If there were a poll measuring approval and disapproval, Toledo City Council might get numbers like what the United States Congress gets.
The current council has been described by more than one veteran politics watcher in Toledo as one of the worst councils in memory.
The problem is a lack of positive accomplishments and an excess of meaningless posturing.
Toledo has done better, and gotten better councils, in the past, including some outstanding people with names like Savage and Douglas and Owens and Ford. Toledo deserves better today.
The council desperately needs new blood.
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Therefore, The Blade endorses four new faces for city council: Nick Komives, Sam Melden, Alfonso Narvaez, and Clyde Phillips, Jr.
The Blade also endorses two incumbents: Sandy Spang and Rob Ludeman. Both are steady oarsmen who could help guide the council toward productiveness and sobriety if the council majority would let them. (Ms. Spang is an independent and Mr. Ludeman is a Republican. Democratic council members hold the majority.)
✔ Mr. Ludeman is seeking his third term as an at-large councilman. He previously served as a district councilman for 14 years. He is an old hand who understands city government and administration well. He balances a pragmatic view of local government — as a primary helper of those who need a temporary hand up — with a low-tax, pro-business, Republican orientation. He is not a visionary, and not charismatic, but he is able and amiable. He can work across party lines. His campaign literature promises experience and common sense, and both claims are actually accurate. Mr. Ludeman is valuable for his institutional memory alone. If he were not a Republican, he would probably have been elected mayor long ago.
✔ Sandy Spang is the hardest working and most conscientious member of the current council. She is running for her second term on council and also ran for mayor two years ago. She reads and researches nonstop, but despite her hard work, especially on priority-based budgeting, she has never been given a committee chairmanship, and she has sometimes been consigned to the margins. That has been the council’s, and the city’s, loss. Ms. Spang is someone devoted to learning and, unlike so many, she has learned while on council, both policy and politics. And she has the work ethic of a Siberian Husky. Ms. Spang would be a good council president. For the president, as we have tragically and recently been reminded, can become the mayor. The council president should be someone of independence and standing, and an at-large member, who could actually handle the mayor’s office. Ms. Spang still has a lot more to give. But she has surely earned re-election.
✔ Nick Komives, who describes himself as a community organizer, has been active in the Democratic Party and in behalf of gay rights in Greater Toledo. He is the kind of person who will dig in and do the day-to-day scutwork, whether it means studying a budget or going door to door. And, at age 33, he is part of Toledo’s youth movement. That is our future, and yet the younger leaders have been held at arm’s length while Toledo endlessly recycles the same old, tired faces. His generation should no longer be kept waiting. Mr. Komives would bring fresh air to council.
✔ So would Sam Melden, also 33, who has been the most visible, imaginative, and articulate rising star in civic leadership for some years now. Mr. Melden has been bouncing around various nonprofits and has assumed various political identities, but has now embraced the Democratic Party, and it seems to have embraced him. He now works for Leadership Toledo. Mr. Melden is a font of ideas. He also has the capacity to bring together people who don’t talk to each other much or don’t even know each other — from old labor leaders to CEOs. For the moment, all the major players in town like Mr. Melden, though he is not well known in many of the neighborhoods. Win or lose, he will be around.
✔ Alfonso Narvaez, at 26, is even younger than Messrs. Komives and Melden, but he has already run for council three times. Alas, he is a Republican. His party not only cannot help him much in Toledo, but it has hurt him. He ran for council four years ago and was endorsed by The Blade then. He is a person who gets his hands dirty. He does not call himself an organizer, but he has organized his North Toledo neighborhood — for safety, for neighborliness, and to combat blight. He did these things before he was in politics, without asking for glory or publicity, and he will keep doing them. He is a true neighbor and citizen and would make a great contribution to council, and the powerless people of the city, though he does not talk the politics of pity a bit — if he could get elected.
✔ So would Clyde Phillips, Jr., an unendorsed Democrat who grew up in the North End and now lives in the Old West End. Mr. Phillips is the kind of person the Founders hoped would have a place in our system — an outsider and an amateur. Often in our current politics, such people are seen as mere cranks. Not Mr. Phillips, who made a living for most of his life doing roofing, plumbing, and electric contracting. He also served in the Army for eight years and was stationed all over the world. He probably knows more about the problems of actual people in the challenged neighborhoods than all the members of the current council combined. He would bring some unvarnished truth to council, as he has to several campaign forums, including The Blade’s. He raises the question Donald Trump raised nationally: Can a true outsider with a distinctive point of view be effective within a system dominated by career politicians?
Of 12 candidates running for at-large council seats this year, six will be elected. The Blade recommends these six as a balanced and diverse group that would listen to citizens, listen to each other, work with the mayor and city administration, and help change the council from talkers to doers. They would be the change we need, and they could help Toledo to progress.
First Published November 5, 2017, 6:13 a.m.
