September 26, 2025 • 18 mins
Willie talks with Ohio Governor candidate Vivek Ramaswamy about his town hall meeting later today, and his vision for Ohio is elected.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Find Billy cunning in the Great America. Welcome this Friday
afternoon the tri State. The weather is great, unbelievable and
Red Baseball is ready the March of the playoffs, so
they win hopefully in Milwaukee, and we'll talk about that
later on with the segment, etc. First pitch about eight ten.
Our coverage of reds Baseball starts at six oh five tonight.
But there's bigger problems brewing in the River City. About
(00:27):
two o'clock today, in a couple hours at the River
Church on Clark Street, there's going to be a community
forum on crime and so much more. Hundreds or thousands
of crimes are being committed in the city of Cincinnati
that are never reported to the police, because doesn't make
any difference you're reported or not, nothing happens. Joan you
and I now is Viveke Ramaswami. In about fifteen months,
(00:48):
he's going to be the next governor of the state
of Ohio. Forveke Ramaswami. Welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show.
And first of all, tell us what's happening about two
o'clock in a couple hours at the River Church on
Clark Street. What is being planned.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Look, we're coming back to Cincinnati, my hometown. I'm on
my way there now as I speak to you. Right now, Billy,
is that we need to crush the crime. We need
to end the violence. It was about eight weeks ago
that Holly and others were brutally assaulted on the streets
of Cincinnati. Holly is going to be with us today
at the event, as will others who have suffered at
(01:23):
the hands of senseless crime in Cincinnati. And what I'm
going to lay out is our vision for how we're
actually going to solve this problem. When I'm in charge,
a lot of people pay lip service to it. What
do we can actually do? And the magic secret is
that it turns out the overwhelming majority of violent crime
(01:43):
is committed by a tiny number of people. We're talking
about hundreds of people, not thousands. Get those people off
the streets. That's the formula. That's what I'm going to
accomplish by working with our cities when I'm governor, and
you know, I wanted to make sure we're doing our
job in our hometown. All lifting up, by the way,
our local candidates who have an election this year, Court Bowman,
(02:04):
Christopher Smitherman, Lynda Matthews. They're going to be there with
me as well. And I do think that local leadership matters,
and I'm there to highlight that as well. Well.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
You know, the statistics are down. Whenever it comes up
mayriftab Purevoll talks about crime is down. Crime is down,
except violent crime, which is through the roof. The reason
crime is down is because the victims of crime do
not report crime. Let me share with you a story
from Channel nine a few days ago about a store
owner of a convenience store in the Banks. We'd like
(02:34):
to think that Banks is the front door of our city,
he says. In A man's name is Sebastian. He says,
quote on a daily basis probably averaging four or five
thefts a day. On weekends, there's fifteen to thirty per
day on the weekend. And if I have my CCTV
cameras operating correctly, I have forty to fifty thefts every
(02:54):
couple days. I have a few hundred every week. I
can't live like this. He also says that the man's
name of Sebastian. After enduring Bengals games, there's massive brawls
and riots taking place. I have numerous videos I can
send to you about all the times bars or fights,
chairs overturned, tables are being thrown. It's complete chaos. And
(03:16):
when I asked ken kober and the cops about this Avek,
they tell me, look, we can only report what when
we're called to the scene. And the police aren't called
to the scene anymore because there's hundreds of crimes being
committed every day in which the shopkeepers know, why call
the cops? Nothing happens. And then you have, on top
of that a forty percent increase in drive by shootings
(03:37):
in OTR. And to solve this problem, I'm on my
soapbox a little bit. To solve this problem. The governor
came down about two weeks ago and standing there was
the chief of Police, the FBI was there, new US
attorney was there. One or two members of council were there.
They talked about the memoran of understanding memoryanum of understanding.
