City Council Candidate Jesse Vogel

Tim Fulton 00:00Welcome to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly, Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week, on the occasion of the upcoming election, we are speaking with the candidates for Columbus City Council District 7. First up, Jesse Vogel, who is framing himself as the outsider in this race. We discussed his work in housing and immigration law, what inspired him to run, and how he believes the city can improve for working people, from affordability to accountability at City Hall. Tomorrow, we'll hear from his opponent, Tiara Ross, in order to provide listeners with a comprehensive picture of this competitive race. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Jesse Vogel, Columbus City Council candidate for District 7. Jesse, how are you?

Jesse Vogel 01:13Doing so well. Thanks for having me today.

Tim Fulton 01:17For those that aren't aware, there's a competitive race coming up for District 7. It is not the first race where we've had more than one person on the ballot since we've moved into the districting system last cycle, two years ago. I think it is fair to say that it is the first competitive one, between you and your, quote-unquote, opponent. I want to get started by, first, give us your sort of elevator speech of who you are, where you come from, why you're running.

Jesse Vogel 01:47Well, you know, I am running for city council in a lot of ways because of my background and work here in Columbus over the past six years. I was born here, I had the opportunity to live elsewhere, in Washington, DC, and came back in 2019 to go to law school at Ohio State. And during that time, I got involved in a community response effort focused on assisting neighbors facing eviction. And not really "just got involved" — I was sitting in my studio apartment near the campus and thinking about this issue of, during this global health crisis, what are we doing for folks most in need? And we watched as the city decided to reopen its eviction court pretty quickly during that global health pandemic. And they moved operations down to the convention center. They said, "Okay, well, we're concerned about social distancing. We need to keep evictions rolling, so we'll move operations to a place with more space between people." And me and some friends just thought, that's kind of nuts. This is a moment when people are in crisis. People have lost their incomes. And we just got together and created this project focused on doing outreach to neighbors facing eviction. You can actually pull lists of people off the court's website who have hearings coming up. We did that. We created a little pamphlet with information about your rights as tenants. And you remember, back at that time, people were isolated, upset, scared, trying to find ways to make meaning and difference. And hundreds of people came together and picked up these little pamphlets on my front porch that I was putting together in between law school classes on Zoom. And me too — I drove around town and dropped these things off and had conversations with people about how it wasn't right, what they were going through, that they had lost income and now they were facing an eviction, had to go downtown to deal with this, and that people cared about them. And that was a moment, I think, where I used some of my skills of organizing, and also got passionate even more so about how things in this city are not really working as well for working people as we need them to. And that sort of set a seed. I ended up going to work at the Legal Aid Society of Columbus, where I represented tenants dealing with bad housing conditions and eviction court. And every day at Legal Aid, you see different ways people are struggling, whether it's housing, lack of access to transportation, need for education, child care, pre-K. So I just got really thoughtful in that moment about, how do we make a bigger impact? And I decided to jump in and run for this seat.

Tim Fulton 04:57Okay. Talk a little bit — and full disclosure, I moderated a panel that you sat on with, at the time, two other folks who were running for the seat — talk about your identity and what you're bringing to your candidacy, and how that informs it and how it informs how you look at the issues facing folks.

Jesse Vogel 05:17Well, yeah, absolutely. Look, my perspective is one of an advocate for individuals and families. I sat in a basement office at Legal Aid. Now I work as an immigration lawyer at CRIS, Community Refugee and Immigration Services, and I've had to face people struggling through tough systems that weren't working for them, had to listen to them. And what my job is, is to advocate, to find solutions for them. And I think that is a perspective that's badly needed on Columbus City Council — someone who knows what it's like to walk through systems alongside people in need, and not just assume that the problem will get fixed by someone else, but really make sure that they get results, because you're accountable. You know, you talk about identity — I'm a gay guy, I'm a Jewish person, and in so many ways, that brings with it, in some sense, a little bit of a different perspective, a kind of, at moments, an outsider perspective. I'm somebody who grew up not always fitting in with people around me. And I think that leads you to want to ask questions and think critically, and not assume things about other people, which are all things I bring into my legal work when I'm working with clients who have traveled across oceans to make home here in Columbus. And it's also something I take into my advocacy and into this campaign, where I'm talking to folks all across the city who look different than me and live different lives than me, and reaching out and saying, I think we can do better, and asking for input and bringing people into the campaign.

