Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval (left) will face Cory Bowman (right) in the city’s mayoral race on Nov. 4. Photos: Via Facebook
By Jim DeBrosse and Madeline Fening
Cory Bowman’s campaign to unseat Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval in the Nov. 4 election will take a miracle of the kind Bowman claims are performed at his faith healing church in the West End.
“I think this is a nice sort of publicity stunt, but this is not a campaign for mayor,” said David Niven, a University of Cincinnati political science professor and long-time observer of Cincinnati politics. “I mean, this was a guy who didn’t even vote in city elections.”
But, as the first Republican challenger in 16 years to take on a Democratic incumbent in what is now a super-majority blue city, Bowman, in his own amateur way, is pointing out vulnerabilities among local Democrats in two areas — the city’s rising gun violence and the impact of big investors on Cincinnati’s housing market.
Bowman, the 36-year-old half-brother of Vice President JD Vance, is the owner of Kings Arms Coffee shop and the evangelical pastor of The River Church, both in the West End. A native of Hamilton and a business graduate of Miami University with a ministerial degree from River University in Florida, Bowman moved to Cincinnati four years ago. He said his MAGA half-brother inspired him to run for office, but has given him no advice or financial support.
Pureval hardly needs an introduction in Cincinnati, where he was one of the first Democrats to break up the Republican courthouse monopoly by running successfully for Hamilton County Clerk of Courts in 2015. A native of the Dayton suburb of Beavercreek and the son of Indian and Tibetan immigrants, the 43-year-old Ohio State University and UC law school graduate is a former special assistant U.S. attorney and legal counsel for Procter & Gamble. After an unsuccessful run for Congress in 2018, he won the 2021 race for mayor with 66% of the vote.
The experience gap between the candidates shows in their campaign contributions. Bowman, who has no previous political experience, reported less than a fifth (18%) of the money raised by Pureval’s campaign ($33,000 vs. $185,000) in pre-election filings with the Hamilton County Board of Elections. Cincinnati residents accounted for 50 percent of Bowman’s donations and 60 percent of Pureval’s.
Bowman’s total pre-primary contributions of $10,000 included $100 from a donor who identified himself as a “professional gambler” and a self-identified “stay-at-home dad” who donated $500. At least two small donations were anonymous, dropped in envelopes at his campaign headquarters.
Among Bowman’s biggest donors were members of the Bortz construction family. Neil, Christopher and Suzie Bortz each contributed the maximum of $1,100. Cincinnati Right to Life contributed a total of $675. In a tepid show of faith, the executive director of the grassroots group Republicans for a Greater Cincinnati donated $20 to Bowman’s pre-primary campaign, or less than half the cost of a Downtown parking ticket.
Pureval, as expected, drew large donations from members of Cincinnati’s biggest law firms, blue-chip corporations, realtors, developers and university and physician groups in addition to numerous smaller donations, including those from ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s online fundraiser ($282). Some of his biggest individual contributions came from out-of-state donors, including LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue ($1,100), Texas Signal President David Lee ($1,100) and Trowbridge Ventures developer Daniel Dickson ($1,100).
How the candidates approach crime
During an hour-long televised debate on Oct. 9, Pureval made clear his advantage in political experience and technocratic know-how, pointing out numerous times Bowman’s lack of knowledge on city issues and specifics in his policies.
But like a boxer on the ropes, Bowman managed to land a couple of punches that went unanswered. After Pureval touted a $5.4 million crime-fighting package passed last month in response to a summer of high-profile crimes in Downtown and Over-the-Rhine, Bowman fired back that it was too little too late. “Last time I checked, he’s been in office ever since four years ago. So why is it just happening now? The problem with City Hall right now is we’re being reactive instead of proactive.”
Bowman noted in the debate that police were shorthanded Downtown on the night of the July 26 racial brawl, recorded parts of which went viral on social media and conservative news outlets. “The reason why that violence happened wasn’t because of the (Cincinnati) Music Festival. It wasn’t because of the race aspect. It happened because administratively you guys failed. The chief got on a press conference and said that there were 11 officers in the third shift, Central Business District. I looked at the (staffing) report and there were three officers and only two (police vans) that night. What that means is that you did not fully equip your city to be safe that night on one of the largest populated nights of our city.”
Pureval went on to endure backlash about the handling of the ongoing brawl investigation. After police had charged seven Black people in connection with the incident, the prosecutor’s office charged a 45-year-old white man — who is also listed as a victim in the incident — with slapping a Black man in the initial confrontation.
