Candidate Profile: Michelle Dillingham
“Give ‘em hell, Michelle!” is Michelle Dillingham’s recently unveiled campaign slogan for her 2021 City Council Campaign. Anyone who has remotely paid attention to the comings and goings of Cincinnati politics over the past decade has either heard of, met or worked alongside Michelle Dillingham. She’s been giving Cincinnati elected officials hell for quite a long time, usually fighting on the side of the underserved, impoverished, disabled and most recently teachers. Dillingham is the third Cincinnati City Council candidate to sit down with me and talk about why she’s ready to lead this city in an entirely different direction than what we’ve seen under John Cranley and the highly dysfunctional City Councils that have served alongside him.
Dillingham’s early life is interesting and not widely talked about. She was born Boston, Massachusetts in 1972 within hours of Richard Nixon being reelected. She described her father as a taxi driver, poet and small press publisher and her mother as a writer and academic. Her parents moved around a lot within the New England area and there were times when she lived in Western Massachusetts and other times when she lived in upstate New York when her mother attended Cornell University. The bouncing around continued into her late teens and early adulthood. She did not find high school very challenging or intriguing, so she dropped out at the age of 16 and got a GED. She bounced around from California to New Mexico until ultimately enrolling into a small liberal arts college in Oregon known as Reed College where she obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology. While living a life in constant upheaval, Dillingham developed a “heavy duty drug and alcohol” problem along the way. Her drug and alcohol dependency consumed her life and she decided at the age of 24 to enter a drug and alcohol recovery program. Quite a wild ride and a lot of life experiences for someone who was just 24 years old. She’s been clean ever since and has proudly been clean for 23 years. In the era of PR crafted candidates, it takes a lot of courage for a political candidate to share the deepest and darkest parts of their life. Most candidates wouldn’t dream of discussing the challenges and hardships they’ve faced in life, but that is what makes Dillingham different than most other political candidates.
Dillingham moved to Cincinnati in 1995 and eventually got her Master’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Cincinnati in 2005. She’s worked in a lot of different roles across this city; she’s been the Director of Education at the Homeless Coalition as well as the CEO of Community Shares which is a group of social justice charities. She currently works as an organizer for the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, a labor union representing CPS teachers. She’s done everything in her career from educating youth about homelessness to fundraising large amounts of money for non-profits at Community Shares. In her current role at CFT, she deals a lot with communications, writing grants, organizing teachers on various political issues as well as onboarding new teachers at the CPS new hire orientation. Her work experiences are broad and varied, but the most important thing is she’s been advocating for regular Cincinnatians for years. In her third attempt at running for City Council, Dillingham is looking to bring her advocacy for regular Cincinnatians to City Hall.
Michelle and her son, Michael Dillingham.
One issue that has been at the forefront of this election cycle has been affordable housing, abatements and tax increment financing districts. “I don’t think we can have an informed debate about affordable housing until an audit occurs of TIF funds, The Port and 3CDC,” Dillingham told me. “Millions of dollars are being shifted around and it is disingenuous to threaten closing recreation centers and senior centers when you're not being honest with the current money being spent,” Dillingham said. “The reality is, we already subsidize housing in this city. We subsidize housing to the tune of millions of dollars thanks to public-private partnerships. We already spend tons of government money on housing but the money is being funneled to organizations like The Port and 3CDC. The problem is that housing currently being subsidized is luxury housing and its enriching developers for personal profits. It’s time to stop subsidizing the wealthiest developers and start subsidizing housing for people who work here and are living off the area median income wage,” Dillingham continued. In December of 2019, the City of Cincinnati added 15 new TIF Districts and councilmembers gave lip service to a financial audit of the existing TIF districts, but that never actually happened. Advocates like Dillingham want to know how the TIF money is being spent and claims these TIF districts are being used by Cranley as a slush fund to pay for pet projects. Across this city, Community Councils have pleaded for more input on how the TIF money is being spent in their neighborhoods, but it has fallen on deaf ears during the Cranley administration. “The role of the Community Councils across this city have been slowly weakened or ignored. Under Cranley’s administration, Community Council votes on development have been completely ignored. The city has recently been approving development plans despite Community Councils objecting. It’s problematic,” Dillingham explained. “My top priority if elected is transparency. Trust, transparency and accountability to the regular tax payer has been severely weakened over the last eight years of this administration,” Dillingham told me.
This won’t be Dillingham’s first rodeo working at City Hall if she’s elected in November. She previously worked as a legislative aide to former City Councilman David Crowley. She worked for Crowley for 4 years and learned the ins and outs of City Hall and how to get things done. She was able to sit at the table during the early days of the reform-minded collaborative agreement which is an agreement between the city, the fraternal order of police, the ACLU and the Cincinnati Black United Front. During her first stint at City Hall, Dillingham said the city made an intentional effort to engage its citizens as well as engage in a genuine planning process. On February 26 of 2021, the city manager released a memo explaining that community engagement with city residents will decrease due to inadequate staffing levels. “This is a strategy they use. Starve government so they can make the case that the private sector is faster and better which turns into a vicious cycle of privatization. Organizations like The Port and 3CDC privatize how our public tax dollars are spent without tax payer input,” said Dillingham.
In the end, Dillingham is one of the few candidates who I proudly and unapologetically support. I’ve worked alongside her during her time at CFT and I’ve been impressed by her organizational skills and her quest to eradicate corruption wherever she finds it. Much like most regular Cincinnatians, her life has been complicated, messy and not simple by any stretch of the imagination. Based on her eclectic life experiences, I believe she can relate to and connect with everyday residents of this city. She’s one of the most authentic candidates you’ll ever meet and you’ll always know where you stand with her. She’s not afraid to ask the difficult questions, even towards people she considers allies. What other candidate can you find who’s fought for teachers, the homeless and non-profit charities? If you want an elected official to reform City Hall from the inside, vote Dillingham in November so she can continue giving elected officials hell.
Dillingham’s new campaign logo and slogan for the 2021 election cycle.
This post is a part of Cincinnati Delusion’s Candidate Profiles for the upcoming 2021 November election in Cincinnati and Hamilton County. We here at Cincinnati Delusion believe it is important to highlight the perspectives of women, people of color as well as members of the LGBTIA+ community. You can read our previous candidate profiles below:
· Stacey Smith (Cincinnati City Council Candidate)