Tim Fulton 07:19Okay. What other issues — you had mentioned the eviction court. What other issues are you focused on in your campaign as it relates to the residents of Columbus? Like, what are the problems we face?

Jesse Vogel 07:32Yeah, well, look, in the primary, we knocked 10,000 doors. Talked to lots and lots and lots of voters, and what I said to them at every stop, every stoop, was, "Hey, I'm Jesse. I'm a Democrat, but I think we can do better. There's some things I care about, but I also want to hear what you care about." And we listened and took notes. And what I heard again and again is that residents of Columbus are struggling with affordability and cost of living. In this campaign, we're separating that out into a number of buckets of issues that I think our city council can do more on. You know, we've talked a little bit about housing. We have the benefit in this city of a great amount of resources and a strong credit rating that has allowed us to go out on the bond market and raise money to invest in affordable housing. I'd like to target some of that investment to the folks most in need, who aren't being served by the marketplace right now — the kinds of people who are looking and needing an apartment for $750 a month or less in rent. I'd like to preserve existing housing that's at risk of being sold to out-of-town investors who don't have our best interests at heart. There's some policies we could talk about. One that I'm interested in is something called Tenant Opportunity to Purchase. That says, if you're living in a place and the apartment is about to be sold, before it's sold, the tenant should have the chance to put in an offer and buy it themselves.

Tim Fulton 09:12Okay, so that's a limited use case, right? Like, that's the limited use case.

Jesse Vogel 09:19Think about it, though, in a marketplace that's heating up, where outside investors are coming in all the time to purchase properties.

Tim Fulton 09:28I'm just saying, it only really works for, like, single-family homes or maybe duplexes.

Jesse Vogel 09:33Well, I don't know that that's right. I think, if done right, and if paired with access to capital, which we could do in this city — I mean, imagine. I think about a client who lived on the north side in an apartment building that had been owned by a lady named Yvette. Yvette picked up the rent checks once a month, and then she died. Her family had to figure out what to do with this property, and they ended up selling it to an out-of-town investor based in New Jersey. And everyone opened their doors one day at this property — elderly folks, people with disabilities, multigenerational families — and they saw notices saying you've got to leave in 60 days. If we had a policy that said that property can't be sold without adequate notice to the tenants living there, and an opportunity for them to put in an offer, and then we paired that with a program from the city of Columbus that said, "You know, all this capital we're raising, we're not just going to give it out to developers. We're actually going to have a fund available for groups of tenants who want to start a housing co-op, and we'll provide some technical assistance about how to do it" — that would have been a package of solutions that could have saved those people's homes and that community. And I think there are all sorts of creative solutions we can think about. The problem right now on council is we don't have leadership that is willing to push for new and creative ideas.

Tim Fulton 10:59Okay. And you are phrasing it in terms of, like, they could be doing more. Are there things that you think that they are doing that they shouldn't be doing? Totally fair if not.