Cincinnati police viewed the filing of the misdemeanor charge as city administrators’ caving to political pressure from civil rights groups and community activists and undermining their own investigation into the brawl.
“The city administration is eroding the very fabric of the justice system with orders to prosecute those without probable cause,” said Ken Kober, president of Cincinnati’s Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). “Cops are being used as political pawns. It’s disgusting.”
One week later, the police union voted unanimously for “no confidence” in Pureval and later endorsed Bowman for mayor.
Pureval called the vote “disappointing,” saying he has been “proud to stand with our officers at every turn as they make sacrifices to protect residents.”
Acknowledging the July 26 brawl in his debate against Bowman, Pureval admitted he should have been “more proactive in putting out a statement” on the incident, rather than waiting three days. “And my learning is that when these things happen and when they are nationalized by outside forces who are looking to divide Cincinnati, it’s important to treat it like a serious issue akin to an officer-involved shooting.”
A week after the debate, Pureval made a move to reclaim the narrative around public safety. On Oct. 15, Purval said the city is “exploring all options” when asked by reporters if new police leadership was on the table. Days later, Cincinnati Police Chief Teresa Theetge was placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation into the “effectiveness of her leadership.”
Kober told CityBeat that replacing Theetge would be a mistake, suggesting instead that “residents vote for a new mayor.”
Theetge isn’t backing down. She’s since hired an employment lawyer, Steve Imm, who says the city is “looking for a scapegoat.”
Pureval himself has argued that crime data don’t back people’s fears of an unsafe city. Even so, he said during the debate that “what matters is what’s in the hearts and minds of Cincinnatians, and too many of them don’t feel safe, which is why this council has moved quickly to prioritize visibility. For the first time in a very long time, police officers are out of their squad cars and onto the street walking beats, interacting with the community, hearing from neighbors exactly what they’re scared of. For the first time in a very, very long time, we are actually enforcing the curfew. And it has been extraordinarily successful.”
Bowman, who doesn’t support removing Theetge as chief, countered Pureval’s claims of success with his personal experience in the West End. He said that gunfire was heard three times over the summer from his church on Clark Street. Nine days later, he posted on Facebook that, after he received online threats, someone had fired a shot through the window of his unoccupied church.
“As a pastor in the West End, as a business owner in the West End, and in our residence, we don’t see (increased crime) as a perception, we do see it as a reality,” he said during the debate. “These are things that we’re kind of seeing in the Downtown area, and we’re seeing it actually spread into other neighborhoods as well.”
Police data, however, don’t support Bowman’s claim.
A look at the numbers
The city’s year-to-date data show shooting incidents have trended downward in the West End since 2023, and CPD’s neighborhood crime analysis report shows homicides are also down: two in 2024 and none so far in 2025. Still, overall violent crime is up 7.3% in the West End due to a rise in aggravated assaults and strangulations. Between 2024 and 2025, aggravated assaults rose from 35 to 44 cases, and strangulations nearly doubled from 11 to 20. In general, the combined total of property and violent crimes declined in the West End by 9%.
Crime rates have been a mixed bag in the city’s core neighborhoods over the past two years.
In CPD’s Central Business Section, which includes the Central Business District and Central Riverfront (aka Downtown), homicides dropped from three in 2024 to one in 2025. Criminal shootings — tracked separately from overall violent crime — increased from nine to 16, though fatal shootings fell from three to one.
While Downtown homicides are down, violent crime overall is up 12.8% compared to last year. The sharpest rise is in aggravated assaults, which jumped 54.5% from 22 to 34 cases.
In CPD’s District 1 — which covers Mt. Auburn, Over-the-Rhine, CUF, Pendleton, Queensgate and the West End — the pattern flips. Unlike Downtown, homicides increased from eight in 2024 to 14 in 2025. But homicides are the only category on the rise; overall violent crime in District 1 is down 6.2%, and criminal shootings fell 26.7%. Aggravated assaults also dropped 4.8%.
In Over-the-Rhine specifically, homicides are up, from four in 2024 to nine people killed so far in 2025. Two of those cases, in particular, shocked the city this year.
Patrick Heringer, co-owner of the Findlay Movement gym, was stabbed to death in his Over-the-Rhine home while trying to protect his wife from an intruder. An innocent 31-year-old female bystander was also killed in a hail of gunfire from a passing vehicle.
Business owners and employees in Over-the-Rhine have complained for several years that gun violence is a growing problem in Cincinnati’s redevelopment showcase.
