P.G. Sittenfeld
Alexander Paul George Sittenfeld is an American politician from Ohio, currently serving as a member of the Cincinnati City Council, currently running for Mayor of Cincinnati. Elected at age 27 in 2011, he is the youngest person to ever be elected to the body. In January 2015, he announced his 2016 bid for Ohio's U.S. Senate seat currently held by Republican Rob Portman. On March 15, 2016, Sittenfeld lost the Senate Democratic primary election to former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland. On July 12, 2020, Sittenfeld announced he is running for Cincinnati mayor, an election that will happen in 2021.
Early life and education
P.G. Sittenfeld was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, the youngest of four children. His mother, Betsy, is a retired school teacher who served as a librarian and art history teacher at Seven Hills School. Sittenfeld's father, Paul, started his career at Procter & Gamble, before leaving to work at Planned Parenthood, running the Fine Arts Fund, and finally transitioning to become a family investment advisory. Sittenfeld's mother is Catholic and his father is Jewish.Sittenfeld is the youngest of four siblings. One of his older sisters, Curtis Sittenfeld, is a novelist known for Prep and Eligible.
For high school, Sittenfeld attended The Seven Hills School, where he was an all-city basketball player. During this time he also wrote a monthly column for The Cincinnati Enquirer and an advice column in Seventeen.
Sittenfeld matriculated to Princeton University, where he served as the president of his freshman class. He remained involved in journalism, including as a columnist for the Daily Princetonian, and as a student stringer through the University Press Club for publications including The New York Times, Trenton Times, and Princeton Alumni Weekly. He was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 2007, he graduated magna cum laude with a degree in English, and was awarded a Marshall Scholarship to attend graduate school in the United Kingdom.
As a Marshall Scholar, Sittenfeld attended a master's program in English literature at Oxford University. There, he lived at Magdalen College, and studied the works of John Steinbeck.
Career
Cincinnati City Council
In 2011, at age 27, Sittenfeld became the youngest person ever elected to Cincinnati City Council. He received the second most votes of the 23 candidates.He was re-elected to the council in 2013 and was the leading vote-getter among the 21 candidates.
Committee assignments
- Budget and Finance Committee, Member
- Education, Innovation, and Growth, Chair
- Equity, Inclusion, Youth, and the Arts, Member
Legislation
Sittenfeld started an initiative known as the "Golden Cincinnati Initiative", the purpose of which was to provide support to Cincinnati's aging community. The initiative included the creation of the City's Chief Advocacy Officer for Aging and Accessibility, a role in the city administration tasked with assisting in the creation and implementation of policies with older Cincinnatians and those with accessibility needs in mind. In November 2018, the Over-the-Rhine Senior Center – which primarily serves low-income, older residents in the neighborhoods around Over-the-Rhine – was set to close due to a reduction in funding. Sittenfeld worked with Cincinnati Area Senior Services, the Cincinnati Recreation Commission, and the Office of Aging and Accessibility, to direct city funding to keep the center operational. In January 2019, Sittenfeld advocated for the city's human services budget to incorporate resources for senior services, which had not previously qualified for funding. The legislation adding senior services as a human services budget priority passed unanimously.
In 2020, Sittenfeld sponsored the first "renter's choice" legislation in the United States, allowing apartment-renting tenants alternatives to cash security deposit.
In 2019, working with the AMOS Project, the University of Cincinnati Law School, Northern Kentucky University Law School, and the Ohio Justice and Policy Center, Sittenfeld sponsored legislation ending the City of Cincinnati Law Department's prosecutorial division’s policy of requesting cash bail when prosecuting defendants. Sittenfeld later introduced legislation allowing prospective job-applicants to the City of Cincinnati with prior marijuana possession charges on their records are not denied employment. In 2020, Along with Council Member Greg Landsman, Sittenfeld introduced legislation to move toward a policy of citations to court, instead of arrests, for low level offenses.
