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George Forbes On His Abrasive Past and Cleveland's Future

From high-profile battles with former mayors Dennis Kucinich and Mike White... to a notorius incident where he lobbed a chair at a young up-and-coming politician named Jeff Johnson... George Forbes has earned a reputation for being over the top. And he admitted as much in a wide-ranging interview with WVIZ program host Dick Feagler.

GEORGE FORBES: It was…it was part of me, and I frequently think about it. Some things I would change --- the bad language I would change. That's not something to be proud of.

It was a rare show of humility for Forbes, whose 46-year political career has been characterized by combativeness. The attorney and former City Council President was also sanctioned by the Ohio Supreme Court for his involvement in ther Bureau of Workers Compensation "Coingate" scandal in 2007.

But, Forbes has also been praised for helping engineer a number of downtown development deals with former mayor Goerge Voinovich, as well as working behind the scenes, last year, to convince local African American ministers to drop their opposition to Cleveland's Domestic Partner Registry. When asked for his assessment of the city's current slate of political leaders, Forbes warned that the City's future rested on more than those elected to office.

GEORGE FORBES: The institutions that make a great city, they are on a decline in Cleveland --- if they exist at all --- like great newspapers, great business groups, and you cannot build a city and a community with public officials. We speak for them, but we are not the ones that germinate the ideas.

Forbes expressed confidence that those ideas would come, but said he didn't see it happening anytime soon.

You can see Dick Feagler's entire interview with George Forbes on Feagler and Friends, Friday at 8:30pm and Sunday at 11:30am, on WVIZ/PBS.

David C. Barnett was a senior arts & culture reporter for Ideastream Public Media. He retired in October 2022.