I said, what memory? And this supposedly highway patrol was
(03:59):
going to come, shall we say the National Guard? Well
that didn't happen. In fact, now we're told that the
MoU says two days a month. Then I talked to
ken Kobra, the police, they haven't seen him since it's
all a bunch of bs, and so on one hand,
we hear crime is down, crime is down, but then
shopkeepers and bar owners and others telling me the curfew
(04:19):
is completely ignored. Massive threats are thefts are happening every day,
drive by shootings are increasing. We got the governor coming
in and Mike Dwaine is friend of mine, well intended,
but nothing came of that at all, and they're just
trying to keep the lid on until election. You know
what I'm saying, What can you do differently than this.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
There's a few things to point out there, believest. One
is this idea that crime is down. It's a farce
on two levels. First of all, even if you look
at the statistics, violent crime in the heart of Cincinnati
is actually up year on years. So this idea that
crime is down is not is not accurate when you
talk about violent crime in the city of Cincinnati. But
(04:59):
even more broadly, other point is that crime has been
steadily going up over the years. So the fact that
you come off of some kind of peak, and then
even if it were down in certain ways that you
measure it, that's not our metric. The metric is crime
too high? And the answer is absolutely it is. And
then there's the third point which you raised, which is
that people have become so numb to that crime over
(05:20):
time that they're not reporting it in the same ways
that they used to. So people are smarter than statistics.
Are people afraid of going into the city of Cincinnati
or are they now? And the reason is the statistics
don't capture under reporting, which is a major issue that
we actually have to take into account. So that's on
the whole that this retort that certain statistics, when cut
(05:41):
certain ways, suggests that crime is down when other statistics
going to show the violent crime in the city of
Cincinnati is up is not a valid answer, and I
don't accept that as somehow putting a lid on this discussion.
What I do want to do is bring some serious
action to the table. And I think our action has
got to focus on where are we going to get
the highest yield, Billy, And the highest yield is take
(06:02):
the repeat violent offenders off the streets. As I said,
the overwhelming majority of crime is committed by a small
number of people. The question is how do you identify
those people? And the answer is they don't make it
very hard for you to identify them. They're committing crimes.
There are many crimes repeatedly, and so we're talking about
judicial reforms. We're talking about making sure that our bail
(06:23):
and cash bail system isn't working to our disadvantage. We're
talking about empowering law enforcement to actually be able to
do their jobs. And I want to be the first
to say, the men and women who serve in the
Cincinnati Police Department and in police departments and cities across
the state up met with them are good people doing
what they do because they care about law enforcement. But
we need to empower them, making sure that they're able
(06:45):
to do their jobs without fear of looking over their
shoulder for be ensued, and at the same time doing
it in a way that works with the judicial system
and with the system outside of the police, that actually
keeps these people off the streets. Bringing back psychiatric hospitals
and bring back the mental health healthcare. Our gals could
not be the top form of psychiatric care in the state.
This is common sense. This is not about right versus left, Billy,
(07:09):
It's about right versus wrong, and we're going to stand
for what is right, what is true, what is virtuous,
what is good, which is bringing back the rule of
law to the cities of our state. It's part of
my job descision as a governor. And we're going to
get it done by working with our city leaders across
our state, including perhaps for most today focusing on Cincinnati. Yeah,
(07:30):
we're coming back.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
To I tell you what, it sounds good. But when
you have a mayor and city council that will tell
you we don't want the Highway Patrol here. You have
the vice mayor, the President pro tem, you have Scotti
Johnson saying we don't want him here. In fact, the
day after the agreement was signed, which was worthless, the
Vice mayor said no, we're not going to follow that,
(07:52):
and so the messages of the police don't bother and
Highway Patrol has got better things to do. So what
do you do if you're the governor and you hold
a big news conference, well maybe with Corey Bowman, but
the mayor of Cincinnati and the February or March and
they say, okay, we're going to sign this piece of
paper and then ignore it. So what do you do
when you have a mayor that ignores what you're telling
(08:14):
him to do it's It sounds good of a bank,
but it doesn't work well.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
I think the first answer is make sure we have
a mayor who doesn't ignore that. And the best way
for I can do that now is I don't have
to wait till I'm governor. So I'm coming back to
Cincinnati today. We have an election this November. I think
we can elect Corey Bowman. I think we got to elect
people at Christopher Smithman and Lynda Matthews to city council.
I think Christopher Smithman, he's not a Republican. Here's a
former seven year I think president of the Cincinnati chapter
(08:40):
of the NAACP. He's an independent. Now, yes, but I
don't care about whether you call yourself Democrat or Republican.
Are you on the side of fighting crime. That's the
side that we're on together today. So I'm not waiting
till I'm governor to get this done. I want local leadership.
Does local leadership make a difference? Yes, You're done right it?
