Reece asked Luken to resign, former mayor says

Mayor Charlie Luken announced his pick of Alicia Reece as vice mayor the day after Election Day, 2001. (Photo by Tony Jones/The Cincinnati Enquirer)

In the summer of 2004, Vice Mayor Alicia Reece asked Mayor Charlie Luken out to lunch. They never had a close working relationship to begin with, but the lunch ended so badly that neither one would talk about it publicly afterward.

Until now.

In an interview last week, Luken confirmed rumors that Reece -- his own vice mayor -- had asked him to resign.

"Her point was that the city needed an African-American mayor, and she thought it was her time," Luken said. Reece was about to launch her own campaign for mayor, and thought incumbency would give her a leg up on rivals like Mark Mallory and David Pepper.

Luken said he can't remember his exact response -- "What do you think I said?" he asked rhetorically -- but said he wasn't shocked.

"It wasn't fun," he said. "But people who have watched the vice mayor won't be surprised."

Reece has a different interpretation of events. She said she was caught off guard by Luken's announcement in August 2004 that he would not run again, and thought she deserved to be kept in the loop on his political plans.

"I had lunch with him and asked him if he was not going to finish his term," Reece recounted "Because if he was, I wanted to know more than five minutes before."

"In hindsight," she said, "there are a lot of folks who thought he should have stepped down." She did not say if she was one of them.

Reece's father and campaign manager, Steve Reece Sr., reiterated the vice mayor's version of events. "If they did have a meeting, it has to be real clear that it happened after Charlie Luken announced he wasn't going to run for re-election -- if it happened. And I'm not saying it did. I wasn't there."

Reece Sr. said the incident was a non-story. "I'm not sure it's significant. I think the story should be Charlie Luken. What the hell did he accomplish?"

So if Luken and Reece were so obviously at odds -- on issues from economic development to police relations to the treatment of the city manager -- why didn't Luken remove her as vice mayor? The charter makes clear that he can select a new vice mayor at any time.

But Luken was worried the move would backfire. He remembers 1987, when the GOP yanked its endorsement of liberal Republican Guy C. Guckenberger over abortion, the environment and gay rights. Guckenberger ran as an independent and had his best finish ever.

Power plays don't always play well in Cincinnati politics.