Council: Handicapping the Race

Predicting who will win City Council is both easy and very difficult. It is easy to get those who are locks to win and likely to win. After that, it is all open ended. It is a fool's errand to try and predict the actual order of finish to any level of accuracy, so don't look for that here. What I have done, instead, is create tiers and grouped candidates based on their likelihood of being in the top nine. Here is my take on the race, two weeks out. Each group is in alphabetical order.

A Lock to Win:
Roxanne Qualls

Likely to Win:
Chris Bortz
Laketa Cole
Leslie Ghiz
Cecil Thomas

In the Mix:
Jeff Berding
Kevin Flynn
Greg Harris
Chris Monzel
Laure Quinlivan
Bernadette Watson
Charlie Winburn


Strong Finish, But Out of the Money:
Tony Fischer
Nickolas Hollan

The Rest:
Anitra Brockman
Amy Murray
LaMarque Ward
Wendell Young
George Zamary


As far as order goes, as I mentioned, there is no way to know. I would say anyone not in the mix could be as high as 13 or 12. A good measure of a candidate that does not win is their placement. If you get anywhere from 10th to 13th, you had a good run and are a contender for 2011.

There are of course two weeks to go, so anything could happen, but usually doesn't.

Minor note: I will go out on a limb here and say the Mayor Mallory will be reelected. The only speculation will be what percentage Wenstrup has to reach in order for Alex Triantafilou to claim the GOP is on the rise in the City. I would suggest that anything less than 50.000001% of the vote would be a sign that the GOP is not on the rise in Cincinnati.