Recalling the career of one of America's most colorful pols

Dennis Kucinich official photo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dennis Kucinich was a victim of redistricting in Ohio, losing to a fresh face in the recent Democratic primary there.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kucinich-faces-uphill-battle-for-redistricted-seat/2012/03/05/gIQA6MFrvR_story.html

As a resident of Cleveland from 1970 to 1981, I recall those ealry days, when the maverick politician was still wet behind the ears:

Jim Castagnera: Recollecting the Cleveland of Mayor Dennis Kucinich

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SOURCE: News of Delaware County (1-4-06)

With winter well underway, the rain and snow have helped keep Congressman Dennis Kucinich, the Democrat representing Ohio’s 10th Congressional District, on my mind. This baby-faced fifty-nine-year-old tossed his hat into the ring during the presidential primaries of 2004. He has kept himself in the news by continuing to push his campaign proposal for a cabinet-level Department of Peace. Bills to establish the new federal department, pending since September in both houses, thus far have garnered 62 Congressional endorsements. That’s a long way off enactment, but still much more than a flash in the pan. This tells me that Kucinich is somebody to watch.

So what sort of a fellow is he?

If you believe the old saw that the child is the father of the man, perhaps we should wonder, “What sort of fellow was he?”

That question takes me back 30 years. My wife and I, both native Pennsylvanians, found ourselves in Cleveland, compliments of the U.S. Coast Guard, in 1970. By 1976, after half a dozen years of apartment dwelling, we’d bought our first house… in Cleveland’s blue-collar West Park neighborhood. Proud homeowners, we enjoyed our rose bushes and backyard barbeques.

Then, along came Dennis.

He was still some months shy of his 32nd birthday when inaugurated the 53rd mayor of the “Mistake on the Lake” in 1978. The municipality he inherited was by then a national joke. Its Cuyahoga River was famously so polluted that it once burst into flames. Ironically, the steel mills lining its shores, which provided much of the volatile pollution, were in sharp decline; some plants were already closed.

Cleveland’s weather also was a national howl. Only Buffalo’s winters garnered worse press. Kucinich’s first month in office witnessed the worst winter in recent memory. Unrelenting snowfalls climaxed with a blizzard on January 26th which roared through town on the back of a 100-mile-per-hour wind. When friends and neighbors here in Delaware County complain about our winters, I think back to Cleveland in ’78 and… like an old combat veteran… mutter under my breath, “Think about shoveling out your driveway for 14 mornings in a row and then tell me how bad you have it here.”

In short, we hapless Clevelanders required a real leader. Instead we got the mayor whom the media were soon calling “Dennis the Menace,” partly because of his uncanny resemblance to the comic strip character… but mostly because his was a destructive administration from the get-go.

Among his appointees was a 24-year-old finance director with little or no financial experience. The beleaguered Cleveland business community’s discomfort over this appointment seemed justified when the mayor rejected a prestigious $41 million Urban Mass Transportation grant for one of only four downtown “people movers” to be built in selected cities. Take it “back to Disneyland where it belongs,” was his oft-quoted kiss-off of the federal bucks.

When Kucinich appointed Sheriff Richard Hongisto of San Francisco to be chief of police, he hailed him as “the best law enforcement officer” to come to Cleveland “since Elliot Ness.” Not three months later Kucinich fired Hongisto in front of live TV cameras during a Good Friday press conference.

The police chief was merely canned. The mayor was very nearly crucified. When on April 10th the City Council voted to investigate other City Hall shenanigans, the mayor called the council members “a group of lunatics.” With that, the movement to recall Kucinich, only a fourth of the way through his two-year term, was underway. By June 1st the necessary 37,500 petition signatures had been gathered. When the ballots were counted on August 13th, Dennis held on to his post by a mere 236 votes.

The following year, Cleveland became the first U.S. city of its size to default on its municipal bonds. We hapless homeowners voted ourselves a 50% income tax increase to insure that the city could continue to collect our garbage, police our streets --- at one point during the fiscal crisis Kucinich threatened to lay off 600 city workers, including 400 cops and firefighters --- and, heaven help us, plow our snow.

That autumn Dennis the Menace was ousted by George Voinovich, who went on to become governor of Ohio and a U.S. Senator. Kucinich went into exile in New Mexico for almost 20 years, before returning to politics, eventually winning his current Congressional seat in 1997. By then Joanne and I had long since returned to the relative warmth and sanity of suburban Philly.

Even from three decades’ distance, I still feel a chill. Hey, maybe it’s only my recollection of record winters that makes me shiver. On the other hand, commendable as a Peace Department might be, I’d hate to see it catapult Dennis the Menace to national power.