Friday, July 18, 2014

Whom the Gods Would Destroy

Cincinnati & it's basin area, the CBD & OTR have been receiving a good bit of acclaim from various places. A lot of the credit for these inroads can be attributed to the previous mayor, Mark Mallory & precious mayor, councilmember & mayoral hopeful, Roxane Qualls.
The latest came in a video article at Fortune.
So, why is the current mayor so hell bent on turning everything around?
Cincinnati Magazine has an interesting piece on the Mad King.
"During the campaign he had asked me to support him, and [said] that if he were to be elected, I would be his vice mayor, says [Wendell] Young. "He supported me when I ran, which made it very difficult to say no to him when he wanted my support. But I didn't like the people around him. It was never a case of not liking him. It was what I could see that he was going to owe—and who he was going to owe favors to—that was a problem for me." Among the folks Young is alluding to is the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST), the anti-tax, anti-development, anti-gay, anti-public projects, and anti-tax break (usually) group that reliably despises and belittles Democrats but made a point of giving Cranley an endorsement (which he ultimately rejected) in the middle of a campaign that he eventually won by peeling off votes from COAST-friendly demographics.
"I think, at center, he's a decent guy," says Young of the mayor. "I think he cares about the city—I really do mean that. It’s just that I'm not really able to talk about the new John Cranley because he’s a guy I don't know."
Could it be that in Cranley's quest for power the web of favors he now owes has slowly been driving him mad? Why else would he want to tear asunder what so many see as a shining gem?

No comments: