Coleman, Michael B. 1955(?)–

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Michael B. Coleman 1955(?)–

Mayor

Michael B. Coleman made history in Ohio in 1999 as the first African-American mayor of its capital city, Columbus. As the new leader of the fifteenth-largest city in the United States, Coleman pledged to continue the work he carried out as an eight-year Columbus City Council member, where he worked to improve city services and revitalize its downtown district. “The secret of Coleman’s success is his extreme mastery of the details of the city of Columbus,” Democratic National Committee chair Joe Andrew told reporters for the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Watching him shaking hands and talking to people was amazing. He knew every street and every park that people talked about… He will be a great mayor.”

Coleman was born in mid-1950s in Indianapolis, Indiana, and moved to Toledo with his family when he was three. His father was a physician and installed his family in Toledo’s black middle-class neighborhood centered around Prospect Avenue. Coleman had an idyllic childhood, recalling the Prospect Avenue area as a neighborhood “where everybody took care of everybody,” he told Toledo Blade reporter Jack Baessler. “…My whole future was shaped by that experience on Prospect. My values were established on Prospect. My mom and dad played the most important role. Both were strong people with strong values.”

Coleman grew up with two brothers and a sister, and attended St. John’s Jesuit High School, where he was one of a handful of minority students. “I guess that is where I really learned to work with people,” he said in the interview with the Toledo Blade. “I felt being in that kind of environment, which is reality, that you have to work harder, be more focused; you have to work with people.” After graduating in 1973, he studied political science at the University of Cincinnati, earning his degree in 1977. From there Coleman entered law school at the University of Dayton, and received his juris doctor in 1980. He began his career as an attorney in the Ohio attorney general’s office, and in 1982 was hired as a legislative aide for Ben Espy, a Columbus City Council member.

By the mid-1980s, Coleman had married and started a family that would grow to include three children, and became active in Columbus civic groups. He served as a member of the Columbus Convention Center Citizens Advisory Group in 1986, and on the Retailer’s Task Force of the Downtown Development Corporation’s in 1987. He was also involved in the Community

At a Glance…

Born Michael Bennett Coleman, in 1955, in Indianapolis, IN; son of John (a physician) and Joan (a community activist) Coleman; married, Frankie; children: Kimberly, Justin, John David. Education: University of Cincinnati, degree in political science, 1977; University of Dayton School of Law, J.D., 1980. Politics: Democrat Religion: Baptist.

Career: Worked in the Ohio attorney general’s office, early 1980s, became legislative aide to Ben Espy on the Columbus city council, 1982; entered private practice with the Columbus firm of Schottenstein, Zox & Dunn, became partner; elected to the Columbus city council, 1992, elected president of council, 1997; elected Columbus mayor, 1999.

Awards: Community service award, Columbus Bar Association, 1989.

Member: American Bar Association, National Conference of Black Lawyers, Ohio State Bar Association, member of council of delegates, 1990-.

Addresses: Office —City of Columbus Mayor’s Office, 90 W. Broad St., Room 237, Columbus, OH 43215.

Housing Network, the Columbus Youth Corps, and was appointed to the Central Ohio Transit Authority for a time. In 1992, he replaced Espy on the council when his boss was selected to fill a vacancy in Ohio’s state Senate. A year later, Coleman was elected for his own four-year term on the Columbus City Council. There, he became known as a consensus-builder and a scrupulous, diligent representative. He was re-elected in 1997 by voters impressed with his commitment to improving the quality of life for Columbus residents. During his tenure, Coleman launched the Urban Recovery Fair to renovated inner-city housing, started a Volunteers Fair for a mentor program called Boys to Men, and served on the Bike way Advisory Committee, which gave the city popular bike paths. He was also commended for working cooperatively with the city’s Republican mayor.

When Coleman was re-elected in 1997, he also became president of the City Council. Shortly afterward, Cleveland Democrat Lee Fisher, a former state Attorney General, chose Coleman as his running mate for the 1998 Ohio gubernatorial race. Fisher lost his bid, however, to Republican Robert Taft, a scion of one of the state’s most famous political dynasties. In 1999, Coleman confirmed longtime rumors by announcing his bid for the Columbus mayor’s office. He bested his former boss, Espy, in the Democratic primary, and entered into a heated campaign with Republican candidate Dorothy Teater, a county commissioner. “I see the job as mayor is to run an efficient government, pick up the trash, put the criminals in jail and provide basic city services and run an efficient, well-managed, financially stable government,” he told Business First-Columbus. He also pledged to further his campaign to revitalize Columbus’s city center. “I will make our downtown move from an eight-hour downtown to an 18-hour downtown at least—that’s 18,” he stressed in the same interview. “And I will create jobs in this community. I will invigorate the central city, and I’ll take the whole city to the next level. We’ll be a world-class city.”

One of the 1999 election’s most contentious issues involved a planned suburban mall, and the property tax proposal that would finance road improvements around it. Columbus Republicans, including Teater, called the plan a tax break for a wealthy developer, who should pay to improve roads out of his own pocket; there were also worries that it would force the closure of an older mall in Columbus itself. As the mayoral race heated up, Democratic National Committee chair Joe Andrew even stopped in the city to campaign for Coleman. It promised to be an historic election no matter who won, for it would give Ohio’s capital city either its first black or first woman mayor. Coleman was said to have spent $250, 000 in the primary contest alone, mostly for television ads, and by the election day, both he and Teater had spent a total of $3.7 million on their campaigns.

On November 2, 1999, Coleman was elected Columbus’s first African-American mayor with a majority of 82, 073 votes, about sixty percent of the vote. Perhaps even more significantly, he became the city’s first Democratic mayor since 1971, the chief executive of a capital city in a state known for decades as a Republican stronghold. Coleman was inaugurated on December 30, 1999 at the Franklin Park Conservatory. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, he told the crowd that day, “If we are going to be the 21st century city that we should be, I ask you to make the sacrifice and the personal commitment right now to do what none of us can do alone and what all of us can do together to meet these challenges.”