By Rieley McDonnell, Staff Writer
2025 is an election year for the city council and mayor for the city of Cincinnati.
Attorney Sol Kersey is the first openly transgender, nonbinary candidate to announce a run for Cincinnati City Council. Kersey is the intake coordinator for Equality Ohio Legal Clinic (EOLC). EOLC has advocated for the Cincinnati City Council to allocate resources towards mental health services for transgender youth.
Their run comes during the wake of President Trump’s recently signed executive order that declares that the federal government recognizes only two genders: male and female.
Kersey’s run also comes after that of Reggie Harris, an openly gay council member, who resigned last year and was replaced by Evan Nolan. This left the council without LGBTQ+ representation for the first time since 2011.
The current mayor of Cincinnati, Aftab Pureval, has announced his bid for re-election. When he took office in 2021, Pureval became the first Asian American mayor of Cincinnati.
His last election campaign promoted a platform of economic growth, aiming to improve city infrastructure, affordable housing and enhance public safety. He plans to continue these efforts if he is re-elected for a second term this November.
The ballot could look a little different this year’s election day. Rank the Vote Ohio, an organization dedicated to promoting ranked-choice voting, is pushing to get ranked-choice voting implemented within Cincinnati for mayoral and city council races.
Ranked choice voting would have voters rank their preferred candidates from one to nine, since there are nine seats on the Cincinnati City Council. The candidate who goes the most first preference votes would win a seat. Then the person with the next amount of preference gets the next seat, and so on until all the seats are filled.
Those in favor of this change, such as “Rank the Vote Ohio” Executive Director Denise Riley, believe that it would allow nontraditional candidates to have a chance in the city council and mayoral elections. She believes that it would hold council members more accountable to their constituents, according to the “Rank the Vote Ohio” website.
However, not everyone likes the idea of this system. Council Member Jeff Cramerding opposed the idea. “I think right now our country is very polarized,” Cramerding told to Local12 Cincinnati news. “There are people on both sides of the spectrum, and I think that ranked-choice voting’s proponents would allow these people, candidates, on both sides of the far edges of the political spectrum to get reelected.”
The year’s elections will take place on Nov 5. 2025. Four years for Mayor, and two years for city council members.