AP's take on Melanie Bates

From the Associated Press:

Campaign Becomes Personal
Husband’s death becomes campaign issue for City Council candidate

By Terry Kinney
The Associated Press

CINCINNATI – School board member Melanie Bates devoted much of her adult life to education. Then a gun-toting mugger in her driveway ended her husband’s life and changed her priorities.

“Education has always been a big passion of mine,” said Bates, who decided to run for Cincinnati City Council to campaign against gun violence. “The deck got shuffled and I was dealt a card I didn’t expect to be dealt. Now public safety has become a priority not just for me but for the city.

“Phil’s death certainly was a tipping point.”

Philip Bates, a 55-year-old chemist for a suburban pharmaceutical company, was returning home one night last August when he was shot in the chest a few steps from the front porch of his family’s century-old home in the racially-mixed North Avondale neighborhood. He later died at University Hospital. A suspect is awaiting trial on murder and robbery charges.

Melanie Bates, 53, expected a heightened crackdown on gun violence after her husband’s shooting. Instead, city officials tried to reassure residents that Cincinnati was safer than most big cities. It seemed – to the Bates family – that officials made little distinction between the killing of a public official’s husband, in a residential neighborhood, and frequent drug-related shootings in the inner city.

Some of Bates’ anger was directed at Mayor Mark Mallory.

“When Mayor Mallory called and said he was going to have a press conference on crime, I didn’t even question it because I assumed it was to announce that he was going to assume some leadership in crime prevention, not telling the city that we really are safe and Phil Bates’ death was an anomaly,” she said.

Bates served on the State Board of Education for seven years and has been on the Cincinnati Board of Education for six. She is keeping her position there while campaigning for City Council.
In a race where voters can mark nine names out of a probable 25 candidates, and many people are just looking for names they know, said Gene Beaupre, a Xavier University political scientist.
“Melanie’s already got good name recognition, and the issue of safety will resonate. More than any other candidate, she is linked to that issue ... with the coverage she’s gotten in her office and the events in her life,” Beaupre said.

Bates, a hospital liaison with the nonprofit Life Center Organ Donor Network, talks daily with her three adult children, a daughter who is a teacher and two sons who are in college. They encouraged her to run for City Council.

“We’re putting our lives back together,” Bates said. “School board was my thing. This is our family’s thing.”

Her campaign has given some meaning to her husband’s death, she said, and reassurance to people who stop her on the street.

“We were told by our leaders that as long as you were a law-abiding citizen, not involved with drugs or guns, you’re safe in the city,” Bates said. “When that happened to Phil ... there were people out there wondering if they were going to be next.”

Mallory has called fighting crime the city’s top priority, and has signed onto New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns program. He and Bates both support the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence, a program based on one introduced in Boston in the ‘90s to reduce violent crime and homicides by identifying and counseling gang members and other chronic offenders.

Mallory, who is not elected by council or facing re-election this year, remains steadfast in his belief that most shootings are drug related and Cincinnati is overall a safe city, but he acknowledges that crime is a potent issue.

“Keeping the city safe will always be a campaign issue,” he said.

THE CANDIDATE: Melanie Bates, age 53
CHILDREN: Emma 24, Jonathan 22, Griffin 19
OCCUPATION: Hospital liaison for LifeCenter Organ Donor Network
PUBLIC SERVICE: Ohio State Board of Education 1995-2001; Cincinnati Board of Education 2003 to present
OFFICE SOUGHT: Cincinnati City Council