Mary Jo Kilroy - Local Politics

Local Politics

In 1991, she ran for an eighteen-person contest for four Columbus School Board seats on a platform that included proposing to lengthen the scholastic day from six and a half hours to eight. Kilroy was one of four candidates to receive the endorsement of the Franklin County Democratic Party. On November 5, 1991, she placed behind incumbent Columbus School Board President, Sharlene Morgan, natural resources expert Robert Teater, past board member Bill Moss, which made her the fourth among the eighteen candidates and the final elected member.

By her second year on the seven member board, she was a unanimous selection to be second in command as Columbus School Board Vice President. She was unanimously re-elected the following year. In her fourth year of service on the board beginning on January 3, 1995, she lost a 4–3 election for Columbus School Board President when the incumbent, Robert W. Teater, cast a tie-breaking vote for himself. She subsequently declined the vice presidency. During her fourth year, she unsuccessfully attempted to include a sexual orientation policy in the school district's nondiscrimination policy that would protect homosexuals. She was reelected in 1995. In 1996, she contested Ohio's 16th district seat in the Ohio State Senate with Eugene Watts, but she lost by a 51.80–37.46% margin in a five-way contest.

Still on the school board, she resumed her vice presidency on January 5, 1998. She ascended to the Columbus School Board President position for her eighth year of service to the board on January 4, 1999. During this eighth year, she decided not to run for re-election to a third term in order to spend more time with her family.

On January 6, 2000, she won one of the Franklin County Democratic Party's two nominations for one of two seats to the three member Board of County Commissioners. The board oversees the Franklin County government's $1.3 billion budget and programs that range from child welfare to job training to minor league baseball. On November 7, 2000, she became the first Democrat elected as a Franklin County Commissioner in eight years. She won by a 48–47% margin by capturing 55 of 74 wards and 90% of the vote in six inner-city wards. She served as the Board's lone Democrat until she was re-elected to a second four-year term and Paula Brooks was elected on November 2, 2004, to give Democrats the majority for the first time in twenty years. In her re-election she won by a 28,500 vote margin, which was substantially more than the 4,300 vote margin in 2000. During both elections, she won despite being widely outspent. She assumed the role of Board President on January 10, 2005.

Governing magazine named Franklin County as being among the five best-managed counties in the country during Kilroy's tenure. Also, Kilroy was named the Public Official of the Year by the Central Ohio Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers as a result of her role in creating the Columbus/Franklin County Affordable Housing Trust. Her term as commissioner was not without controversy, however. Kilroy came under fire during the awarding of contracts for the construction of Huntington Park because the lowest bid for the concrete was rejected in favor of a higher bid by a union shop. Eventually, the issue went to court and the commissioners decided to award the contract to the low bidder. She lost the 2006 race for U.S. Representative from Ohio's 15th congressional district to Deborah Pryce, 50.2%–49.7%.