Winner of race for mayor faces numerous challenges

The Queen City hasn't fully recovered from racial tensions dating to the 2001 riots.
CINCINNATI (AP) -- Two candidates from prominent Cincinnati families are battling to lead a city with an eroding tax base, declining population and escalating street violence that has driven businesses, shoppers and jobs to the suburbs.
The winner will have to create the kind of working relationship with the city council that eluded Mayor Charlie Luken, a Democrat who decided long before the end of his first term not to seek another. And he'll have to hire a city manager who will get the support of council members who refused to back the one Luken hired just three years ago.
"The central question here isn't safety or downtown development, it's leadership," said Xavier University political scientist Gene Beaupre. "That turns on personal qualities."
The choice facing voters Nov. 8 in Ohio's third-largest city -- one still struggling to recover from racial tensions that led to riots in 2001 -- is between two Democrats, the top vote-getters in a seven-way nonpartisan primary in September. Each received about 31 percent of the votes.
Councilman David Pepper, 34, and state Sen. Mark Mallory, 43, square off on a ballot that, indicative of the fractured political establishment, includes 31 candidates for nine seats on city council.
Mallory casts himself as an outsider in his hometown, a consensus builder coming home to rescue a screwed-up city.
Trading exchanges
"He's not part of the mess at City Hall," says one of Mallory's radio commercials, implying that Pepper is at least partly responsible for the city's problems.
"There's been a lot of fighting, a lot of bickering, situations where my opponent has had the opportunity to include people in what he was doing, but he decided not to do that," Mallory said.
Pepper, a lawyer, said the reason he first ran for City Council in 2001 was because the city already was in chaos.
"I don't think the public is buying Mark's sales pitch because they know I've been here working hard to clean up the mess that's been left to the city from years before," Pepper said.
Pepper thinks Mallory's statements would haunt him if he were elected.
"Most people on council will be back there, and he's going to have to spend a lot of time mending fences," Pepper said.
No strangers to region
Both candidates come from well-known families.
Mallory's father, William Mallory Sr., was the longtime majority leader of the Ohio House. His brother, William Mallory Jr., is a municipal court judge.
Pepper's father, John Pepper, was chairman and CEO of the Procter & amp; Gamble Co. His grandfather was chairman of the University of Cincinnati Department of Obstetrics.
Both say they have programs to make the city safer, to create jobs and improve services. The winner probably will be the one who does the best job distinguishing himself from his opponent, and who best targets his likely voters, Beaupre said.
"I think the Bush campaign and Kerry campaign [in 2004] really reignited an interest in targeted, personalized voter contact," Beaupre said. "Both campaigns [in this race] are targeting specific voter groups they think they can swing."
U.S. Census statistics from 2000 showed that 43 percent of Cincinnati's 331,285 residents were black. Pepper, who is white, believes he can garner enough black votes to win; Mallory, who is black, believes he can get enough of the white vote to win.
"I've been elected for 10 years now, and my dad for 28 years before that, and the majority of the people who elected us to the offices that we have held have been white," Mallory said.
Backing
Pepper has the endorsement of former U.S. Sen. John Glenn -- one of Ohio's most popular politicians -- and of civil rights activist and former federal appeals court Judge Nathaniel Jones, who is black. Pepper once clerked for Jones.
Each candidate has some union backing.
Both candidates are vying for crossover votes from Republicans.