Jesse Vogel 11:11Yeah. I mean, I think that we have great folks in Columbus who are working hard and trying to come to solutions. I think too often we're not thinking big enough or creative enough. One issue that I focused on also in this campaign is accountability. You walk into a council meeting, right? And you see our nine members of council sitting up on this dais, far from the people in the back sitting in the pews, the people going to listen in. And they come in through the back doors, and they all sit down. And what we often see is, each policy, each ordinance proposed, we see nine hands raise and say, "Yes, all in favor." What I think many residents would like to see is a little more discussion and debate, and use of our resources in a more effective and accountable way. Right now, Columbus has a $50 million structural deficit, and we keep spending, and it's not in line with the revenue that we're bringing in. One thing I'd like to see from council is conversation about how the mayor is going to rein in spending in a way that ensures we continue to invest in what matters. Housing — we've talked about. Transportation — we also need to find ways to increase access to service. In Columbus, we have a census tract with the lowest life expectancy in the state, on the Harmon Avenue corridor, where South Park Apartments are, and South Park Elementary. Folks are dying at 60 there, and part of the reason for that is they don't have a car and they don't have access to a grocery store. So in thinking about the transportation issue, this is really one of life and death. So on council, I'd like to work with MORPC, and work with COTA, and work with the bus operators to find ways to increase access to that service, to expand it, and to ensure that everyone, wherever you are in the city, can get where you need to go. And then finally, we've been talking a lot in this race about education. There's only so much that council can do, but there's a lot more we can do. I've served on a committee, the policy committee of the school board, at which I've seen the horrible impact of policies being passed from the state government. We need to support public education. One way we could do that is, for example, collaborating with the county and with the city school districts in order to expand the Early Start pre-K program, which has shown really fabulous results for our kids. I can't think of a better investment than that.

Tim Fulton 14:24Okay, switching gears a bit. What are your thoughts on the current city council district system, and how it — you and your opponent both have to live in the same general district in order to run for this seat, but you're voted on at large throughout the city, and by all accounts, based on this first term, you aren't really directly accountable to the folks that live in your district. How do you feel about that structure? Do you think it does a good job of representing the people of Columbus? And if you had the opportunity, what would you change, if anything?

Jesse Vogel 15:11You know, this is a conversation that comes up again and again and again in the campaign. One thing that's interesting about this race is, me and my opponent are running very different types of campaigns. I've engaged a lot more people in the city of Columbus on this issue and in this campaign by organizing canvasses across the city, and house parties, little gatherings in people's living rooms in every corner of Columbus. And what I hear again and again in different parts of the city is that people don't feel listened to. On the north side, someone said it takes 25 minutes for 911 to respond to my call. In Deshler Park, someone said, "I put in a request into 311 for a problem with a bad landlord down the block, and nothing gets done about it." On the west side, they said, "What's going on with our sidewalks?" And I've got to think, being in this, that part of it has to do with the way the incentives are set up in a city that still runs elections in an at-large manner. This is a city of 900,000 people. And so if you're running in a city of 900,000 people, and it costs so much money to communicate with the voters you need to turn out to vote — and we have campaign contribution limits in Columbus, where the maximum an individual can give to a city council race is $16,615 —

Tim Fulton 16:49Which is well higher than any —

Jesse Vogel 16:52It's nuts. And what that means is that the incentive is to work through a machine system where a few people who hold relationships with developers and corporate executives and city contractors spend an afternoon and sit down and raise $100,000 in $16,615 chunks, and spread it along to the people who want to run. And that's what my opponent is doing in this race. And what that means also is that that's what it takes in order to run citywide. So there's less incentive to be out in every neighborhood and to be directly accountable to people in every neighborhood, because of where all the checks are, and because that's what an at-large system requires. You can't just knock on every door and talk to your neighbors to win.

Tim Fulton 17:47And I will — full disclosure — I haven't talked to Ms. Ross yet, so what I'm doing is committing to, I'm going to ask her the same questions, because I don't think it's fair. Two years ago, when I interviewed everyone, it was some of the most boring interviews I've ever had to do, because as soon as I started, it was like, oh, I can't follow up and ask this person this question, because I didn't ask three other people this question. So, would you like to address the fact that the county party has endorsed your opponent? And I am going to be following that up with, talk to me about the critiques around your fundraising.

Jesse Vogel 18:25Sure. Well — also, can I finish? I mean, I think that what we've heard is that there's poor representation in the city, and I think that's partly because we have at-large races. We don't have strong enough constituent services, in the sense that if you're a representative of a district — if I'm a representative of a district — I want to be getting calls from everyone in the district, right? I don't want to just be sending them —

Tim Fulton 18:53Similar to Congress, similar to the Statehouse.

