Jack Ford didn't follow the path taken by most Toledo politicians.
Most start on the city's board of education, trying to make a name for themselves, and then seek higher office, he said.
But for Mr. Ford, a stint on the school board has marked the end, at least for now, of a long political career.
After five years on the Toledo Board of Education, the former Toledo mayor and state legislator said health concerns, which included nearly dying from diabetic complications earlier this year, convinced him to take a break and he did not seek a second school board term.
But he is not retiring, and quietly says he could someday return to public service.
"I've learned not to say never, but with my health challenges, I've decided to slow down," Mr. Ford said the day after his final board of education meeting last week. "It doesn't mean I wouldn't serve on a board or take on a volunteer, short-term role."
Right now he is concentrating on his daughters, his 3-year-old granddaughter, and teaching a constitutional law course at the University of Toledo. Starting next month, he will teach four courses there.
Tall, cerebral, and soft-spoken, Mr. Ford, 64, formerly a social worker, has for decades been an integral part of Toledo and Ohio politics. He is arguably best known in Toledo for his single term as the city's first black mayor, from 2002 to 2006.
During his four years in the mayor's office, Mr. Ford weathered economic and budget woes and said he was stuck with a budget deficit his first day in office that was compounded by a jobless recovery.
While mayor, Mr. Ford led a crackdown on Toledo employee sick-leave abuse, an upgrade of outdated city computer technology, development of new auto parts supplier plants and an expansion of the Jeep assembly plant, a controversial 2003 smoking ban, and establishment of the CareNet health care plan for uninsured Lucas County residents.
"CareNet has been a model for the country and has served some 24,000 Lucas County people over that period who would not have health care," Mr. Ford said.
He also oversaw the start of a $450 million sewer-treatment upgrade, 100 miles of street resurfacing in 2005, and cleanup of the former Toledo Edison Acme power plant site for the Marina District. And he weathered the departure of Owens-Illinois Inc.'s headquarters from downtown Toledo to Perrysburg and a failed development agreement for the Marina District.
Mr. Ford said he knew the smoking ban and taking on city unions with his sick-time abuse crackdown would hinder his re-election attempt, but he didn't care.
"It was probably one of a couple of reasons I lost so badly," he said. "One of the things people say I don't do well enough is take credit for things, and that may be true; that is just not my style."
Criticized for style
Mr. Ford was sometimes criticized while he was mayor for his soft-spoken, leaden style.
His longtime friend Bob Vasquez, a Toledo Board of Eduction colleague, said that management style is actually one of Mr. Ford's great strengths.
"The public has a way of seeing him calm and even monotone, but he has a calming effect when solving problems — complicated problems," Mr. Vasquez said. "His legacy is going to be a very good one and very strong, and people will come to appreciate him more over time."
Mr. Ford's life and career crisscrossed and tangled with the more fiery personality of Carty Finkbeiner — someone more known to take credit when he could.
At most times the two were buddies, playing tennis together as young men, having their families spend time together, and working together. Later in life, they banged skulls, culminating with the 2005 election campaign when the incumbent Mayor Ford was ousted by Mr. Finkbeiner, his two-term predecessor who left office in 2001 because of term limits.
In 1980, Mr. Ford was chosen as director of substance-abuse prevention for the Lucas County Mental Health Board, with the task of consolidating several struggling agencies. The result was Substance Abuse Services Inc., which he continued to lead after his 1987 election to the first of his four Toledo City Council terms. He left the agency upon his election as a state representative in 1994.
‘The F Troop'
After Mr. Ford's election to council, he, Mr. Finkbeiner, and Councilman Mike Ferner were dubbed "the F Troop" for their often lockstep votes that pushed issues such as diversity in city hiring. During that time, Mr. Ford and Mr. Finkbeiner teamed up to sell Toledo on a youth curfew, and they drafted a city charter amendment to establish a "strong-mayor" form of government — a major change under which Mr. Finkbeiner was the first mayor elected and Mr. Ford was the second.
The two men wrote the charter amendment over several nights at the kitchen table in Mr. Finkbeiner's South Toledo home. Mr. Ford said the pair's hours of work were fueled by sugary grape juice, which eventually had to stop flowing because of Mr. Ford's Type 2 diabetes.
Voters approved the strong-mayor charter change and Mr. Finkbeiner narrowly beat Mr. Ferner in 1993 to become mayor. Mr. Ford, meanwhile, won the city council presidency.
