It was in 1969, in his second race for a city council seat, that Kucinich finally won. He was twenty-three.
When he arrived at city hall, he was appalled by Cleveland’s culture of corruption. In his recent memoir, The Division of Light and Power, Kucinich recounts how he was told by an older council member that CEI representatives gave “away Cleveland Indians baseball tickets and also electric appliances,” and that CEI’s man at city hall was Lee Howley, the former law director for the city.
“When I went to council, I thought I won the lottery,” recalls former councilman and county treasurer James Rokakis. “I used to get a pass for all the baseball games. Who controlled their lease? Cleveland City Council. I thought it came with the job.”
During the late 1970s, the main priority for CEI and the banks aligned with the corporation, particularly Cleveland Trust and National City Bank, was the sale of the public utility Muny Light to CEI.
At the time, Muny Light had served the city and many of its residents for the better part of a century since its creation in 1907 under Progressive Era mayor Tom Johnson. Like Johnson, Kucinich saw how public electricity saved money for Clevelanders. Inspired by Johnson’s example, Kucinich fought against Muny Light’s sale from his earliest years on the city council.
CEI’s lead attorney, himself a former city official, put it to Kucinich straight. “The sale is the solution to Cleveland’s problems. We’ll buy it and run it like a business.”
The young councilman wasn’t interested.
CEI tried similar tactics with others on the council. “Someone from my ward approached me on behalf of CEI,” former councilman Rokakis told me. “This guy told me they could get me $500 cash that day to ‘become friends.’ They said they would double or triple the amount if I would commit to a vote to sell Muny Light to them. I told him, ‘No, thanks!’ ”
And then, suddenly, the lights started going out across Cleveland.
Kucinich and his allies had begun to suspect that CEI was causing these periodic blackouts in an effort to build support for the sale. Indeed, in 1977, as CEI became involved in the development of a power plant in nearby Perry, a government regulatory commission confirmed that CEI had in fact ensured the blackouts by denying Muny Light access to the existing national grid.
Their goal was to drum up as much resentment as possible, hoping to force the council into supporting its sale. Instead, they ended up launching a citywide war.