Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval, about one year into his second four-year term, says there are many Cincinnatians who have no idea what powers he has and what powers he doesn’t have.
And that bothers him a lot.
“The misunderstanding impacts people’s expectations for me every day I am in this job,” Pureval told WVXU.
He knows exactly what he is not.
He’s not the weak mayor of 50 years ago who had no authority whatsoever except to bang the gavel at council meetings and try to cash in on whatever political capital he or she brought to the office.
Nor is he the chief operating officer responsible for all of the day-to-day operations of the city, from making sure the garbage trucks are rolling, that the snow plows are busting up the snow and ice each winter, or personally supervising the filling of every cavernous pothole that pockmark city streets.
He — or any future mayor of Cincinnati — is not that guy.
That guy — or woman, currently — is the city manager.
Pureval is what he calls a “strong-ish mayor,” with some powers that were not part of the job description when the council-manager form of government was adopted 101 years ago.
He has, as mayor, been the object of complaints and multiple opinion columns because he was absent from City Hall and the city itself when some major events took place, all of them very ugly.
Pureval was on a planned family vacation in Vancouver, Canada, in July 2025 when a violent assault and street brawl Downtown drew intense public attention. He chose to cut the trip short by four days.
On Opening Day of Reds baseball this year, the mayor was away for a family spring break trip when rowdy crowds and disorder took to streets around The Banks and forced forced police to shut down the entire area.
And just last month, Pureval was attending the Asian American Pacific Islander Leadership Summit in Los Angeles when historically heavy rains caused severe flooding on the city’s East Side.
On July 8, Pureval was on Paramount’s The Daily Show with host Ronny Chieng, a comedian, taking about increasing the city’s housing stock — growing population and not enough places for them to live — and fending off Chieng’s misinformed jabs about Cincinnati being a “Republican stronghold” and a city of nice but boring people.
It wasn’t until later that week that the flooding on the East Side became and issue.
“I may not be here every time a major problem arises, but if I’m not its not because I don’t care,’’ Pureval said.
He is quick to remind his critics that, for 101 years, Cincinnati has had a city manager directing the daily operations of the city government. The present city manager is Sheryl Long.
Pureval says he doesn’t spend much time thinking about what he will do next, once his time in office is over.
“I am open to the idea of running for statewide office in Ohio at some point, but that’s so far off, I don’t know what the opportunities will be,” he said.
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