After all that time and effort, after all the hoopla had died down and the election night results in Cincinnati showed few voters wanted any part of Republican nominee Cory Bowman as their next mayor, you have to wonder what that candidacy was all about.
It clearly wasn’t about moving into the corner office at 801 Plum Street.
It was clear before 9 p.m. Tuesday, when the early voting totals were released, that the neophyte candidate’s campaign was like a backyard bottle rocket that fizzled out before reaching the tree line, falling harmlessly to the ground.
With 45 of the city’s 109 precincts reporting, Bowman was losing to incumbent Democratic Aftab Pureval to a margin of nearly 4 to 1.
Bowman was the longest of long-shot candidates for mayor since direct election of Cincinnati’s mayor began in 2001.
Despite the drubbing, there are those who believe Bowman may not be done with politics.
Some Republicans who look at what the Ohio Redistricting Commission did last week to flip Democratic Congressman Greg Landsman’s 1st Congressional District from “leans Democrat” to “leans Republican” see Bowman as a potential candidate.
Becoming mayor was improbable from the start. Bowman was:
- a candidate whose only claim to fame was that he is the half-brother of Vice President JD Vance, in a heavily Democratic city, where Kamala Harris won the city just last fall with 75% of the vote.
- a neophyte in politics who never voted in Cincinnati until last year, when he voted for the Trump/Vance ticket.
- a Butler County native who came to Cincinnati four years ago to open a church affiliated with an evangelical church in Tampa, where he had spent most of his adult life.
- a candidate who qualified for the general election by coming in second in the May primary, with only 13% of the vote compared to 83% for incumbent mayor Aftab Pureval.
It wasn’t a good day for Republicans loyal to Donald Trump, either here or elsewhere. Democrats won governorships in Virginia and New Jersey, while a self-described "Democratic socialist" was elected mayor of New York City.
It is not as if Bowman had nothing to run on. He did not lack on hot-button issues.
Crime became a central focus of the campaign in August following a brawl Downtown that was shared widely on social media — here and nationwide.
Many Cincinnatians — including the Queen City Lodge of the FOP — believed Pureval was scapegoating Police Chief Teresa Theetge for the growing concern over crime.
Theetge currently is on leave and fighting to keep her job.
And the FOP endorsed Bowman for mayor.
That led to a late campaign phenomenon that rebounded in Bowman’s favor — appearances all over the city of dark blue yard signs saying in bold, white letters, “I stand by Chief Theetge.”
From Sunday to Monday, the number of such signs we saw driving through East Walnut Hills and Hyde Park exploded, growing like kudzu on a Georgia highway.
It’s fair to say that inside those homes with the pro-Theetge signs lives either a relative of the chief, a person with an FOP sticker on the bumper of their car, or a Bowman voter. Or all three.
But on Tuesday, for the Republican running for mayor in a dark blue city, there just weren’t enough of them.
Maybe his true supporters are somewhere outside the city limits. Time will tell.
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