Candidate for
Commissioner; County of Hamilton; 4 Year Term Starting 1/2/13

I believe in Local Government. The closer you are to the people you represent, the more transparent your work becomes and the more accountable you are.

I believe that it is important that our leaders in public office maintain that visibility and remain accountable and accessible to the people they serve.

I believe that all people are deserving of representation and that their opinions and their voices need to be given a meaningful opportunity to be heard.

I believe it is important for people in office to work together. That compromise is not a bad word. Instead, compromise is quite often, on the contrary, necessary to move the Nation forward.

I strive for consensus governance to enable all citizens to have a meaningful stake in their government and in the outcome.

I believe that it is important to remain true to your principles and that people have a right to know where you stand on an issue as clearly and unambiguously as possible.

I believe it is possible to compromise on the methodology of how you move forward without having to sacrifice your principles.

I am fiscally conservative yet believe that we must govern with a big tent to live up to the promise of what our representative republic is, and always has been, about.

I believe that we must be prudent in our decisions and conservative in our spending. Nonetheless, there are times when sound, strategic investments must be made in order to move the county forward

I am often asked why, or how, did I become a Democrat growing up in Hamilton County as the son of two registered Republicans? I am most certainly a fiscal conservative. However, as the second of three brothers in my family, I have, like all middle children, been a moderate and worked to compromise and resolve conflict.

When it came time to vote and to consider declaring a party, my choice was clearly influenced by three key life-changing events in my life during what I refer to as my "formative years" from being a young teenager the age of 14 in 1972, to when I completed Law School in 1983. During those years I experienced:

1.) The death of my father in 1972 when I was just 14 years old. We endured. But I learned how quickly life can change on a dime and with it, due to tragedy, your hopes, your dreams and even your survival can become dependent on the existence of a safety net in place to offer a helping hand.

2.) The pain of discrimination. After Dad died I watched my Mother sacrifice, and labor and endure to go back to school and earn her Master's degree to sharpen her employability and job skills, only to be passed over time and time again by younger less qualified individuals who were also almost invariably male; and

3.) The murder of my cousin Donald Weis. Don was a Giant of a man in terms of stature, morals, courage and leadership. He was a first cousin and a Cincinnati firefighter and was murdered on the streets of Cincinnati by a man in full view of the killer's wife and children. The event highlighted the need for effective law enforcement AND the need for effective early intervention and proactive measures; in short, the need for both if we are to be serious about public safety; and about reducing crime and making our community safe.

When I examined the record of the major parties on these issues I concluded that the Democratic Party was the Party more in tune to what I experienced and what I felt was the appropriate response to each. If you look at the historical record of both major parties any objective analysis reveals that the Democratic Party has been the Party more willing than not to:

1.) champion for safety nets to help people in need during times of personal tragedy; and

2.) stand up against all forms of discrimination and promote equal, human and civil rights; and

3.) roll up their sleeves to attack crime with more than rhetoric and "get tough" legislation, and instead, try to attack root causes of crime while also adopting appropriate anti-crime and sentencing legislation.

For those reasons arising out of three intimate, life changing experiences, I became a Member of the Democratic Party, and, for those same reasons, I have remained a Member ever since.