Sittenfeld sponsored legislation creating Cincinnati's first-ever bus-only lane to provide dedicated avenues for Metro buses to traverse city streets, with an emphasis on the Central Business District, to reduce congestion and speed up travel time. In 2019, Sittenfeld sponsored an amendment to the city charter which allowed for a regional funding system for the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority's Metro bus system, which previously had only received direct local funding from the city’s earnings tax. Voters approved Sittenfeld's charter amendment with 75% support in the November 2018 election.
Beginning in 2017, Sittenfeld began an effort with councilmember Chris Seelbach to establish an annual commitment in the city's budget directing $500,000 toward city-wide pedestrian safety improvements. In 2019 that allocation funded 70 projects such as enhanced lighting and signs, improved crosswalks, and bump-outs which reduce the width of streets at key, pedestrian-heavy intersections.
Sittenfeld sponsored city funding for a new health and wellness center in the neighborhood of Evanston, which serves immigrant students and families. He has also advocated for additional school nurses in the city budget.
Sittenfeld has advocated for reproductive rights. In April 2019, after the Ohio Senate passed Senate Bill 23, a bill which would ban abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, Sittenfeld introduced legislation requiring the City of Cincinnati's Law Department to file an amicus curae brief with the court in opposition to the legislation, challenging the bill's constitutionality.
Sittenfeld has participated in efforts to make Cincinnati into a smart city, including sponsoring legislation to create the city's open data portal, expanding wireless internet access to a low-income Cincinnati neighborhoods, creating the city's Government Technology Advisory Council, and calling for implementation of technology tools that can be deployed for public safety such as ShotSpotter.
Texting scandal
In 2018, Sittenfeld was caught leading the "Gang of Five", a group of five city council members who communicated via secret text messages attempting to undermine the mayor and bypass public meetings and debates.In March 2019, the Gang of Five agreed to turn over their text messages in order to settle a lawsuit filed by a local anti-tax activist. Among the text messages were juvenile discussions of city employees' sexuality, messages mocking members of the public who attended council meetings or contacted the city council. The text messages were made searchable and posted on the website of the law firm that brought the suit against the Gang of Five. The Agreed Entry resolving the case has been made available online at the Scribd website.
In June 2019 additional text messages were released as a result of a lawsuit filed by Sinclair Media reporter Angenette Levy in which it was revealed that Sittenfeld encouraged the then-city manager, Harry Black, to work with African American community leaders to avoid being fired. This release also included text messages in which Sittenfeld discussed his concern over Black's need for counseling, and Sittenfeld and other council members discussing Black's habit of making late night drunken phone calls to city officials and reporters. Text messages also revealed that Black had engaged in efforts to suppress dissent among city employees, including chastising a city employee after she testified before council about the death of a teenager when 911 operators and Cincinnati police were unable to locate the teen. Despite all these concerns, Sittenfeld opposed efforts to fire Black.
The Gang of Five's efforts cost the City approximately $101,000 as it resulted in additional costs to fire a city manager, and costs to hire outside lawyers to defend the lawsuit and ultimately in paying the fines and attorney fees as part of the agreed order resolving the lawsuit.
U.S. Senate campaign
On January 22, 2015, Sittenfeld announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat held by current Republican United States Senator Rob Portman in 2016. Sittenfeld lost in the Democratic Party primary to former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland.Throughout his primary campaign, Sittenfeld focused heavily on gun control issues, claiming he would support reforms such as a federal ban on assault weapons and more comprehensive background checks for gun purchasers. On January 28, 2016, Sittenfeld announced a proposed amendment to the Ohio legislature to restore home-rule authority on gun control. His proposal would allow city governments within Ohio to enact their own gun control laws, a power which was removed by a 2006 state law.
Mayoral campaign
On July 12, 2020, Sittenfeld announced that he was running in the 2021 Cincinnati mayoral election to succeed incumbent Mayor John Cranley. He faces another city councilman, David S. Mann.Personal life
Sittenfeld is co-founder and assistant director of the Community Learning Center Institute in Cincinnati. He also worked at DataRole, a technology startup company in downtown Cincinnati.Sittenfeld serves as a board member of the Freestore Foodbank and Breakthrough Cincinnati. On June 4, 2016, P.G. Sittenfeld married Dr. Sarah Sittenfeld.