Council hopeful Jason Riveiro fighting like hell for the black vote?
There’s only one way for a person that is relatively unknown in the black community to get black votes and that way is to fight like hell. Riveiro is fighting for black votes. But unlike candidates of the past who came to the black community with a jingle or did the booty call dance (Qualls), or tried to put their hands on Lincoln Ware’s man part (Ghiz). It does not appear that Riveiro is going to stick and move– get our votes and then disappear.
On a cool summer night Riveiro stands outside Integrity Hall in Roselawn and rocks his four-month old baby. His wife stands at his side and they introduce themselves to people. Riveiro’s team has provided hot dogs and snacks to the mostly aggrieved black people who have come out to learn how they can get casino jobs and stop HB 194 commonly known as the voter suppression bill.
Our people are suffering, they (City of Cincinnati) gave away a billion dollars in contracts and African Americans got less than one percent. I’m at this meeting to make sure African Americans get some casino contracts,” said a well dressed black man who looked and sounded like a preacher.
Ohio Legislative Black Caucus member Alicia Reece told the overflow crowd at Integrity Hall that the black unemployment rate in Cincinnati is around 23 percent.
“Say what? There’s gonna be a lot more crime,” said a guy I knew from high school who knew a couple of the guys grilling the hot dogs, who are part of Riveiro’s campaign team.
Some of Riveiro’s team looks like guys that you might see standing on a street corner in any of our blighted neighborhoods. Only they aren’t on the street corners because they are working, becoming engaged with the voting process, and learning valuable skills.
“They do other stuff besides grill hot dogs,” said Riverio’s campaign manager Kevin Johnson. He’s a young looking black guy, very polished with a business, and a degree in political science.
Since my friend from high school was friends with Riveiro’s team, I thought I could break them or Johnson down to give me the real scoop on Riveiro. Does he really like black people?
It’s not uncommon for candidate hopefuls to take advantage of people who suffer from drug and alcohol problems in our community and pay them a few bucks to hand out campaign literature at the polls, so uninformed voters will think that the candidate really supports blacks people’s issues.
Not these guys, they had nothing but nice things to say about Riveiro. Johnson was great at articulating Riveiro’s platform, including why he supports the streetcar.
The streetcar may be Riverio’s Achilles heel with blacks, but maybe, just maybe, the other issues that he’s running on like building a strong relationship between blacks, browns, and all races might land him a seat on Council.
Riveiro is the Cincinnati Chapter leader of League of United Latin Americans Citizens LULAC the Hispanic version of the NAACP.
In this iron-clad world of politics blacks plan to go to the polls and vote for fewer than five people.
They might want to consider Jason Riveiro as one of their choices.