This story originally appeared in The Epoch Times.
By Jeff Louderback
Cincinnati is a deep-blue city where a Republican has not sat in the mayor’s seat since the late 1970s, and the city council is composed solely of Democrats. Cory Bowman, who is Vice President JD Vance’s half brother, is running for mayor. He and GOP city council candidates hope to change this southwest Ohio community’s political makeup on Election Day in three weeks.
Incumbent Mayor Aftab Pureval, a Democrat, has said that Bowman has no political experience and labeled his opponent as “MAGA” during a debate last week.
Bowman said an outsider is what Cincinnati needs.
“National politics is on everybody’s mind, but when it comes to city hall, people are tired of it,” he said. “They just want people to do their job when it comes to taking care of the citizens of Cincinnati.
“Let’s just address the elephant in the room—my brother is JD Vance, OK. But the thing is … we’re running this race for Cincinnati.”
Ohio has a strong Republican presence.
President Donald Trump comfortably won the state in the past three elections. Vance, before he became vice president, was elected as a U.S. senator from Ohio in 2022, replacing then-Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), a longtime lawmaker.
Current Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), endorsed by Trump, defeated then-Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) in November 2024. Ohio has a Republican governor, Mike DeWine, and a Republican supermajority in the Ohio Legislature.
Ten of the 15 U.S. House members representing Ohio are Republicans.
However, Democrats control Cincinnati.
Cincinnati is Ohio’s third-largest city, and voters have cast their ballots three-to-one for Democratic candidates in recent presidential elections. Before he served 12 years in Congress, Brad Wenstrup was the last Republican to run for Cincinnati mayor in 2009. It was an unsuccessful bid.
In November 2024, when Trump registered a resounding victory, 77 percent of Cincinnati’s electorate voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
Ohio’s First Congressional District, which includes Cincinnati, is represented by Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), who defeated incumbent Republican Steve Chabot in 2022 and Republican challenger Orlando Sonza in November 2024.
If Bowman can defeat Pureval in November, he will become the first Republican mayor of Cincinnati since Ken Blackwell held the post from 1978 to 1980.
Multiple Republicans have followed Bowman’s path in an attempt to reshape the Cincinnati City Council.
Overall, 25 candidates are vying for nine seats on the city council.
Eight Democrats are seeking re-election.
Victoria Parks is the lone incumbent not seeking another term.
Liz Keating, the last Republican to serve on the Cincinnati City Council, announced her candidacy during the summer.
Christopher Smitherman is former Cincinnati vice mayor and former president of the Cincinnati NAACP. An independent, he served on the Cincinnati City Council from 2011 to 2022.
Bowman and Smitherman have expressed support for each other’s campaigns.
“I support you for Mayor. I love how you continue to work hard to earn the hearts of the citizens in Cincinnati. This race is not about any political party but a need for honest & strong leadership.”
Linda Matthews, a Cincinnati native who is a former public school teacher, would become the first black Republican Cincinnati councilwoman if elected. An Ohio Republican Party State Central Committee member, she believes that the “timing is right” for Republicans to change the makeup of Cincinnati’s city council.
“I’ve lived in the urban core and worked as a teacher, and I’ve seen so many changes over decades that are not positive,“ Matthews told The Epoch Times. ”Our community is unsafe. We can build beautiful buildings and have innovation, but if the perception and reality are that Cincinnati is unsafe, then the community will suffer.”
Earlier this year, Bowman told The Epoch Times that he believes that few Republicans have sought city council and mayoral seats over the past few decades because they were not confident that they would win. He said that “times have changed” and Cincinnati residents “deserve a choice.”
Matthews echoed that belief. She said she supports Bowman’s candidacy.
“Republican and Democrat voters alike throughout the city are tired of all the blood being spilled in the streets,“ she told The Epoch Times. ”They want to live in a safe city.”
Matthews is a trustee at Central State University, a historically black college and university located about one hour north of Cincinnati. She told The Epoch Times that Trump has been generous to historically black colleges and universities and that she believes that Bowman’s relationship with Vance will not hinder his mayoral campaign.