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Why I want to remind people we have an election
this November. Show up. If you care about ending the violence,
if you care about ending the crime, I don't know
what party you're in. I don't care for an independent,
does not a partisan question. Show up and vote for
the candidates for city council and for mayor who are
actually going to take this problem seriously and address it,
not just try to sweep it under the rug with
(09:22):
pr So that's a big part of why I'm coming
back today as well as you don't have to wait
for your governor to lead. We could start today and
that's what I'm aiming to do by coming back. Now
that being said, when I'm governor, is there a role
for the governor to play? Absolutely there is. It's not
I'm done with the accountability and the buck passing between
the legislature or the governor, or cities or the mayor
(09:43):
or the judges. Enough. We have to take responsibility. And
the state does provide serious levers of funding to our localities,
to our municipalities, to our counties, and I think that
that's perfectly appropriate to use that to also set minimal
standards of the results that we expect to see, the
behavior we expect to see from local municipalities, from cities,
(10:05):
and one of the top deliverables to the people who
live in the state is to bring down violent crime.
You know, rocket science, we don't how to do it.
The state that we put the man in the moon,
really state they put a man in the moon. And
you can figure this out. This is not complicated. It
just takes a spine, takes the spine and steel at times,
and that's what we're going to break.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Well, when you live, when you were here and you
were in the vallec Victorian of either Deer Park High
School or Saint X I'm not sure which, all right,
but nonetheless, you could take your guys downtown and go
to a Reds game or go to a Bengals game
and not face brawls and riots and thefts and wilding
in the streets. That's not the way it is today.
So are you ready for the big question?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Well, I mean, the one thing I want to say
about the diomory. But I want to say one thing is
I don't want to paint some just rosy picture. This
is this live been ups and downs, right, you would
Vine Street growing up and over the rhine. These would
be areas where you would hope would improve. But the
problem is we have the tool get to do it,
and we still haven't made those improvements. In fact, it's
gone even further in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Well, and so what I want to do is I
don't just want to make Ohio great again. I want
to make Ohio and Cincinnati greater than we have ever been.
That's the standard I'm aspiring to.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
I want to ask you the big question. Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
All right, Let's take it six.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Months from now, You're sitting in the Governor's office. For
one reason or another, whoever the mayor of Cincinnati is,
and I pray to God, is Corey Bowmen kind of
gives you the happy talk, you know, Okay, we'll sign
another piece of paper. Then you've got city council members
undermining the mayor quickly and saying no, we're not going
to do that. And they're telling the police do not
arrest people for walking around open air or smoking in
(11:39):
marijuana that happens all the time. We're not going to
arrest people using drugs. We're not going to arrest the homeless.
Would you seriously consider sending out the National Guard over
the objection of city council and the mayor to bring
peace to Cincinnati? Would you do that for Veke Ramaswami.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Well, the first thing is if Corey Bowman's in there.
As you say, I'm not going to just get the
yapp job. I'm going to actually get action, and that's
why I'm helping them get elected. But to your question,
would we be open to using the National Guard? Absolutely,
and I think that we should. A good leader should
be able to do this in a way that is
at once firm but also does it with respected dignity
and explains to the people exactly why we're doing what
(12:19):
we're doing. I visited Washington, DC earlier this week. It
is as of now, in my experience of being there,
abillity was probably one of the safest cities I've ever
felt like I've been in. Now there's a big police presence,
President Trump. It's a constitutional duty as the US president,
by the way, to take care of Washington, d C.
That's constitutionally ordained to the federal government. But the job
of the states is to look after the states, including
(12:42):
the cities in that state. And you know what, is
the National Guard being able to be utilized in more
ways than we use them now a good thing. Absolutely.
Would that require added training, of course, but we're going
to do it in the right way, in a way
that's common sense, but in a way that doesn't just
buckle either. That's the way I look the lead.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Well, we have about two minutes remaining of aveg Raamaswami.
I can recall cops have told me on the beat,
we're told to stand down. They don't pull over people
driving recklessly or speeding or possible DUI. If you pull
people over, you say give me your license, registration, proof insurance.
Then all of a sudden, your hands on with a
whole bunch of people that are driving illegally, don't have insurance,
(13:22):
have capises and warrants. So the cops are told, don't
pull people over for traffic. They're told open air drug
use is permissible in the city of Cincinnati. We don't
want to deal with that. The homeless population about one
thousand strong, about half the long in mental hospitals, living
underneath bridges and the portals of big buildings downtown. Leave
them alone. Cops don't want to go hands on. And
(13:43):
when you see a bunch of kids that are breaking
the curfew, the cops are told, why I asked, how
old are you? Well, some fourteen year old to say
I'm eighteen. You got your ID?
Speaker 2 (13:51):
No?
