Joe Cunningham, the great American. Of course. John Cranley, who's spent
eight years as the mayor of the City of Cincinnati, in about twenty five
years in total service, came out about a week or two ago as a
loyal Democrat to say that Joe Biden should complete his term in office but should
not stand for re election. As the nominee of the Democrat Party, whoever
is elected this November is going to serve until January of twenty twenty nine.
I don't think anybody believes that Joe Biden has the mental acuity to serve until
twenty twenty nine. But nonetheless, plus we want to get into what happens
Saturday night at TQL and John Cranley, welcome again into Bill Cunningham Show.
And first of all, John, can you tell the American people what is
Cranleigh doing these days in July of twenty twenty four. What is the Cranley
life like now compared to what it was before. It's wonderful. Bill,
I'm very blessed and it's great to be back with you. It's always fun.
It was great to see you and Penny at the game on Saturday night
at the FCC massive win over Miami, and obviously as mayor, I was
proud to help the lenders and burning usher that team into this great city.
But life is good for me, Bill. I'm at the CaMK Law firm.
I'm happily married with our son who's just finished his freshman year at Saint
David High School, and we have more blessings than we deserve, and so
we try to give back in any way we can do. You see a
way of you getting back into politics, you know, someday, but not
in the short term. You know, I think, as it turns out,
for me, it was the right thing that it just so happens that
my time out of politics is with my son being going through high school.
I think that's a good time for me not to be a distraction from him
and get him into college, and then I'll reevaluate at that time. Let's
talk about what happened on Saturday night. You want to talk about Biden,
of course, but you and I were there with some other a lot of
the muckety MUCKs, the shakers and movers, plus that Bailey was going nuts.
Let's go back four or five years. You're the mayor and as I
recall there was issues involved about certain utilities that may have scuttled the entire deal,
and if that did not happen, when it occurred, Sacramento, the
capital of the state of California, was ready to step up and take the
FC club. FC Sacramento describe how uncertain it was as to whether Cincinnati would
even have FC five or six years ago. Oh, it was very close.
I mean, first of all, Bill, let's start with the good
news. We are now again a three big league city with the Reds,
the Bengals, and FCC Soccer obviously not as big as baseball and football,
but is the fastest going sport in America and is the largest sport in the
world. And when the likes of Messi come to America, you know that
ten years from now, it's only going to be bigger. And we got
on the front end of this train which is going to set Cincinnati up for
a great success for generations to come. And Jeff Birding and Carl Linder and
all the other owners, Scott Farmer deserved such enormous credit. But to answer
your question, when I was Mayor, you know that I knew that it
was going to be a game changer for Cincinnati because we saw the success at
Nippert and I also knew that the leadership, the lenders and the farmers were
willing to invest in the other owners hundreds of millions of dollars to build a
stadium in the city at private expense, and I think that's very important.
I think your listeners are very familiar with the fact that the stadium deal for
the Bengals was way too generous with taxpayer money back in the late nineties,
and we didn't want to repeat that. And we are lucky to live in
a community where the lenders and the farmers put up literally over three hundred million
dollars to build that stadium. What the city needed to do and what I
happily championed as mayor, was putting about twenty five million dollars in the infrastructure
public infrastructure around the stadium, including building a garage that the city owns to
this day to accommodate additional traffic at and near the statement, by which the
city still makes money from that investment. But the parking was needed. And
considering that we paid for every single thing in Paul Brown Stadium and not one
thing in TQL, it seemed like a no brainer to me. But at
the time, as you know, council was very divided and it was only
a five to four vote that originally originally passed to get that through. And
I'm very proud that I led that effort, and I'm glad that we got
the votes. But it is amazing when you look back on it, how
narrow the majority was for such a great success for us. And wasn't your
Vet Simpson. I'm not sure what's happened to her. I don't know where
she is now. I wish her well, But nonetheless, she was one
of the ones kind of whipping the council in the voting no. Because the
city spent twenty five million, I would think Saturday night's game probably produced twenty
five million dollars by itself. I've never been in a more exciting soccer facility.
I'm looking around here. I've been to two games in my life.
I said, this is unbelievable. And if Bailey's going nuts, they're marching
in from from Findlay Market. That was packed the excitement of twenty five million.
Are those who voted no? Remember their names? Was that your Vett
Simpson? And who else can you recall, well, let's start with the
the yes votes were were Smitherman, David Mann, Kevin Flynn was still on
a council at that time, and God, I'm blaked. Amy Murray was
she there? Oh yeah, Amy Murray? Of course yes, he was
strong supporter. And the opposition at the time was the Vet Simpson. Uh,
it was PG. It was who was the other two? And they
day, how about Wendell Young? Is he there? Oh? Yeah,
Wendell Young voted no, that's correct, and so it was five to four
vote in December of twenty seventeen. Now that was the reason I'm kind of
slipping on some of the names because it was a transition between one council to
the next city council, so there were changes in the makeup of the council.
But luckily we were able to get that barely through. And that vote
happened right before I flew to New York City with mister Lindner and mister Birding
and Farmer to do our final interview with Major League Soccer to win the franchise
expansion, which was a game changer for the history of Cincinnati. Twenty five
million investment, billions of dollars rewards that worked in the West End right now
is a vibrant, alive community. I like to go back in time and
say, Okay, these are the persons that are posted, and these are
the persons that went out and got it done. Now. Secondly, you
came out about a week ago and said time for Joe Biden to step aside
his recent appearance on Morning Joe, he's dug in his heels deep. I
look at the list of the Democrats saying Biden's got to step down. The
long list not as long. And he made the comment that I received eighty
seven percent of the primary vote. I'm a Democrat. I got eighty seven
percent of the primary vote. And for a party that stands for democracy,
how do you have someone in office who got eighty seven percent of the vote
and the party chieftains overrule that eighty seven percent and put someone else in charge.
