Cincinnati's Incomplete Subway by Jacob R. Mecklenborg

Author:Jacob R. Mecklenborg
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781614231912
Publisher: The History Press

Ward captain Mike Mullen sells Coney Island picnic tickets to neighborhood boys. Courtesy of Bossism in Cincinnati.

The ballots themselves were tipped in favor of the two national parties; bird emblems were printed next to Republican and Democrat candidates for the benefit of the city’s illiterate, but the names of independent candidates or nonpartisan charter amendments were “birdless.” Seasongood drew attention to his nonpartisan ballot issues in 1924 with his “Birdless Ballot League,” an organization that campaigned for his charter reforms throughout the year, including the late summer while he toured Europe for two months. Despite Seasongood’s conspicuous absence and the presence of two decoy charter amendments placed on the ballot by Hynicka, the charter reforms that reshaped municipal government and are still largely in effect today passed by a 2–1 margin.

The new charter did not take effect for a year, and the subsequent orchestration of a Charterite takeover was helped by Central Parkway’s complicated preparatory work. Throughout 1925, a team of surveyors and lawyers were busy defining the parkway’s tax assessment zone for sixteen thousand assessed properties. Seasongood made the poor condition of the city’s streets a major part of his argument against the machine; a completed Central Parkway would have dazzled the public and diffused his argument. The parkway could have been completed by 1925 if the 1921 bond issue had passed, but eighteen months after the electorate finally approved parkway bonds in spring 1924, there was no construction activity.

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