It looks like a scene from Starsky & Hutch: Mayor Dennis Kucinich standing next to a spiffy sedan and future police chief Jeffrey Fox.
Is the young mayor taking control of a stakeout? A hostage situation?
Not quite. This is a civilian operation. Kucinich is at the city's Harvard Yards service center, trying to convince 50 city mechanics to end their wildcat strike.
It's Aug. 8, 1978, five days before the election to recall Kucinich. Amid the abrasive mayor's countless battles with political enemies, picket lines had halted garbage collection. Kucinich had negotiated retroactive pay raises for the mechanics, but City Council wouldn't pay. With Fox, his personnel director, flanking him, Kucinich took the mic to defuse the crisis and blame council.
"Your decision could change the outcome of the city's history," Kucinich told the strikers. "They're trying to use you to play political games."
The mechanics returned to work the next day, saying they were tired of being a "political football." Kucinich won the Aug. 13 recall election by just 236 votes out of 120,300. But he lost the 1979 election to George Voinovich. Fox, who served two years in Kucinich's cabinet, operated 84 Charing Cross Bookstore on Detroit Avenue in the 2000s. He's now retired in Maryland.
