuses on equity as well as sustainability. She has also made reducing gun violence a priority and she introduced a resolution, which garnered unanimous support, to declare gun violence a public health crisis.
Jeff Cramerding
Party: Democratic.
Age: 50.
Neighborhood: West Price Hill.
Cramerding was first elected in 2021. He is chairperson of the Equitable Growth and Housing Committee. On council, he is known for advocating for fiscal responsibility and repairing infrastructure, including the Boldface Park pavilion. A labor lawyer, he is a founding member of Price Hill Will, a community development corporation.
Scotty Johnson
Party: Democratic.
Age: 60.
Neighborhood: Mount Airy.
Johnson was first elected in 2021. He is the chairperson of council's Public Safety and Governance Committee. On council, he led the effort for the city to apologize for razing one of the city's largest Black neighborhoods to make room for Interstate 75 in the 1960s. He called it the first step toward "reconciliation" with former residents of the lower West End, where about 10,000 mostly Black families were removed from what was known as the Kenyon-Barr district. Johnson was a Cincinnati police officer for 33 years and was the president of the Sentinel Police Association, a group of Black officers whose mission is community policing. Johnson worked behind the scenes on the Cincinnati Collaborative Agreement between the police department and citizens after 2001 civil unrest. He is an elder at Christ Emmanuel Christian Fellowship Ministries in Walnut Hills.
Seth Walsh
Party: Democratic.
Age: 32.
Neighborhood: Clifton.
Walsh was appointed to council last December to replace Landsman. On council, Walsh championed buying LUCAS devices, which help in doing chest compressions, for fire stations. Not every station has one yet, but the one in Sayler Park has already helped save two lives. Walsh came to the job from being CEO of the College Hill Community Urban Redevelopment Corporation and has been widely praised for leading a renaissance in the College Hill neighborhood. In June, after he fired his community director, the city of Cincinnati paid a $30,000 settlement to her after she alleged she was fired in retaliation for writing a memo that said there had been campaigning out of Walsh's council office. Later that month, a city investigation found there was insufficient evidence that Walsh used city resources for campaign purposes and that the allegations stemmed from what the investigator said "were not management best practices."
Liz Keating
Party: Republican.
Age: 39.
Neighborhood: Hyde Park.
Keating was appointed in 2020 and then elected in 2021. On council, Keating has spearheaded two hack-a-thons – ways to rethink, save money and partner with corporations to solve problems. The first addressed the city's chronic litter problem and the second addressed increasing recycling in more efficient ways. She also cosponsored anti-gun violence measures. Keating is the marketing director for Jim Stengel Co., a marketing and consulting think tank. She is also a recreational department lifeguard, volunteering because the city does not have enough lifeguards. She's the daughter of the late Bill Keating Jr., a lawyer who was known for his community involvement, and the granddaughter of former Enquirer publisher and U.S. Rep. Bill Keating, who died in 2020.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: 12 people filed to run in the 2023 Cincinnati City Council race
