What happened to Alicia Reece?

Though her mayoral dreams were averted, Alicia Reece and supporters were still in high spirits as they danced to "Ain't No Stopping Us Now" at her Bond Hill Election Night party. (Photo by Keli Daily/The Cincinnati Enquirer)

A random, completely unscientific sampling of voters at the Bond Hill Recreation Center Tuesday afternoon made clear that Vice Mayor Alicia Reece's mayoral aspirations were in trouble.

After all, this should be the strongest of Reece's strongholds. But it took nearly an hour to find a single voter willing to profess his support for the 34-year-old Bond Hill councilwoman.

Mostly, they were for state Sen. Mark L. Mallory. Even when they didn't mention Reece by name, their reasons for supporting Mallory implicitly criticized Reece for her focus on gangs as the root of the crime problem and what they saw as disrespect for former City Manager Valerie Lemmie:

Doug Crooms, 40: "He's like the lesser of all the evils. Everybody else is talking about crime, but no one's doing nothing. All these killings in Bond Hill and Avondale, they're trying to make it a gang war. It's just a bunch of stupid kids, but hype sells."


Pecola Wise, retired: "He's riding the coattails of his daddy, but his daddy has done some good things. He'll do what he says. I really believe he'll at least try to do some of the things he says he's going to do. He's a good man, and he comes from a good family."


Willie Bell, 50, bricklayer and tree-trimmer: "I'm voting for change. I'm voting for Mallory myself. He's been upstate a while. He understands what's going on, and he understands how to make decisions. He knows the process, with the city manager. I don't like how that came out -- they didn't let her do her job. The mayor didn't step up to say, 'This is who I hired. Let her do her job.'"

Mallory beat Reece in the four precincts at the recreation center -- which had a higher-than-average 26.2 percent turnout -- by 21 votes, according to the final, unofficial count. Across Ward 7 -- which encompasses Bond Hill and Roselawn -- Mallory's lead was 280 votes.

Mallory, for one, said he wasn't surprised at besting Reece in her own back yard.

"I've been telling people all day -- when they told me that Ward 7 is Alicia Reece's base -- I told them, 'It's my base, too. We share that base,'" he said.

Whatever base Reece had didn't show up. Precincts that supported Reece had the lowest turnout in the city:

	Candidate	Precincts won	Turnout
	David Pepper	160	22.3%
	Charlie Winburn	29	20.6%
	Mark L. Mallory	156	19.3%
	Alicia Reece	39	15.0%

So what do you do when you have a turn-out-the-base strategy and the base doesn't show up?

Briana Hansen, a 20-year-old Xavier University student from Indianapolis, volunteered for Reece in the final weeks. She summed up the flaw in Reece's campaign strategy this way: "They were relying on people to turn out to vote for her, rather than getting people to want to vote for her."

"I loved working for them more than anything. They are amazing people -- friendly, and welcoming. I felt she was very qualified," she said. "But toward the end I thought, 'Is this all there is? Where is the momentum?"

Reece's father and campaign manager, Steven Reece Sr., said this morning he has no regrets.

"I think we ran the right campaign, had the right strategy," he said. "The turnout is not what it should have been, in terms of people being aware there was an election."