The following year, Mr. Ford successfully ran for a vacant Ohio House of Representatives seat. During two terms in Columbus, he rose to the rank of House minority leader.
"In the legislature, I got more legislation passed as a Democrat than anyone else in my tenure, particularly in foster care," he said. "The Johnnie Jordan law, that was the [1996] case where the foster kid killed his foster mother. … I passed a statewide law that made it incumbent on children servicing agencies to require kids like Johnnie Jordan to undergo monthly psychological [exams]."
In 1997, Mr. Ford said he flirted with the idea of returning home to run for mayor against Mr. Finkbeiner, his old friend and fellow Democrat, who at the time was wrapping up his first term. They both screened for the Democratic Party's endorsement. Mr. Finkbeiner won it and Mr. Ford declined to run. During that second Finkbeiner term, Mr. Ford criticized the mayor over an ethics issue and his treatment of minority city officials.
Term-limits factor
Term limits barred Mr. Finkbeiner from seeking a third consecutive term in 2001 and Mr. Ford, seizing the opportunity, ran for the office and won it despite Mr. Finkbeiner's endorsement of his opponent, Ray Kest.
Mr. Finkbeiner would become a political commentator on WTVG-TV, Channel 13, a pulpit he sometimes used to criticize Mayor Ford's administration before engaging in what became a visceral, mud-slinging election campaign in 2005.
Mr. Ford compared Mr. Finkbeiner to scandal-plagued Gov. Bob Taft, blamed him for a $16 million hole in the city budget, and repeatedly raised a 1999 incident when Mr. Finkbeiner allegedly hit a city employee with a coffee mug. By that point, it was clear to insiders that their friendship had been replaced by something more like the relationship between two prize-fighting boxers.
"I was in politics for eight years and I have been amazed at the relationship of some individuals who have made it more of a career and how they can go from being really good friends and then being political rivals," said Louis Escobar, who was a councilman under both Mr. Ford and Mr. Finkbeiner and a council president.
‘Carty is Carty'
Today, Mr. Ford said he and Mr. Finkbeiner are good friends once again.
"Carty is Carty," he said. "We got past the campaign. He has come over to see me about 10 times."
Current Toledo Mayor Mike Bell, who was fire chief in Mr. Ford's administration, called his former boss "a true public servant."
"I wish him well in whatever his new endeavors will be," Mr. Bell said. "He had a little bit more relaxed style than [Mayor Finkbeiner's] administration. Jack sort of let you do your job and I appreciated that. He didn't try to get into micromanaging you as a chief."
The controversial Ohio Issue 2 put Mr. Bell and his former boss at odds in the autumn.
Mr. Ford teamed up with his former rival, Mr. Finkbeiner, to publicly oppose the referendum on the Republican-backed, collective-bargaining bill, Senate Bill 5, in the Nov. 8 election.
Mr. Bell was the lone big-city mayor who endorsed the measure.
After his mayoral re-election defeat, Mr. Ford returned to politics in June, 2007, with appointment to the school board seat to which he was then elected the following November.
Praise for Ford
A month later, Mr. Ford's health issues — something he had been dealing with for decades — became public when he disclosed during a taping of Coffee with the Fords, the Sunday morning program he and his wife hosted on WTVG-TV, that he had been undergoing kidney dialysis.
Mr. Vasquez and TPS Superintendent Jerome Pecko said Mr. Ford was a vibrant school-board member despite his health issues.
"Jack Ford is an icon in the Toledo community and its public schools," Mr. Pecko said. "His impact on the district has been huge. He has been an advocate for minority and gender inclusion [in awarding school construction contracts], for fair and equitable administration of discipline of students, and persistence in demanding, from our external providers, the delivery of quality tutorial services for TPS youth."
Kidney and respiratory complications almost killed Mr. Ford this summer, when he spent two months at Toledo Hospital followed by a long rehabilitation. He missed months of school board meetings.
Mr. Ford had retired from his professor position at Bowling Green State University just days before his hospitalization, and soon thereafter decided not to seek re-election to the school board.
"It has been a great career for me. Toledo has been very good to me and I have tried to, in turn, do some things as payback, but I will be 65 in May and I think it's best I slow down," Mr. Ford said. "But that doesn't mean if I get ticked off about something, I [won't] get back in the fray."
Contact Ignazio Messina at: imessina@theblade.com or 419-724-6171.
First Published December 26, 2011, 5:30 a.m.
