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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Former Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken: Registers As City Hall Lobbyist

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The Democratic mayor left office in 2005. He's been a politician, a lawyer, the TV anchorman on Channel 5 who replaced Jerry Springer, and now a lobbyist. There's a quip going around -- often attributed to Luken -- that if he ever sold used cars he'd have worked in all of the bottom five. Luken filed his registration forms in the council clerk's office. He's representing Humana Inc., the health benefits firm based in Louisville, and KeyCorp, the big regional bank from Cleveland.

Last year, he became a Statehouse lobbyist whose portfolio in Columbus includes Case Western Reserve University, the Distilled Spirits Council, AT&T and the Alliance of Auto Manufacturers. In Cincinnati, Humana is the biggie. The company has thousands of employees and a huge slice of the health insurance benefits business in the Cincinnati area, including government-sponsored plans. Luken had two stints as mayor. They were interrupted by a term representing Ohio's 1st Congressional District, a House seat he gave up to become a local news TV anchor. He is in the record books for serving as mayor longer than any person in Cincinnati's history.

1 comment:

  1. I guess the casino owners don't want him anymore...

    (FYI, the link to the city hall doc doesn't work, but don't bother "fixing" it. The URL changes constantly for some reason on their document site. List the doc type and # instead. The good news is that the city manager started an initiative to revamp the website.)

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