“Safety has become a huge concern in Over-the-Rhine,” Emily Spring said in an interview with CityBeat in 2024. Spring is a veteran bartender and server in Over-the-Rhine who’s become an informal advocate for local restaurant workers. “We hear them every single night and we’ve gotten to a point where we’re completely unfazed by it until somebody’s walking into our bar covered in blood, you know?”
Two days after an Oct. 13 double shooting at Fountain Square just steps away from Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse, Britney Ruby-Miller, CEO of Jeff Ruby’s Culinary Entertainment, told Channel 9 News she was frustrated with crime Downtown but optimistic that city and business leaders are working on a solution.
“I feel safe at my restaurant. I’m optimistic in the plan and I think this plan is going to work,” Ruby-Miller said. “I believe that we have a challenge, so I’m not going to sugarcoat that. But I believe we are going to turn this around.” She added that she never expected to spend 30% of her time as CEO working on safety and crime issues.
How the candidates approach housing issues
On the issue of housing during the debate, Pureval told of his council’s success in creating more affordable rental units in Cincinnati through zoning changes passed last year in the Connected Communities Act. Bowman countered by saying tenants outside Downtown and smaller local developers aren’t seeing the benefits.
“I think that what they’re doing actively on the surface seems to be the right plan, but it’s involving connected developers that are the only ones that are getting their pockets filled,” Bowman said during the debate.
After hearing complaints from tenants in the West End about substandard rental conditions, he said the city needs to do more to make big-business landlords more accountable. “It doesn’t make sense to just keep on stacking more affordable housing that is leaving our tenants in pain and suffering.”
Bowman wants to divert more of the city’s money to “our local developers, people that sometimes can only do one or two properties at a time. But a lot of them get turned down in the West End because there are these big conglomerates that are actually tied in with the city and they’re the only ones that get the cut of it.”
An Enquirer op-ed column by opinion page intern Meredith Perkins made similar points, arguing that “while the Connected Communities plan might increase the supply of housing in Cincinnati, to pretend as if the zoning overhaul alone will guarantee affordable housing for Cincinnatians is optimistic at best and naïve at worst. For Connected Communities to succeed, it is necessary for the city to tackle the other corroborating factor majorly thwarting housing affordability: private equity investors.”
In 2022, the Enquirer reported in a series of articles that private equity investors represented by big national firms like Vinebrook Homes and Venture Real Estate Company were buying up thousands of units of affordable housing in the city and converting them to rentals. The result, the Enquirer found, were higher rents and often substandard conditions for tenants and fewer affordable single-family homes for purchase.
The Port, a Cincinnati-based public development agency, helped solve that problem in part by acquiring nearly 200 single-family homes from an out-of-town investor in 2022. Private equity investment in Cincinnati has since declined but, according to the latest data in the 2023 census, the city’s home ownership rate was still well below the national average — 39 percent compared to 64 percent.
While Pureval noted the city’s success in converting empty office space Downtown into multi-unit rentals for young people, Bowman pointed out that, in the long term, young people are also looking for affordable single-family homes to start families.
“They want to have the dense housing to start off with,” he said. “But I disagree with the idea that they want to stay that way the rest of their life. I believe a lot of young people want to get married, have kids. They want to have cars, they want to have houses… Instead, we want to make it easier for renting, and I don’t think that’s the strategy they need to have.”
Bowman wants the city to do more to promote homeownership. “Look at the West End, there’s all sorts of vacancies in empty buildings. I think we need to incentivize revamping these old historic buildings that have so much charm instead of only incentivizing the connected developers to build concrete boxes for people that feel like a prison.”
Niven said the outcome of the election appears to be another victory for Pureval as mayor. But much depends on the usually abysmal turnout for off-year elections in the city, which dropped to a record low in 2021 with just one in four eligible voters showing at the polls.
“It’s a different dynamic this time with a gadfly type (Republican) opponent instead of a conventional city politician opponent,” Niven said. “But I think the fundamentals are the same and the outcome is a foregone conclusion.”
Although the mayor’s race will get most of the attention, he added, “There’s a legitimate chance that Republicans could take one of those (city council) seats. It’s one of those things where turnout’s going to be terrible, but those votes are going to be consequential.”
Neither candidate responded to requests for interviews with CityBeat.
Incumbent Democrat Aftab Pureval will face off against Republican challenger Cory Bowman in Cincinnati’s mayoral race on Nov. 4. Visit votehamiltoncountyohio.gov to learn more about polling locations and other election information.