“Cory is a person you can sit down with and talk to, and he listens,“ she said. ”I think people are ready for change, so why not a Republican mayor and the first African American Republican woman on city council?”
Pureval, 43, is seeking a second term as Cincinnati’s mayor. He is a lawyer and former special assistant U.S. attorney who served as Hamilton County clerk of courts before winning the 2021 mayoral race with about 66 percent of the vote.
In 2018, Pureval ran for Congress and lost to Chabot.
Only 10 percent of registered voters showed up at the polls during this year’s mayoral primary, when Pureval gained 83 percent of the ballots compared with 13 percent for Bowman. In Cincinnati, the top two candidates in the primary advance to the general election. Bowman defeated another Republican challenger and advanced to the general election.
Since the primary, Bowman and his grassroots campaign team have walked Cincinnati’s 52 neighborhoods, knocking on doors and “getting [the] message out to as many people” as possible, he told The Epoch Times.
The incident happened at 3:06 a.m., when Cincinnati’s downtown area was crowded with more than 150,000 people attending a Cincinnati Reds game, the Cincinnati Music Festival, and a basketball tournament.
The brawl went viral. Two white people were brutally attacked by multiple black men and women, sparking concerns about race and crime in Cincinnati.
“The long-term strategy is recruiting and retaining more police officers so that we have the manpower to increase our visibility throughout the city and also enforce the law,” Pureval said. ”Those recruit classes are a really big part of that.”
Bowman has repeatedly criticized Pureval and his administration for “tying the hands of police officers” and making it more difficult to apprehend criminals.
Bowman earned a degree in economics and business administration from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
He moved to Tampa, Florida, to study for the ministry at River University, where he met his wife, Jordan, who is from Oklahoma.
“I prayed that the Lord would place it in her heart to love Cincinnati as much as I do,“ Bowman said. ”After a visit, she told me this is where she wanted us to raise our family.”
The couple moved to Cincinnati in 2020, after living for nine years in Tampa. They launched The River Church Cincinnati in 2020 and opened Kings Arms Coffee in 2022.
Bowman told The Epoch Times that he was inspired to run for mayor after returning from Trump’s inauguration, at which Vance became vice president.
Bowman’s platform is centered on reducing gun violence and improving economic development and overall living conditions in neighborhoods such as the West End and downtown. Other sections of Cincinnati are not getting the same attention from city government as the downtown area, Bowman said.
Pureval supports Cincinnati’s status as a sanctuary city, while Bowman opposes it.
During last week’s debate, Bowman and Pureval expressed contrary views about multiple topics, including the first question: “If crime rates are down, why do so many Cincinnatians still feel unsafe?”
“Some of what’s called property damage is actually gun violence,“ Bowman said. ”Residents, business owners, and police feel like crime is up.”
Pureval said public safety is a top priority for his administration. Bowman pointed out that the Fraternal Order of Police and the Firefighters Union have endorsed his campaign. He said the Fraternal Order of Police announced a vote of no confidence in Pureval.
“I will always support the police,“ Pureval said. ”My administration always says yes to [the Cincinnati Police Department].
“For the previous three years, despite having similar levels of crime, there was not this public outcry for that kind of visibility. So we are trying to be eyes wide open about evolving with what our community wants and giving it to them. And that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
Bowman said the city does not allow police officers to enforce certain laws, a claim Pureval denies.
“Tell that to the cop after cop after cop that has come into my coffee shop and said that they believe that the crime is up, and they believe that even the stats are false, and they believe that the city is unsafe and all they want to do is their job, and that’s what we will allow them to do with our city,” Bowman said.
Like Bowman, Vance is an Ohio native. He and his wife, Usha Vance, own a home in Cincinnati’s East Walnut Hills neighborhood.
Vance has not taken an active role in his brother’s campaign, but he offered him a last-second endorsement on X on May 6.
When they talk, Bowman said, the discussions mostly center on “Star Wars” and their children.
“He‘ll ask how the campaign’s doing, and I’ll ask him how being vice president is,” Bowman said. “I would rather have a brother than a political adviser when the campaign is done.”