Speaker 1 (13:52):
All right, nothing we can do. They have all these
sanctuary places to go if you're breaking curfew. They've taken
a total of zero people in for the past month
because the cops are not enforcing the curfew. They're not
enforcing open air drug use, they're not enforcing the traffic laws,
they're not enforcing the Quarter against Homelessness. There's rampant criminal
misbehavior happening, and we have happy talk trying to hold
(14:14):
the lid on til the first week in November. You've
just got an honest report from a citizen of Hambleton
County that tries to go downtown. It is terrible. It
is awful. Businesses are shutting down to taste of Belgium
shutting down, and large companies in Cincinnati you're considering leaving
because their employees are not safe. Can you smell when
I'm cooking?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I think you're cooking. I will tell you that. Well,
the point is you're speaking hard truths, all right, billion
And if you care about somebody, you tell them the truth. Yeah,
you care about yourself, you can tell them what they
want to hear and make them feel good. But if
you care about somebody, tell them the truth. And you've
given our people the hard truths we need to hear. Now,
the question is how do we get accountability from our
(14:56):
elected leaders. And again I'm coming today to help highlight
the fact we have a local election coming up. A
lot of people don't show up for local elections. Well,
Thomas Jefferson famously said, the government you elect is the
government you deserve. Elect the government that Cincinnati deserves. Put
Corey Bowman in his mayor. Put people like Christopher Smithman
and Lynda Matthews in the city council who take this
(15:17):
problem seriously. That's step one. But the other thing is
you brought up the juvenile issue. I don't want to
say something about this. The juvenile crime has spiked since
those disastrous COVID nineteen school closures. And you want to know, Billy,
who was the what was the first state out of
the fifty states in the United States to shut down
(15:38):
our public schools?
Speaker 1 (15:39):
You know who was? I'm assume Ohio.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
It was Ohio. And you know who led and you
know who was advocating for that. Who is the COVID czar.
It's the person I'm running against any acton was the
person who led to those and pushed for those school
closures and defends them even today. You might imagine that,
you know, you could imagine five years later somebody could say, hey,
I'm mistake. We knew COVID risk was low, we knew
(16:02):
it was near zero for many of those kids. We
shouldn't have made that decision. That's not what she says.
She continues to double and triple down on that decision.
And now we're seeing the effects of that in the
mental health of those kids, many of those kids not
showing up to school on the streets instead committing crime.
So these issues are deeply intertwined. These are issues of
failures in the kind of leadership we've had in our
(16:26):
cities and the wrong decisions that we made, even in
the back of shutting down our schools. I'm not saying
this to blame anybody. I'm saying this to pave a
better path for the future. And that's what I want
to bring. I want to unite this state. I want
to unite our city. I don't want this is my
point in saying this is not because I want to
divide us. It's because I want to unite us. And
eighty ninety percent of people in Cincinnati agree with me
(16:48):
that ending the violence and crushing the crime is a
good thing, not a bad thing. It's going to be
good for Republicans and Democrats alike. But this November, vote
for our local leaders, and I'm going to humbly ask
if you put me in the governor's office next year,
we're going to be in a position to make sure
we replicate success in every city, great city across our state.
We have many great cities in Ohio. It's time to
(17:09):
make those cities greater than they've ever been.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Well, we have ten seconds remaining. Forty six percent of
the students at CPS are chronically absent, and if a
black boys in seventy one percent don't go to school,
and I don't know what to do in public. Well,
well up against Levak. It's two o'clock today the River
Church on Clark Street. And you are blessed to have
an opponent like Amy Acton. Are you signing her petitions?
(17:34):
Are you funding her campaign? What are you doing to
make sure you run against her?
Speaker 2 (17:39):
You know, I don't care who I run against. We're
going to win this thing, and we're going to win
this thing big, because it's not who we're running against. Jeez,
it's what are we actually running for? And that's why
I'm hoping to lead our state as governor back to
greater days than we've ever seen. And you know, thank
you everybody for next year voting for me. But this
year in Cincinnati, let's get the job done for our
city leaders. We're running Bowmen and Smitherman and Nangis and
(18:02):
the rest of them.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Well, the voters have a choice and hopefully they'll make
the right one. Ravike, thanks again for coming on the
Bill Cunningham Show. Thank you, thank you, Matte, thank you,
God bless you all. Let's continue forty six percent chronically
absent every day and you're thinking, how do you function
spending twenty thousand dollars per kid? All all that is
is like a day adult daycare or juvenile daycare. That's
(18:24):
what it is. Bill Cunningham News Radio seven hundred ww
Find Billy cunning in the Great America. Welcome this Friday
afternoon the tri State. The weather is great, unbelievable and
Red Baseball is ready the March of the playoffs, so
they win hopefully in Milwaukee, and we'll talk about that
later on with the segment, etc. First pitch about eight ten.
