A coney for your thoughts

Camp Washington Chili is a 24-hour working-class oasis at Colerain Avenue and Hopple Street. (Photo by Tony Jones/The Cincinnati Enquirer)

Neighborhood candidate forums have their place in Cincinnati politics, in much the same way C-SPAN has a place in curing insomnia. In a ritual repeated in about 52 different places, dozens of City Council candidates will get up, give repetitive five-minute speeches, and dash off to the next event.

But it's hard to monopolize the conversation when you're stuffing your face full of cheese coneys. And that was the idea behind Thursday's Coney Caucus at Camp Washington Chili.

For two hours, hundreds of chili-eating voters from Camp Washington and environs chatted up more than a dozen candidates for mayor and City Council. Lifelong Camp Washington resident David Justice, who's partially blind, wanted to know what council members could do to put in safer crosswalks at the corner of Colerain Avenue and Hopple Street. Joseph T. Gorman, a community organizer, quizzed candidates on the finer points of neighborhood development: gap financing, building codes and vacant building licenses.

Coneys were on special for $1 -- but 68 coneys later, the owners decided to write off the expense and give them away.

"We're just trying to figure out how to get the candidates off their stump speeches and talk to people," said Gorman, the organizer of the event.

The concept was the brainchild of two progressive activists, Jenny Edwards of Winton Place and Jan Holland of Northside, who held four of the events last year, mostly at Park Chili in Northside. Edwards wanted to get "Democrats, Republicans, Charterites and other-ites" to talk to each other. "We go to our blogs and our Internet and we do everything else, but we don't get up close and personal," she said.

Gorman hopes the idea will catch on around the city, at places like Empress Chili in Carthage, Skyline Chili in Clifton and Price Hill Chili.

Among those attending the caucus were mayoral candidates Mark Mallory and David Pepper, and council candidates Bill Barron, Jeff Berding, Eve Bolton, Laketa Cole, John Cranley, David C. Crowley, Samantha Herd, Paul McGhee, Chris Monzel, Michael Earl Patton, Christopher Smitherman, Cecil Thomas and Wendell P. Young.