It was arguably the riskiest and most ambitious moment of Ben Konop's young political career - and it ultimately led to his decision to not run for a second term as Lucas County commissioner.
"I will not be seeking re-election in 2010," Mr. Konop, a Democrat whose four-year term expires at year's end, told The Blade in an exclusive interview.
For the 33-year-old commissioner, who campaigned on bringing fresh ideas and perspectives to county government, that climactic moment happened at a public hearing last spring and best illustrated for him the entrenched mindset of northwest Ohio's "powers that be" - or those he believes have thwarted his greatest ideas for change.
After months of policy research and numbers crunching, Mr. Konop was unveiling his proposal for a $70 million publicly financed scholarship program aimed at increasing the number of county residents with college degrees.
"In the 21st-century global economy, a business with good-paying jobs more often than not chooses its locations based on the skills, training, and education of a city's work force," Mr. Konop said. "Toledo has some of the hardest-working and dedicated workers on this planet, but if we, meaning government, don't equip them with the skills necessary to compete in the global economy - and do so with a sense of urgency - there is a real chance that Toledo will become something like Gary, Ind."
And the real beauty of the plan, in Mr. Konop's opinion, was that it wouldn't require new taxes; funding for the bond purchase would come by turning down thermostats, switching some county employees to four-day workweeks, and, most crucial, by privatizing some county-dispatched ambulance services.
But the proposal didn't go over well at the May 26 public hearing. Packing the room was an audience of more than 70 irritated fire officials, paramedics, and local politicians who weren't impressed by Mr. Konop's proposal and feared service reductions, job losses, or pay cuts.
Future Toledo Mayor Mike Bell, the former fire chief who would go on to beat Mr. Konop in last year's mayoral primary, sat with arms folded among old fire service colleagues and voiced his own disapproval. Once Mr. Konop heard fellow Commissioners Pete Gerken and Tina Skeldon Wozniak join in the chorus, he said he knew his idea was dead.
"That meeting was probably the most clear-cut example of the good old boys circling the wagons to just shut down even any discussion of change," Mr. Konop recalled last week. "It's a win-win, logical program that is much needed in our community, and it was within 30 minutes just shot down by the entire status-quo network of northwest Ohio."
So, Mr. Konop, a bachelor who lives in downtown Toledo, is not interested in another four years as the odd man out in his hometown community.
He said he came to this decision about a month ago after much reflection. He said he's in contact with people "at the federal level" for a potential new job that would allow him to continue helping northwest Ohioans in ways that he couldn't at the local level.
He declined to give specifics about those job prospects but said it is not an elected position. His salary as commissioner is $87,075 a year.
"There are only so many times you can run up against a brick wall, and eventually you want to try and take another direction to get around the brick wall," Mr. Konop said. "Getting outvoted 2-to-1 [on the Board of Commissioners] repeatedly for four years might not be the best way to make change in northwest Ohio."
Mr. Konop's departure will occur six years after he became involved in the region's politics.
The University of Michigan law school graduate had been living in Washington and working 50 to 70 hours a week for a six-figure salary at the Fulbright & Jaworski law firm.
But U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) - his boss when he was a teenage congressional page - urged the 27-year-old during a 2003 White House Christmas Party to challenge Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Oxley of Ohio's 4th Congressional District in the next election.
Mr. Konop quit his job as a lawyer, moved to Ada, Ohio, and focused solely on his long-shot bid. Mr. Oxley was the longtime incumbent and was chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
Although Mr. Konop lost the 2004 race, he had a surprisingly strong showing and scored a rare victory for a Democrat by carrying Allen County.
Mr. Konop moved to Toledo and was elected commissioner in 2006 after soundly defeating George Sarantou, a Republican and current Toledo City councilman.
He continued to work part-time after the election as a university instructor, teaching election law at the University of Toledo and legislative process at Ohio Northern University in Ada. Mr. Konop donated his UT salary to a college scholarship fund. He since has stopped teaching.
Joined by two fellow Democrats on the Board of Commissioners, Mr. Konop said he was surprised to find the resistance to his "change agenda," considering the severity of the region's problems.
"We've been deteriorating, frankly, as a community for so long that I thought logically, people in government and in positions of power would be more open to change," he said.
He sparred with Mr. Gerken and Ms. Wozniak over $450,000 of new windows for a county building (they wanted them, he didn't) as well as over problems at the Lucas County Improvement Corp., a development agency that Mr. Konop insisted was little more than a vehicle for rewarding political cronies.
Now, Mr. Konop counts among his victories resolutions for greater public transparency with politicians' campaign donors, as well as a new policy against nepotistic hiring practices.
Another victory involved the Lucas County dog warden's office, which he felt euthanized too many dogs. The county is looking to hire a new dog warden after mounting criticism from Mr. Konop and animal welfare advocates prompted longtime Dog Warden Tom Skeldon to resign recently.
He is also proud of having saved the Children's Wonderland exhibit from being mothballed last Christmas season. Still, it appears that Mr. Konop will leave office without accomplishing much of the ambitious agenda he laid out.
When he announced his candidacy last year for mayor, he was fiercely criticized for breaking a promise to serve his full four-year commissioner term. His response was that at the time he signed the pledge, Toledo wasn't facing double-digit unemployment, a foreclosure crisis, and a gaping deficit.
Mr. Konop's mayoral campaign received some unflattering attention locally and nationally with the appearance last summer of a YouTube video showing him being repeatedly heckled during a campaign news conference. Perhaps more damaging was Mr. Konop's participation in a subsequent video intended as a spoof of the heckler episode.
That video, produced for a comedy show called MonkeY DomE, showed the candidate karate-chopping and smashing a picture over the head of a man, whom he wrestles on camera. During the action, a U.S. flag is thrown to the ground and kicked around.
Although Mr. Konop apologized, critics seized on the video as evidence that he was too young and immature for office.
The video appeared barely a month before the September primary election. Mr. Konop finished a distant fifth out of the six candidates, just ahead of self-proclaimed prophetess Opal Covey.
"It certainly harmed my mayoral campaign, there's no doubt about it, because it distracted people from issues that were actually relevant," Mr. Konop said. "But there were no repercussions to anybody but myself. It wasn't like I spent millions of dollars of taxpayer money on some bad investment or something - that would have showed immaturity."
While Mr. Konop said he was disappointed by the outcome of his mayoral bid, he insisted that he didn't decide until recently whether to run again for commissioner. Two candidates, including Mr. Sarantou, have filed petitions to run for the seat.
Mr. Konop is confident he would have prevailed but said he expected a fierce race and wasn't looking forward to mounting a high-energy campaign in an election year that could be very rough on incumbents.
"I wouldn't want to run a campaign where I didn't put a full, complete effort into it," he said.
Mr. Konop said his greatest regret as commissioner has been his inability to pass the college scholarship proposal. Critiquing his own performance, he said he regrets not building enough political coalitions to help propel his agenda. All too often, he went it alone.
"That's a good lesson I think I've learned, that you can't just rely on the integrity of your argument. You have to build some sort of political coalition to push it through," the commissioner said. "Whether that would have been enough to overcome this circle-the-wagons mentality - who knows."
Mr. Konop said he also doesn't know when or where or in what capacity he will run again for elected office again, but it's something he expects to do.
"I assume it would be in northwest Ohio, but I haven't really come to that point yet," he said.
Contact JC Reindl at:
jreindl@theblade.com
or 419-724-6065.
First Published February 15, 2010, 6:55 p.m.