Jesse Vogel 18:57That's right. And I want to sort of know the ins and outs of the district. I've lived and worked in District 7 for six years, and I care about it. And I do think that a lot of questions have been raised about the effectiveness of this system. I won District 7 voters by close to 19 percentage points, but came in second place citywide, just by about 600 votes, in the primary. And a lot of people looked at that and thought, that's odd, that people across the city can vote on who's in charge in District 7. And I would like to work with others to find ways to reform some of these problems that lead to worse representation.

Tim Fulton 19:42Well, and I did ask — sorry, I'm now going to talk about both sides of my mouth — probably about half of the people who ran two years ago, I did ask them, do you think that this new system will result in any sort of constituent services changes? I only asked people that had been on council before. And — sorry, full disclosure, I don't think I asked all of the ones that had been previously sitting on council, so I'm not going to name any names — I don't think a single one of them either didn't answer the question or said, "No, that's not how this works. There's going to be no change. There will not be a difference in constituent services." And I was, like, in my head, yeah, there seems to have been an opportunity there. Totally. But at the same time, you've got to get elected citywide. So, and I think — you know, I think a not-unfair critique of Mayor Coleman was his focus on individual neighborhoods, and then when Ginther sort of took up that mantle, he was like, "Oh, there's a whole lot of neighborhoods we're not paying attention to," and so they did. And so I think that's some credit. But there are two — there are six sides to this.

Jesse Vogel 20:57Yeah, well — and I don't understand. I mean, I just think we have to find ways to provide better representation in the neighborhoods, and this system doesn't really do that.

Tim Fulton 21:12That's fair. So, the endorsement — sorry, let's do the endorsement, and then we'll talk about fundraising.

Jesse Vogel 21:20Okay, so the question — I mean, you just want to talk about —

Tim Fulton 21:26How do you feel about the county party endorsing your opponent, when I believe what you were advocating for was no endorsement at all?

Jesse Vogel 21:35That's right. Yeah, I was disappointed by that choice. I was very consistent in conversations with County Democratic Party members in advance of that vote. Our Franklin County Democratic Party is made up of close to 220 individuals. Some of them are elected at the ward level, and some of them are appointed by elected officials and the chairman of the county party. I called every single one of those members of the county party in advance of the vote in July. And the reason I did that was because I've been a Democrat my whole life, and I wanted to report back to them what we heard from voters — which was that they see this as a race with two Democrats running and an open seat, and in this year of all years, given everything going on at the White House and the loss of Joe Biden last year, when voters sort of felt told what to do by Democrats, that it doesn't make sense to put their thumb on the scale and tell voters who to vote for. So I was disappointed by the way that vote went, but I do want to explain that what happened that night was really unusual, and was the result of really strong coalitional organizing across Franklin County. What happened was, we walked into that room, and it was a different dynamic than most of those meetings, in that the room was packed with people who were not just voting county party members, but were regular folks across the city who wanted the party to know that they didn't want the party to endorse. Then the discussion began, and State Representative Beryl Brown Piccolantonio raised her hand and said, "Hey, we'd like to actually ask for a non-endorsement in this race," after the screening committee had recommended an endorsement. You know, we often see in that space a small set of party insiders try to shut down debate, and that's what happened. We had somebody raise their hand and say, "I call the question. We don't have time to talk about this." But because of the organizing that I and others had done in the lead-up to that vote, that move to shut down real dialogue amongst party activists and elected officials didn't succeed. And then we watched about 10 different people stand up, from Representative Beryl Brown Piccolantonio to Representative Munira Abdullahi. We had party activists. We had Black women activists, like Ms. Adrienne Hood, whose son was shot and killed by the Columbus police, and who herself had run for Columbus City Council a few years ago. All kinds of folks stood up and said, "Let's listen to the voters, not tell them what to do." So I was disappointed by that result. I was also proud of the conversation that we helped make happen. And the truth is that after that, a lot of folks watched that vote and didn't like what they saw, and have since come on board to support my campaign. And I'll include, I think, among that, Kate Curry-D'Souza, who was the third candidate in the primary, who ran as an independent, who ran a very strong race and won 8,000 votes — such that 60% of voters in the primary said they don't want Tiara Ross to be council member. She came out and supported me this fall. And I think part of the conversation and thinking was about what we saw in terms of the consolidation that many thought was unwise and unfair.

