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Article
published August 25, 2001
Ford, Kest sign code
of conduct for clean race
Mayoral
hopefuls among 1st in nation to adopt pledge
By FRITZ WENZEL
BLADE POLITICAL WRITER
Ray
Kest and Jack Ford signed a pledge yesterday to run a clean
campaign, making Toledo among the first major cities in the nation
where candidates for mayor agreed to adopt a code of conduct
governing their campaigns.
The pledge calls for candidates to
be "committed to the principles of honesty, fairness, respect for my
opponent, responsibility, and compassion," and may short-circuit a
bitter race between warring factions of the local Democratic Party
that held the potential to become one of the nastiest in city
history.
"This is very unusual," said Brad Rourke, the vice
president of public policy for the Institute for Global Ethics. "I
can’t think of another city like Toledo where this has
happened."
"I hope it represents the beginning of a wave," he
said. "We have been working since 1998 to encourage these codes on
the theory and hope that we could get codes of conduct ingrained
into the political landscape, so it doesn’t require a nonprofit
organization to push for them."
Mr. Kest and Mr. Ford have
raised record amounts of campaign cash to fund their fight for the
most influential office in northwest Ohio.
The pledge was the
brainchild of the Project on Campaign Conduct, an organization that
has run pilot projects in Ohio and Washington state to try to
improve the nature of political campaigns during the 1998 and 2000
elections.
The project is part of the Institute for Global
Ethics, a nonpartisan think tank in Camden, Me., which sponsors
research into public morality.
"Hats off to The Blade for
putting this forward in such a way that the candidates paid
attention, and hats off to the candidates for agreeing to sign," Mr.
Rourke said.
The institute’s "clean-campaign pledge" was
printed yesterday on The Blade’s Pages of Opinion.
Mr. Rourke
said that by noon yesterday he had received e-mails from around the
country alerting him to The Blade’s publication of the
pledge.
Mr. Kest and Mr. Ford signed copies of the pledge,
which they had downloaded from the institute’s web
site.
"This is exactly the kind of thing we have been hoping
would happen - a spontaneous, locally generated code of conduct. I
am thrilled," Mr. Rourke said.
The code of conduct has met
resistance in some established political circles, he said, because
"most political insiders and strategists advise their candidates to
not sign the pledge because it ties their hands.
"We are more
than happy to sign it and live by it and progress in our campaign
according to what I signed," said Mr. Kest, the Lucas County
treasurer who put his signature to the pledge during a news
conference in his Government Center office.
Mr. Ford, the
Ohio House minority leader, said he will "abide by the clean
campaign pledge, and I look forward to a campaign that is devoted to
a discussion of the issues that the citizens of Toledo care about."
Mr. Ford signed the agreement last night at Whitmer High School,
where he was preparing to greet people attending a football game
there.
Mr. Kest said he expects no trouble determining what
campaign charges would constitute a violation of the
pledge.
"I think it is obvious. Personal is personal," he
said. "For example, the policies in this office - how we work with
the taxpayers, programs that we do in this office - I think are open
to scrutiny and debate. I think Jack Ford’s legislative record
should be open to scrutiny and debate."
"I think the personal
attacks that have been going on and the innuendoes that are not true
should end," he said, referring to past sexual harassment
allegations made against him. Mr. Kest faced trial in civil court
from a former employee who complained of harassment, but a jury
found no merit in the charges.
"This says to the public that
we’re serious about running an issues-oriented campaign," Mr. Ford
said. "We’re going to win this on the issues. If we have to win it
any other way, it’s not worth having."
Other candidates in
the race said they support the pledge, including independent
candidate Armiya Muhammed, who runs a security company; James
Harmon, a mathematics teacher who is running as an independent; and
Rick Grafing, a restaurateur who is running an independent
campaign.
Opal Covey, an independent, did not respond to
calls seeking comment.
"I don’t believe in mudslinging, and I
won’t enter into it," Mr. Harmon said.
Mr. Grafing said it
"seems reasonable to me. It reminds me of the code of ethics of the
Better Business Bureau that I’m a member of. What it means is that
you are going to be honest and ethical in all your advertising," Mr.
Grafing said. "The claims you make you have to be able to
prove."
"I will not use, or allow to be used, personal
attacks, innuendo, or stereotyping," the pledge reads.
It
also calls for candidates to emphasize issues and their past records
and for factual documentation of claims, and disclosure of "all
contributions made to my campaign and will supply my campaign
finance reports for publication on the Internet."
Campaign
underlings are covered by the same pledge, according to the document
signed by the candidates.
The Project on Campaign Conduct is
not active in Ohio. But Catherine Turcer, campaign finance reform
director for Ohio Citizen Action, which co-sponsored the Ohio
project in 2000, said she is delighted to hear Toledo’s mayoral
candidates are interested in the clean campaign pledge.
"It’s
wonderful," she said.
The six candidates for mayor are
competing to succeed Mayor Carty Finkbeiner, who is barred by term
limits from seeking a third consecutive four-year term.
The
two top vote-getters in the Sept. 11 primary election will advance
to the Nov. 6 general election.
The next mayor of Toledo will
be paid $136,000.
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