... And Jerry Springer grew up in New York

What do Ted Berry, David S. Mann and Roxanne Qualls all have in common?

Sure, they were all Cincinnati mayors. But there's something else -- they all grew up in Northern Kentucky.

"At least when I first got started in politics, it was kind of held against me," Mann said on the radio the other day. "I would get on talk shows and somebody would say, 'Where did you go to high school?' And I said Dixie Heights High School. You know, it's 30 miles away. They said, 'So you didn't grow up in Cincinnati?' "

Qualls, who grew up in Erlanger and was first elected to City Council 16 years after Mann, said times might have changed by her time at City Hall. "It wasn't even an issue," she said.

Mann and Qualls were talking to freelance reporter Joe Wessels about the role of the mayor as a regional leader on WAIF's Cincinnati Advance Radio Friday. Both had stories of leaving the city limits and talking to Greater Cincinnatians who spoke of them as "our mayor." Voters from as far away as Lawrenceburg, Ind., would swear they voted for him, Mann said.

But Cincinnati has a parochial side as well. "Where did you go to high school?" has become our traditional greeting. Cincinnati voters who don't know a Charterite from a cheese coney can tell an East Sider from a West Sider -- and certainly an outsider.

On the mayoral campaign trail, state Sen. Mark Mallory always notes that he was "born and raised in the West End." His opponent, Councilman David Pepper, also talks about growing up in Cincinnati, which he calls "America's great hometown." But it's not technically his hometown -- he grew up outside the city limits, in Wyoming, and he went to a prep school in Indian Hill.

But Pepper has tried to avoid Mann's mistake. Ask Pepper what part of town he grew up in, and he relates it to the nearest city neighborhood.

Pepper jokes that he grew up in the "greater Hartwell area."