Our coverage of reds Baseball starts at six oh five tonight.
But there's bigger problems brewing in the River City. About
(00:27):
two o'clock today, in a couple hours at the River
Church on Clark Street, there's going to be a community
forum on crime and so much more. Hundreds or thousands
of crimes are being committed in the city of Cincinnati
that are never reported to the police, because doesn't make
any difference you're reported or not, nothing happens. Joan you
and I now is Viveke Ramaswami. In about fifteen months,
(00:48):
he's going to be the next governor of the state
of Ohio. Forveke Ramaswami. Welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show.
And first of all, tell us what's happening about two
o'clock in a couple hours at the River Church on
Clark Street. What is being planned.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Look, we're coming back to Cincinnati, my hometown. I'm on
my way there now as I speak to you. Right now, Billy,
is that we need to crush the crime. We need
to end the violence. It was about eight weeks ago
that Holly and others were brutally assaulted on the streets
of Cincinnati. Holly is going to be with us today
at the event, as will others who have suffered at
(01:23):
the hands of senseless crime in Cincinnati. And what I'm
going to lay out is our vision for how we're
actually going to solve this problem. When I'm in charge,
a lot of people pay lip service to it. What
do we can actually do? And the magic secret is
that it turns out the overwhelming majority of violent crime
(01:43):
is committed by a tiny number of people. We're talking
about hundreds of people, not thousands. Get those people off
the streets. That's the formula. That's what I'm going to
accomplish by working with our cities when I'm governor, and
you know, I wanted to make sure we're doing our
job in our hometown. All lifting up, by the way,
our local candidates who have an election this year, Court Bowman,
(02:04):
Christopher Smitherman, Lynda Matthews. They're going to be there with
me as well. And I do think that local leadership matters,
and I'm there to highlight that as well. Well.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
You know, the statistics are down. Whenever it comes up
mayriftab Purevoll talks about crime is down. Crime is down,
except violent crime, which is through the roof. The reason
crime is down is because the victims of crime do
not report crime. Let me share with you a story
from Channel nine a few days ago about a store
owner of a convenience store in the Banks. We'd like
(02:34):
to think that Banks is the front door of our city,
he says. In A man's name is Sebastian. He says,
quote on a daily basis probably averaging four or five
thefts a day. On weekends, there's fifteen to thirty per
day on the weekend. And if I have my CCTV
cameras operating correctly, I have forty to fifty thefts every
(02:54):
couple days. I have a few hundred every week. I
can't live like this. He also says that the man's
name of Sebastian. After enduring Bengals games, there's massive brawls
and riots taking place. I have numerous videos I can
send to you about all the times bars or fights,
chairs overturned, tables are being thrown. It's complete chaos. And
(03:16):
when I asked ken kober and the cops about this Avek,
they tell me, look, we can only report what when
we're called to the scene. And the police aren't called
to the scene anymore because there's hundreds of crimes being
committed every day in which the shopkeepers know, why call
the cops? Nothing happens. And then you have, on top
of that a forty percent increase in drive by shootings
(03:37):
in OTR. And to solve this problem, I'm on my
soapbox a little bit. To solve this problem. The governor
came down about two weeks ago and standing there was
the chief of Police, the FBI was there, new US
attorney was there. One or two members of council were there.
They talked about the memoran of understanding memoryanum of understanding.
I said, what memory? And this supposedly highway patrol was
(03:59):
going to come, shall we say the National Guard? Well
that didn't happen. In fact, now we're told that the
MoU says two days a month. Then I talked to
ken Kobra, the police, they haven't seen him since it's
all a bunch of bs, and so on one hand,
we hear crime is down, crime is down, but then
shopkeepers and bar owners and others telling me the curfew
(04:19):
is completely ignored. Massive threats are thefts are happening every day,
drive by shootings are increasing. We got the governor coming
in and Mike Dwaine is friend of mine, well intended,
but nothing came of that at all, and they're just
trying to keep the lid on until election. You know
what I'm saying, What can you do differently than this.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
There's a few things to point out there, believest. One
is this idea that crime is down. It's a farce
on two levels. First of all, even if you look
at the statistics, violent crime in the heart of Cincinnati
is actually up year on years. So this idea that
crime is down is not is not accurate when you
talk about violent crime in the city of Cincinnati. But
(04:59):
even more broadly, other point is that crime has been
steadily going up over the years. So the fact that
you come off of some kind of peak, and then
even if it were down in certain ways that you
measure it, that's not our metric. The metric is crime
too high? And the answer is absolutely it is. And
then there's the third point which you raised, which is
that people have become so numb to that crime over
(05:20):
time that they're not reporting it in the same ways
that they used to. So people are smarter than statistics.
