George Voinovich

George Victor Voinovich (July 15, 1936 – June 12, 2016) was an American politician. A member of the Republican Party, he was a United States senator from Ohio from 1999 to 2011, the 65th governor of Ohio from 1991 to 1998, and the 54th mayor of Cleveland from 1980 to 1989. He is the most recent Republican to serve as mayor of Cleveland as of .

Born and raised in Cleveland, Voinovich graduated from Ohio University and the Ohio State University College of Law. He spent more than 46 years in public service, first as an assistant attorney general in 1963. He began his political career in the Ohio House of Representatives before serving as Cuyahoga County auditor, county commissioner, and Ohio lieutenant governor. He was elected mayor of Cleveland in 1979 and gained national recognition for helping restore the city's financial stability after its 1978 default.

Voinovich was elected governor in 1990 and reelected by a landslide in 1994. As governor, he emphasized economic development and government efficiency. He won election to the U.S. Senate in 1998, where he became known as a moderate Republican and a leading advocate of fiscal responsibility, and was reelected in 2004. Voinovich retired after his second term ended in 2011.

Voinovich was the 15th person to have served as both the governor of Ohio and a U.S. senator and one of only two Cleveland mayors to later become governor of Ohio and a U.S. senator; the other was Frank Lausche. He is also the only person to have served as both chairman of the National Governors Association and president of the National League of Cities.

Early life and education Voinovich was born in Cleveland, the son of Josephine (Bernot) and George S. Voinovich. He was the oldest of six children. (from Kordun, Croatia), and his mother was of Slovenian ancestry.

Voinovich grew up in the Collinwood neighborhood of Cleveland and graduated from Collinwood High School in 1954. He was raised Catholic and was a lifelong member of his neighborhood parish, Our Lady of the Lake in Euclid (formerly Holy Cross). He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in government in 1958 from Ohio University, where he was a member of the fraternity Phi Kappa Tau and served as president of the student body and the men's dormitory system. Voinovich received a Juris Doctor from the Ohio State University College of Law in 1961. Voinovich was the first Ohio lieutenant governor not to be elected separately from the governor.

Mayor of Cleveland (1980–1989)

1979 Cleveland mayoral election

By 1979, elections in Cleveland had become nonpartisan, and with then-Mayor Dennis J. Kucinich (D) about to enter a tough reelection campaign, Voinovich began to consider running for mayor again. Finally, on July 26, he entered the race, calling the decision "one of the most difficult in [his] life". He remained lieutenant governor until he won the election.

Aside from Kucinich, Voinovich's opponents in the race included State Senator Charles Butts and city council majority leader Basil Russo. As the election drew closer, The Plain Dealer endorsed Voinovich. Voter turnout in the primary was greater than that of the 1977 race among Perk, Kucinich and Edward F. Feighan. In the 1979 nonpartisan primary election, Voinovich received 47,000 votes to Kucinich's 36,000. Russo (who got 21,000) and Butts (with 19,000) did not qualify for the general election. The biggest surprise was Voinovich's showing in predominantly African American wards, where he was expected to finish last. He trailed only Butts, with Kucinich last.

On October 8, 1979, a few days after the primary, Voinovich's nine-year-old daughter Molly was struck by a van and killed. The event brought the Voinovich campaign to a virtual halt and made it difficult for Kucinich to attack his opponent. Still, he challenged Voinovich to a series of debates in various Cleveland neighborhoods. Voinovich declined the invitations, saying the debates would be unproductive, but they did debate on November 3 at the City Club. Voinovich won the election with 94,541 votes to Kucinich's 73,755.

Voinovich was reelected twice in landslides. In 1981 he defeated former State Representative Patrick Sweeney, 107,472 to 32,940, to win Cleveland's first four-year mayoral term. In 1985 he defeated former councilman Gary Kucinich (Dennis Kucinich's brother), 82,840 to 32,185.

"The Comeback City" Voinovich was considered shy and a rather low-key politician, a description he adopted himself. Once elected, he met with Ohio Governor James Rhodes to solicit the state government's help in clearing up the city's debts. Voinovich negotiated a debt repayment schedule and in October 1980, with the state serving as guarantor, eight local banks lent Cleveland $36.2 million, allowing the city to emerge from default. Still, the city's economy continued to decline, and federal funding was cut. Two weeks earlier, voters turned down another 0.5 percent income tax increase. The opposition was led by Kucinich, who had been keeping a low profile since losing the election. Voinovich said he would resubmit the tax issue on the February ballot to avoid facing a deficit in 1981. That time the voters approved the tax increase.

By the time Voinovich was elected, Cleveland had become the butt of late night comedians' jokes about the Cuyahoga River and Mayor Ralph Perk's hair catching fire (in separate incidents) and as the only major American city to go bankrupt.

Voinovich took an aggressive approach. He reversed a defensive attitude projected by the Cleveland media, going to "war ... to save one of this country's greatest cities". even though New York City owed nearly 150 times as much when it received a $2.3 billion federal bailout to avoid bankruptcy in 1975.

The restoration campaign reached its peak in October in the society magazine Town and Country Write-in and minor candidate notes: In 1988, write-ins received 151 votes. In 1990, David Marshall received 82 votes and James E. Attia received 49 votes. In 1994, Keith Hatton received 48 votes and Michael Italie received 24 votes. In 1998, write-ins received 210 votes. In 2004, Helen Meyers received 296 votes.