Opinion: Officeholders get people talking, debating with daily questions
Question of the day: What Cincinnati city official poses daily questions to get people interacting with each other in spirited, nonpolitical, debates?
Answer: Liz Keating, City Council member.
"The whole goal of everything that we do in this office is making sure that we’re building relationships with everyone else," she explained. "That white board has been critical to us building bridges."
Keating, 39, won her first full term on council in November 2021 after being appointed nearly a year earlier. She’s the only Republican on the current council after an election dominated by the Democratic slate, so she felt the need to reach out.
"We are the lone soldier," she said.
She credits her former communications director, Mickey McClanahan, with the daily question idea. Keating intentionally chose as her office − one that opens to the main lobby of City Hall’s third floor, where council meets − so people can see into it as they come down the hall.
In these days of high-tech communication tools, her staff set up a simple white dry erase board with a daily question posed just inside her office to draw attention. The questions are always nonpolitical, but have stirred vigorous discussions. Other council members, their staffers and passing visitors join in.
There are no right or wrong answers. Here are some that have drawn the most responses:
Best Cincinnati style chili spot?
Favorite Hometown Hero?
What is your favorite Cincinnati fun fact?
If you could "unread" one book, so you could read it and experience it again for the first time, what book would it be?
What international holiday/tradition would you adopt in the U.S.?
In a building loaded with politicians and politics-minded staffers, some get very adamant that they have the right answer. In fact, Gio Rocco, chief of staff for Councilman Mark Jeffreys, was so sure about his response to the "correct way to abbreviate Cincinnati" that he got his answer tattooed on his shoulder: "Cin’ti."
Pavan Parikh, elected in November as Hamilton County clerk of courts, started playing the questions when he’d be in City Hall. He began this month teaming up with Keating, offering the same question of the day in his county courthouse office. Parikh, a Democrat, saw that the question board was working as a way to engage people in City Hall.
"I thought it might be a perfect opportunity to do the same in our office and throughout the courthouse, since so many attorneys, paralegals, members of law enforcement and court staff in addition to the clerk staff and the public also come through our doors," he explained.
Parikh and Keating have expanded the reach by posting questions on their Twitter accounts.
"So much of the work that happens in this building is so serious that we wanted to find a way to introduce a little levity into the day as well," Parikh said.
One of the first questions he answered was "Who is your favorite musician/band?"
His answer: "Taylor Swift. (Yeah, I said it)." That one got a wide range of results, from Foxy Shazam to Pink Floyd to Barry Manilow.
"It’s cool that it’s growing in a bipartisan manner," Keating said. "It’s a relationship-builder; people bantering back and forth."
In Democrat-dominated Cincinnati, Keating has to be innovative as she looks ahead to a battle for reelection later this year. She went against traditional GOP dogma this month by supporting two gun restrictions passed by council.
One mandates locked, safe storage of guns to protect child safety and the other makes possessing a firearm illegal for someone convicted of domestic violence or under a restraining order obtained by an intimate partner.
Gun lobbyists have successfully challenged such local measures in Cincinnati and other Ohio cities and will challenge these, too. But Keating said it’s important to take action to reduce gun violence.
"We need to try to find some common ground," she said.
However, we couldn’t find common ground on one recent question: What was the best Super Bowl commercial? The sentimental "Farmer’s Dog" was a popular choice, as was Ben Affleck working the drive-thru for Dunkin’ Donuts. That was Parikh’s choice, while Keating’s was the Google Pixel commercial demonstrating ability to erase now-unwanted people from saved pictures.
There was a better choice: the T-Mobile ad with John Travolta reprising his "Grease" T-Birds leader role, singing with the "Scrubs" co-stars backing him.
EXTRA POINTS:
No Surprise: disclosures in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox News showed Fox talk hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham expressed to each other disbelief of 2020 election fraud claims while also worrying Fox could lose viewers or anger Donald Trump by countering them. It’s all about the ratings and there’s a formula dating back decades to Rush Limbaugh: Lionize right-wing hucksters; ridicule liberals, attack "the media," stir in racial and homophobic stereotypes. You can get a local version early afternoons on WLW AM.
Daddy & Me: City Council members offered kudos to The Cincinnati Herald on the success of its latest Daddy-Daughter Dance, a sold-out annual event at Duke Energy Convention Center that drew more than 1,300 people Feb. 11. Vice Mayor Jan-Michele Kearney is an owner of the weekly black-oriented newspaper.
No One Does Now: "I don’t even know what critical race theory is, to be totally honest with you," said Forest Hills Schools Superintendent Larry Hook, during his deposition in a federal lawsuit blocking the eastern Cincinnati suburban district’s anti-CRT school board resolution. CRT is a graduate school level course of study that alarmists have broadened to apparently mean anything in schools they don’t like.
Dan Sewell is a member of The Enquirer board of contributors. He can be reached at his personal email dsewellrojos@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Opinion: Officeholders get people talking, debating with daily questions