Are people afraid of going into the city of Cincinnati
or are they now? And the reason is the statistics
don't capture under reporting, which is a major issue that
we actually have to take into account. So that's on
the whole that this retort that certain statistics, when cut
(05:41):
certain ways, suggests that crime is down when other statistics
going to show the violent crime in the city of
Cincinnati is up is not a valid answer, and I
don't accept that as somehow putting a lid on this discussion.
What I do want to do is bring some serious
action to the table. And I think our action has
got to focus on where are we going to get
the highest yield, Billy, And the highest yield is take
(06:02):
the repeat violent offenders off the streets. As I said,
the overwhelming majority of crime is committed by a small
number of people. The question is how do you identify
those people? And the answer is they don't make it
very hard for you to identify them. They're committing crimes.
There are many crimes repeatedly, and so we're talking about
judicial reforms. We're talking about making sure that our bail
(06:23):
and cash bail system isn't working to our disadvantage. We're
talking about empowering law enforcement to actually be able to
do their jobs. And I want to be the first
to say, the men and women who serve in the
Cincinnati Police Department and in police departments and cities across
the state up met with them are good people doing
what they do because they care about law enforcement. But
we need to empower them, making sure that they're able
(06:45):
to do their jobs without fear of looking over their
shoulder for be ensued, and at the same time doing
it in a way that works with the judicial system
and with the system outside of the police, that actually
keeps these people off the streets. Bringing back psychiatric hospitals
and bring back the mental health healthcare. Our gals could
not be the top form of psychiatric care in the state.
This is common sense. This is not about right versus left, Billy,
(07:09):
It's about right versus wrong, and we're going to stand
for what is right, what is true, what is virtuous,
what is good, which is bringing back the rule of
law to the cities of our state. It's part of
my job descision as a governor. And we're going to
get it done by working with our city leaders across
our state, including perhaps for most today focusing on Cincinnati. Yeah,
(07:30):
we're coming back.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
To I tell you what, it sounds good. But when
you have a mayor and city council that will tell
you we don't want the Highway Patrol here. You have
the vice mayor, the President pro tem, you have Scotti
Johnson saying we don't want him here. In fact, the
day after the agreement was signed, which was worthless, the
Vice mayor said no, we're not going to follow that,
(07:52):
and so the messages of the police don't bother and
Highway Patrol has got better things to do. So what
do you do if you're the governor and you hold
a big news conference, well maybe with Corey Bowman, but
the mayor of Cincinnati and the February or March and
they say, okay, we're going to sign this piece of
paper and then ignore it. So what do you do
when you have a mayor that ignores what you're telling
(08:14):
him to do it's It sounds good of a bank,
but it doesn't work well.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
I think the first answer is make sure we have
a mayor who doesn't ignore that. And the best way
for I can do that now is I don't have
to wait till I'm governor. So I'm coming back to
Cincinnati today. We have an election this November. I think
we can elect Corey Bowman. I think we got to elect
people at Christopher Smithman and Lynda Matthews to city council.
I think Christopher Smithman, he's not a Republican. Here's a
former seven year I think president of the Cincinnati chapter
(08:40):
of the NAACP. He's an independent. Now, yes, but I
don't care about whether you call yourself Democrat or Republican.
Are you on the side of fighting crime. That's the
side that we're on together today. So I'm not waiting
till I'm governor to get this done. I want local leadership.
Does local leadership make a difference? Yes, You're done right it?
