Kucinich - Guts & Integrity - An Earned Reputation

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http://mideastcenter.org/dong08232003.html
August 23, 2003

The Boy Mayor and the Power Company
Kucinich has been Burnt by FirstEnergy Before
By CATHERINE DONG

Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich was cautious in his statements Saturday about the First Energy plant in Ohio that may have been responsible for the massive blackout affecting more than 50 million people across North America. He did not immediately point an accusatory finger at First Energy, emphasizing that the first priority must be to restore power and water to those who have lost it. Even the concerns he expressed about First Energy were carefully prefaced by the words "recent press reports indicate" and "if press reports are accurate," indicating his willingness to give them a fair shake, something that they were less than willing to give him 25 years ago.

Dennis J. Kucinich first made his name in politics by becoming the youngest mayor of a large city, when in 1977 he became the mayor of Cleveland, Ohio at age 31. He took over a city that was deeply in debt but, as these things tend to go, was soon blamed for the city's financial crises. The city tried to negotiate the renewal of $14 million worth of notes held in local banks. A rollover, it's called, and it's usual for banks to agree. Not this time.

The banks had a get-rich-quick scheme up their sleeve. They wanted Mayor Kucinich to sell the city's electric company, MUNY Light, to Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company whose parent company nowadays is, you guessed it, First Energy. Why did these bankers want that? Well, of the eleven directors of Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company, eight were also directors of four of the banks. And five of the banks held almost 1.8 million shares of CEI stock.

So the banks pushed the city into default and Kucinich lost his next re-election bid because of First Energy's greed. Oh, yes, greed. Because in the 1990s, the people of Cleveland woke up to the fact that Dennis Kucinich had saved them all a ton of money. In 1998, the Cleveland City Council honored him for "having the courage and foresight to refuse to sell the city's municipal electric system," saying he had saved Clevelanders more than 300 million -- that 300 million that they would have paid to CEI if Kucinich had caved in. But he didn't. That doesn't seem to be his style.