Posted by Plain Dealer
on February 23, 2008, 5:45 pm
75.185.182.243
Kucinich and Cimperman prove yet again that the voters should retire the show horse and hitch up a workhorse
Tuesday's 10th Congres sional District debate un derscored why Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cim perman is the best of the five Democrats running in the March 4 primary, and why incumbent Rep. Dennis Kucinich should be replaced.
The City Club event, staged in a ballroom at the Crown Plaza Cleveland City Centre Hotel, not only attracted a sell-out audience of nearly 700 people, it was broadcast live by two television stations and one radio station. That's good, because the stakes are high.
Kucinich has pursued two embarrassingly ineffective presidential campaigns since 2004, while his district and all of Northeast Ohio have continued to suffer from economic decline and federal neglect. The 10th District deserves a full-time, thoroughly engaged representative in Washington who can set aside personal ambition and self-righteousness long enough to deliver for the folks back home.
Two answers made the differences between Cimperman and Kucinich crystal-clear:
When veteran labor leader John Gallo suggested that Cimperman had not done enough to keep Wal-Mart out of Cleveland, the councilman quite correctly challenged that assertion. To the dismay of this editorial page, Cimperman worked very hard either to keep out the retail giant or to set parameters so restrictive it would have been foolish to come. His efforts for a time threatened to scuttle the entire Steelyard Commons project, one of the biggest retail developments Cleveland has seen in decades. Eventually, though, he and other Wal-Mart opponents were outmaneuvered by developer Mitchell Schneider and Mayor Jane Campbell's administration.
If Cimperman were more like Kucinich, he would have railed against the unfairness of it all, said the bombastic things local labor leaders - other than those in the construction trades, that is - wanted to hear and moved on to some other cause. Instead, Cimperman showed why he's the kind of legislator this region needs in Wash ington: When handed a bushel of lemons, he made lemonade.
Cimperman worked with Schneider to create a tax-increment finance package that generated money to build the Towpath Trail and to help neighborhood businesses compete with Steelyard's big chain stores.
That's what a smart leader does.
A few minutes later, Kucinich was asked about his attitude toward business, especially small business. Financial planner Thomas Pitrone said he used to visit Kucinich's Washington office on annual lobbying trips organized by the Council of Smaller Enterprises, but the delegation was met with such indifference that they no longer bother going there.
Kucinich seemed stunned; why, he and his staff welcome everyone. Then he ripped into COSE - whose efforts to provide affordable health coverage to its members have won national acclaim - for wanting to reform the current insurance system, not replace it with the single-payer model Kucinich prefers.
That's vintage Kucinich: Don't support an initiative that might help some of the people you represent in the short-run. Hold out for a sweeping overhaul that not even a majority of your Democratic colleagues considers feasible. That way, nothing gets done, but you hang on to an applause line.
Haven't Kucinich's constituents had enough of his trips to Des Moines and Damascus? Yes, it's true, as challenger Barbara Ferris pointed out, that Cimperman cannot vote for himself on March 4 - he does, for now, live across the street from the district's eastern edge.
But people in the 10th District who want real leadership can vote - for Joe Cimperman.
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