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Why I want to remind people we have an election
this November. Show up. If you care about ending the violence,
if you care about ending the crime, I don't know
what party you're in. I don't care for an independent,
does not a partisan question. Show up and vote for
the candidates for city council and for mayor who are
actually going to take this problem seriously and address it,
not just try to sweep it under the rug with
(09:22):
pr So that's a big part of why I'm coming
back today as well as you don't have to wait
for your governor to lead. We could start today and
that's what I'm aiming to do by coming back. Now
that being said, when I'm governor, is there a role
for the governor to play? Absolutely there is. It's not
I'm done with the accountability and the buck passing between
the legislature or the governor, or cities or the mayor
(09:43):
or the judges. Enough. We have to take responsibility. And
the state does provide serious levers of funding to our localities,
to our municipalities, to our counties, and I think that
that's perfectly appropriate to use that to also set minimal
standards of the results that we expect to see, the
behavior we expect to see from local municipalities, from cities,
(10:05):
and one of the top deliverables to the people who
live in the state is to bring down violent crime.
You know, rocket science, we don't how to do it.
The state that we put the man in the moon,
really state they put a man in the moon. And
you can figure this out. This is not complicated. It
just takes a spine, takes the spine and steel at times,
and that's what we're going to break.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Well, when you live, when you were here and you
were in the vallec Victorian of either Deer Park High
School or Saint X I'm not sure which, all right,
but nonetheless, you could take your guys downtown and go
to a Reds game or go to a Bengals game
and not face brawls and riots and thefts and wilding
in the streets. That's not the way it is today.
So are you ready for the big question?
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Well, I mean, the one thing I want to say
about the diomory. But I want to say one thing is
I don't want to paint some just rosy picture. This
is this live been ups and downs, right, you would
Vine Street growing up and over the rhine. These would
be areas where you would hope would improve. But the
problem is we have the tool get to do it,
and we still haven't made those improvements. In fact, it's
gone even further in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Well, and so what I want to do is I
don't just want to make Ohio great again. I want
to make Ohio and Cincinnati greater than we have ever been.
That's the standard I'm aspiring to.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
I want to ask you the big question. Are you ready?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
All right, Let's take it six.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Months from now, You're sitting in the Governor's office. For
one reason or another, whoever the mayor of Cincinnati is,
and I pray to God, is Corey Bowmen kind of
gives you the happy talk, you know, Okay, we'll sign
another piece of paper. Then you've got city council members
undermining the mayor quickly and saying no, we're not going
to do that. And they're telling the police do not
arrest people for walking around open air or smoking in
(11:39):
marijuana that happens all the time. We're not going to
arrest people using drugs. We're not going to arrest the homeless.
Would you seriously consider sending out the National Guard over
the objection of city council and the mayor to bring
peace to Cincinnati? Would you do that for Veke Ramaswami.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Well, the first thing is if Corey Bowman's in there.
As you say, I'm not going to just get the
yapp job. I'm going to actually get action, and that's
why I'm helping them get elected. But to your question,
would we be open to using the National Guard? Absolutely,
and I think that we should. A good leader should
be able to do this in a way that is
at once firm but also does it with respected dignity
and explains to the people exactly why we're doing what
(12:19):
we're doing. I visited Washington, DC earlier this week. It
is as of now, in my experience of being there,
abillity was probably one of the safest cities I've ever
felt like I've been in. Now there's a big police presence,
President Trump. It's a constitutional duty as the US president,
by the way, to take care of Washington, d C.
That's constitutionally ordained to the federal government. But the job
of the states is to look after the states, including
(12:42):
the cities in that state. And you know what, is
the National Guard being able to be utilized in more
ways than we use them now a good thing. Absolutely.
Would that require added training, of course, but we're going
to do it in the right way, in a way
that's common sense, but in a way that doesn't just
buckle either. That's the way I look the lead.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Well, we have about two minutes remaining of aveg Raamaswami.
I can recall cops have told me on the beat,
we're told to stand down. They don't pull over people
driving recklessly or speeding or possible DUI. If you pull
people over, you say give me your license, registration, proof insurance.
Then all of a sudden, your hands on with a
whole bunch of people that are driving illegally, don't have insurance,
(13:22):
have capises and warrants. So the cops are told, don't
pull people over for traffic. They're told open air drug
use is permissible in the city of Cincinnati. We don't
want to deal with that. The homeless population about one
thousand strong, about half the long in mental hospitals, living
underneath bridges and the portals of big buildings downtown. Leave
them alone. Cops don't want to go hands on. And
(13:43):
when you see a bunch of kids that are breaking
the curfew, the cops are told, why I asked, how
old are you? Well, some fourteen year old to say
I'm eighteen. You got your ID?
Speaker 2 (13:51):
No?
