The Orbis

Issue date: 2/25/08 Section: Opinion

Dennis Kucinich

During the past two presidential elections, Dennis Kucinich has made it into the national spotlight with wacky antics, seemingly bottomless pockets filled with various and sundry items, and his far-left politics. He's managed to garner all kinds of support for his vocal anti-war efforts and calls to impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Despite all this national attention, there seems to be trouble brewing at home. Joe Cimperman (D), the challenger to his Ohio 10th Congressional District seat, has received endorsements from Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Aside from that, Kucinich is lagging in both donations and the polls. Obviously he won't be going to live in the White House anytime soon, but will Kucinich be returning to Washington at all? Maybe not.

Ohioans (especially Democrats) are notorious for electing the most eccentric people to Congress. James Traficant (D), representative of the 13th Congressional District, was known for attempting to run for Congress from behind bars, wearing bad clothes, a terrible toupee, and ending his speeches with "Beam me up..."!

Kucinich has proposed legislation to ban mind-control satellites and, in a recent presidential debate, admitted to seeing UFOs. While we have absolutely no problem with the fact that Kucinich is terribly unconventional (to put it nicely), the main concern is that Kucinich has made many questionable decisions in his long tenure as a Cleveland politician. Furthermore, residents of the 10th district just aren't sure he is representing their interests anymore.

Kucinich's chaotic run as Cleveland's mayor from 1977-1979 is still fresh in the minds of many Clevelanders. As the youngest mayor of a large city in United States history, he made what could be called many youthful blunders while in office. He appointed a financial director with only eight months experience as a stock broker and had a very public feud with his appointed chief of police. During a recall election in 1978, Kucinich won by less than 1000 votes.

To his credit, Kucinich did manage to prevent the sale of the municipally owned power company Muni Light to a private company, and it remains in city control to this day as Cleveland Public Power, providing power to much of Cleveland proper and significantly reducing power expenses by forcing private firms to compete. Despite this, he has been ranked as one of the worst big city mayors of all time.

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