Tim Fulton 25:42Okay, pivoting to the other sort of critiquing question. Some have critiqued — and I was surprised, first of all, by your capacity to fundraise, but then also, both prior to the primary and then since then, a lot of money from outside the state. And I think that people are sort of like, what's going on here?

Jesse Vogel 26:09Yeah, well, let me tell you what's going on here. It costs real money to run and win for Columbus City Council. I explained before about the massive campaign contribution limits that are not real limits at all. I mean, $16,600 that an individual can put in — that is ridiculous. I've described how much money it costs to communicate with voters all across the city of 900,000 people. So I'm passionate about this work, and when I looked at this in the beginning, I thought, I've got to raise money to win. So what I did was, I pulled out my phone, which I've had contacts in since middle school, and I started going down the list and asking people what they could contribute, and making big asks of people. Sometimes they would say no. It's like, you call somebody and think, oh, this person can give 500, and they say, "How about 50?" And I say, "Okay, thanks very much," and move on, because that's what it takes to run and win. In April, we ran the numbers, and we had raised from 944 donors — four times the individual contributors of Tiara Ross. At that report, she had raised the majority of her money from, I think, 18 four-figure donors. A third of her money had come from people giving $5,000 or more. We're running really different races. And at this point, I've raised money from over 1,258 individuals — many, many more times the Columbus donors than Tiara Ross has on her finance report. That's because she doesn't have to. She's been running a campaign that received $60,000 in in-kind contributions from three elected officials on city council in the primary. I expect that council members will continue to financially support her campaign in the general.

Tim Fulton 28:22Well, and that endorsement, I imagine, comes with some resources as well.

Jesse Vogel 28:28And the truth is that this speaks to accountability. If you're thinking about who is it on council who's going to fight for you, it's more likely to be somebody who is not beholden to four or five people who have donated in the tens and tens of thousands of dollars to your race. It's more likely to be somebody who has raised money a little bit at a time, because he knows what it takes to run and win, from thousands of people. So that's what this is all about, for me.

Tim Fulton 28:59Fair. I want to wrap up with, basically, your stump speech on this is who I am — you know, your unique value proposition to the voters.

Jesse Vogel 29:12Well, look, I think that voters have a real choice this year on Columbus City Council. They have a choice about how we move forward. My background is, I've been a legal aid lawyer, and now I'm an immigration attorney. Every day in this kind of work, we see different ways the city can do better for its people — whether it's providing a real strategy on housing affordability that starts with what people need, whether it's providing access to transportation, advocating for a free fare on COTA, which has been studied and found feasible, and that study was sort of put on a shelf, whether it's saying it's time to expand access to pre-K, because that's an investment we can't turn around from. We can do better. And I think whether you're rich or poor, wherever you are, you know that there was this data breach last year. You know, I've been trying to get a recycling bin at my house. So I think there are things that can work better in Columbus, and I've been a lawyer and organizer fighting to get things done for people my whole life. My opponent moved into the city of Columbus in order to run for this seat, because she was asked to by existing elected officials, and I think that's because she represents more of the same — somebody they know and can work with and think won't rock the boat too much. On the campaign trail, we hear her talk about her work with the city attorney and the civilian Police Review Board. The city attorney — God love them — but Sawyer Towers, Colonial Village, those were not successes. Those were failures to provide real housing strategy that gave people what they need before things got too bad. So I don't think that cuts it. Right now, this is an extraordinary time in our country and in our city. We face really big challenges in terms of our budget and in terms of attacks from the federal government. And I think we need someone who is prepared to stand up, ask tough questions, collaborate with others, and get new things done that really speak to what people need in a challenging time.

Tim Fulton 31:46All right. Jesse, thanks for your time.

Jesse Vogel 31:48Thanks, Tim. So great to be here.

Tim Fulton 32:02Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, and share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite candidate. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.