Speaker 1 (13:52):
All right, nothing we can do. They have all these
sanctuary places to go if you're breaking curfew. They've taken
a total of zero people in for the past month
because the cops are not enforcing the curfew. They're not
enforcing open air drug use, they're not enforcing the traffic laws,
they're not enforcing the Quarter against Homelessness. There's rampant criminal
misbehavior happening, and we have happy talk trying to hold
(14:14):
the lid on til the first week in November. You've
just got an honest report from a citizen of Hambleton
County that tries to go downtown. It is terrible. It
is awful. Businesses are shutting down to taste of Belgium
shutting down, and large companies in Cincinnati you're considering leaving
because their employees are not safe. Can you smell when
I'm cooking?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I think you're cooking. I will tell you that. Well,
the point is you're speaking hard truths, all right, billion
And if you care about somebody, you tell them the truth. Yeah,
you care about yourself, you can tell them what they
want to hear and make them feel good. But if
you care about somebody, tell them the truth. And you've
given our people the hard truths we need to hear. Now,
the question is how do we get accountability from our
(14:56):
elected leaders. And again I'm coming today to help highlight
the fact we have a local election coming up. A
lot of people don't show up for local elections. Well,
Thomas Jefferson famously said, the government you elect is the
government you deserve. Elect the government that Cincinnati deserves. Put
Corey Bowman in his mayor. Put people like Christopher Smithman
and Lynda Matthews in the city council who take this
(15:17):
problem seriously. That's step one. But the other thing is
you brought up the juvenile issue. I don't want to
say something about this. The juvenile crime has spiked since
those disastrous COVID nineteen school closures. And you want to know, Billy,
who was the what was the first state out of
the fifty states in the United States to shut down
(15:38):
our public schools?
Speaker 1 (15:39):
You know who was? I'm assume Ohio.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
It was Ohio. And you know who led and you
know who was advocating for that. Who is the COVID czar.
It's the person I'm running against any acton was the
person who led to those and pushed for those school
closures and defends them even today. You might imagine that,
you know, you could imagine five years later somebody could say, hey,
I'm mistake. We knew COVID risk was low, we knew
(16:02):
it was near zero for many of those kids. We
shouldn't have made that decision. That's not what she says.
She continues to double and triple down on that decision.
And now we're seeing the effects of that in the
mental health of those kids, many of those kids not
showing up to school on the streets instead committing crime.
So these issues are deeply intertwined. These are issues of
failures in the kind of leadership we've had in our
(16:26):
cities and the wrong decisions that we made, even in
the back of shutting down our schools. I'm not saying
this to blame anybody. I'm saying this to pave a
better path for the future. And that's what I want
to bring. I want to unite this state. I want
to unite our city. I don't want this is my
point in saying this is not because I want to
divide us. It's because I want to unite us. And
eighty ninety percent of people in Cincinnati agree with me
(16:48):
that ending the violence and crushing the crime is a
good thing, not a bad thing. It's going to be
good for Republicans and Democrats alike. But this November, vote
for our local leaders, and I'm going to humbly ask
if you put me in the governor's office next year,
we're going to be in a position to make sure
we replicate success in every city, great city across our state.
We have many great cities in Ohio. It's time to
(17:09):
make those cities greater than they've ever been.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Well, we have ten seconds remaining. Forty six percent of
the students at CPS are chronically absent, and if a
black boys in seventy one percent don't go to school,
and I don't know what to do in public. Well,
well up against Levak. It's two o'clock today the River
Church on Clark Street. And you are blessed to have
an opponent like Amy Acton. Are you signing her petitions?
(17:34):
Are you funding her campaign? What are you doing to
make sure you run against her?
Speaker 2 (17:39):
You know, I don't care who I run against. We're
going to win this thing, and we're going to win
this thing big, because it's not who we're running against. Jeez,
it's what are we actually running for? And that's why
I'm hoping to lead our state as governor back to
greater days than we've ever seen. And you know, thank
you everybody for next year voting for me. But this
year in Cincinnati, let's get the job done for our
city leaders. We're running Bowmen and Smitherman and Nangis and
(18:02):
the rest of them.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Well, the voters have a choice and hopefully they'll make
the right one. Ravike, thanks again for coming on the
Bill Cunningham Show. Thank you, thank you, Matte, thank you,
God bless you all. Let's continue forty six percent chronically
absent every day and you're thinking, how do you function
spending twenty thousand dollars per kid? All all that is
is like a day adult daycare or juvenile daycare. That's
(18:24):
what it is. Bill Cunningham News Radio seven hundred ww
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