Do you buy that argument? Well, look, I believe that based
on what we saw in the debate, that he is not likely to win,
and I want to win. And as to your last point about he
won the primaries, he sure did. And so only as a legal matter,
only he can make the decision to release his delegates and allow us to
have an open convention. And that's what I'm urging him to do, which
is to end if camp, open up the convention, and give us a
fighting chance of winning in November, which I think is very important to the
future of our country. And right now, you know, he's losing in
all the battleground states. He was losing before the primary, before the debate,
he's losing by even more now. And I want to see a Democrat
win, and I don't believe he can win, even though I think he's
done a good job as president. He says, I've been a good president.
I got all the votes there my delegates. I can do the job.
Do you think he can be? Is he mentally alert now? In
your opinion? I don't know. But what I do know is that he
can't effectively communicate anymore. And that is the job of being president, that's
the job of winning a campaign. And certainly his you know, age is
a one way street for all of us. It's not his fault, but
it is what it is. And the idea that is a communication abilities are
going to get better when he's eighty six is fanciful, and so I believe
that our party can and should take the opportunity to find a better candidate to
give us a chance of winning in November. And who is that Well,
if it was up to me, it would be the governor of Michigan,
Gretchen Widmer, the governor of Kentucky, Andy Basher, Passification Sect, Karay
Pete, didj Edge, and just the name a few, Josh Shapiro from
Pennsylvania, Jared Poulos from Colorado. I like governors. I like Midwestern people
like Whitmer or Bashier, you know, Kentucky, Michigan. These are you
know, these are pragmatic, moderate Democrats, which are more of my ilk.
Those would be those would be my choices. Well, there's one name
missing from that list, Vice President Kamala Harris. What about her? Oh,
look, at this point, she would not be my top choice,
but I think she's a better choice than Joe Biden. I mean, the
fact is that she was a tough on crime prosecutor in San Francisco, attorney
general. I think, you know, she hasn't always gotten the best rapt
as vice president, but at this point in time, I think she would
she would be a better candidate Joe Biden not my first pick, but I
would still rather have her than Joe Biden lead our ticket at this time.
Wouldn't that be a problem if you overwhelmed and went over the top of an
African American female in office with Joe Biden and to have somebody of a different
skin tone take over the nomination when she's standing there ready to go. Wouldn't
that be a problem among Democrats? Well, I'm against identity politics, so
I don't think that I think the Democratic Party is going to unite around anyone
to be Donald Trump. Obviously, our party did nominate and elect Barack Obama
twice, so we have you know, we have a long standing commitment to
diversity, and I'm confident that our party will be united regardless of who our
top candidate is. But let me state again, I believe Kamala Harris can
win. I think Gretchen Widmer has a better chance of winning, but I
think Kamala Harris could win as well. Are you looking forward to a debate
again between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. I guess one has scheduled around September
tenth or eleventh, and I can't imagine. Well, it was a pretty
disastrous you know, it was a pretty disastrous debate, you know, nine
days ago, and I'm hoping by then we have a different candidate debating Donald
Trump. Well, he's not going to get better in the passage of time.
And let's face it, he's walking a path all of us one day
may walk, which is losing your mind when you get old. Well,
really think about this, Think about this. The biggest issue in America right
now is inflation. And Donald Trump's policy is to put ten percent tariffs on
everything that comes into our country. His message seems to be, you think
inflation's high, hold my beer, I can do better. And what bothers
me is that we have the greatest economy in the world. We've come back
from COVID fast than any country in the world. Prices are too high,
But whose policies are going to be better to bring down inflation in the next
several years? And I believe that Trump's policies will make inflation worse. And
what bothers me is that our candidate for president isn't even making this case.
And I think it's about the economy. It usually is, and it should
be and let's have that debate. But right now we have a candidate who
is not effectively communicating, and that is a critical problem that, given his
age, will only get worse. And by the way, I think it
will get much worse for Trump to who loses a train of thought and is
not a young man either. But it's clear based on the debate, that
the Democrats can do better with a better candidate. Well, I may disagree
on the politics. I'm a Trump kind of a guy, but I understand
as a Democrat where you come from, I think it'd be much easier for
the Donald to defeat Joe Biden than defeat Kamala Harris anyone else. When the
Democratic Party unites, it is a terrible monster to be a monolithic between the
talk shows and the newspapers and the big city mayors and college towns and labor
unions and all the opinion makers, we all go in one direction. That's
a tough thing to beat for a Republican. However, if the Democratic Party
is split by one or two, three or four different ways, guess what,
it becomes a whole lot easier for the Republican to win. And so
we'll see what happens. But John Cranley, give my best, your mom
and dad, and uh, thank you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry your
son didn't go to Deer Park High School. I guess the admission results tests
were a little bit high, but he was able to get into sant X,
which is a good second choice. Hey, thank you all right,
John Cranley, former mayor, thank you for coming on. Good luck to
you, John. Thank you. Let's continue, thank you, Let's continue
with more. If a line becomes available five to one, three, seven,
four, nine, seven thousand. There it is from one of the
most prominent Democrats in this part of the country, Bill Cunning and the Great
American with you every day, your Home of the Reds playing tonight hosting the
Colorado Rocks on news radio seven hundred wu oldowet