Word: kucinich
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...Cleveland's Dennis Kucinich is the youngest mayor of any big American city. Aggressive, bright and ambitious, he seemed likely to make good on his campaign promise to shake up city hall and provide more efficient government when he took office last November. Since then, Kucinich has indeed shaken up Cleveland. But, for the most part, the results have bordered on the disastrous. Last week, after he fired popular Police Chief Richard Hongisto, citizen groups began a recall movement that may send Kucinich into early retirement...
Despite his youth and choirboy looks, the 5-ft. 6-in. Kucinich (pronounced Koosin-itch) is a savvy veteran of Cleveland's bruising ward politics. The son of a truck driver, he grew up on the city's ethnic, working-class West Side (his father is Croatian, his mother Irish). At 23, he won a seat on the city council and six years later was elected clerk of courts, the city's second highest elective office. A maverick Democrat with a strong anti-Establishment bias, he has built his power base among poor and working-class voters...
Witty and energetic, he has great appeal among the young; he keeps a ventriloquist's dummy in his baronial office to entertain visiting schoolchildren. Kucinich has a large collection of comic books and has seen Star Wars six times. He is a master at manipulating the media. On the night that he edged out the official Democratic candidate for mayor by only 2,900 votes of the 180,000 cast, Kucinich was in the newsroom of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where he once worked as a copy boy. While photographers clicked their cameras, he sent the edited story...
Cleveland: Dennis Kucinich smiles like an altar boy and snarls like a truck driver-a potent combination in a city of energetic ethnics. Part Irish, part Croatian, standing 5 ft. 6 in. and looking even younger than he is, Democrat Kucinich is accused of going for the jugular even when he does not have to. He accused Republican Mayor Ralph Perk in the primary of selling out to business interests and neglecting the neighborhoods. Perk finished a poor third behind Kucinich and State Representative Feighan...
Then the two survivors turned on each other. Feighan had the backing of the Democratic organization, but Kucinich won with just over 50% of the vote, thus becoming the youngest mayor of a major city. He promises to increase city services to the neighborhoods, reduce tax abatements for businesses and fire unproductive political appointees. "Some people have said I'm going to take a broom and sweep out city hall," Kucinich said in his victory speech. "That's not true. I'm going to use a vacuum cleaner...