Dennis Kucinich: From Sleeping in a Car as a Kid to 16 Years in Congress

June 4, 2021

“Imagine a private utility company… using manipulative blackouts every time Dennis Kucinich, when he was mayor, was getting an advantage on them. Building public support for them, because they figured that by a blackout, they could blame the mayor and this municipally-owned electric utility, Muny Light.”.

Dennis Kucinich: I was the target of a mob contract hit for not selling Clevelands Electric Company.

MAY 28, 2021

CLEVELAND

“I found city workers asleep at their desks, while their phones rang and rang,” he writes. “Others were reading paperback novels at desks strewn with half-eaten donuts and crumpled coffee cups. One employee was filing her nails while the public waited impatiently at a service counter. The smell of rock-concert-scented smoke came from underneath the door of one unlit room.... When I turned on the light, two employees of the housing department were toking in the dark. Eyes widened, red-faced, they coughed and coughed until I turned off the light.”

Brian Ross Investigates: @Dennis_Kucinich was the youngest mayor of Cleveland, taking on powerful interests who wanted him out of the way. In his new book "The Division of Light and Power", Kucinich describes how he survived. 

Dennis Kucinich talks Cleveland mayoral race and new book

Dennis Kucinich has just released a new book called 'The Division of Light and Power'. It is the story of his battle to give power to the people while mayor of Cleveland in the 1970's. The book details Kucinich's battle with a utility monopoly that involved corporate espionage, political corruption, organized crime, congressional investigations ...

KILL KUCINICH, TAKE LIGHT AND POWER: Ex-Cleveland mayor Dennis Kucinich talks about his bombshell book, DIVISION OF LIGHT AND POWER, in which he describes being repeatedly thwarted by corrupt members of his city’s government while fighting against a relentless campaign to privatize Cleveland’s public electric power systems that included multiple attempts to assassinate him.

His powerful story of greed and avarice is reminiscent of similar kinds of high-level corruption depicted in the 1974 movie Chinatown. 

Kucinich tells the story of how he learned to stand up to the local establishment, just as he would later do as a member of Congress when he was a lonely voice of opposition to the Iraq war.

Kucinich says that the most important lesson for proponents of good government is to know where “City Hall” is. By that he does not mean some stone building. Rather, it’s about knowing where the power lies — whether it be a business, a bank, or some more shadowy entity.

Dennis Kucinich has a new book out about his first go-round as Cleveland mayor. The Division of Light and Power is an epic insider’s account of his battle against what he says was shadow city government which engaged in corporate espionage, sabotage, price-fixing, cut-throat competition, anti-trust activities, organized crime, and wholesale fraud. It’s pretty dramatic stuff which, IMHO, could form the basis of an intense and timely movie. He talks about all that with me following the clip below of a local news report about his 2021 campaign announcement. The Cleveland mayoral primary, BTW, is September 14.

Over the July 4th weekend, I interviewed two-time presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich about his latest book, The Division of Light and Power. Though he wrote this memoir as a narrative of events that happened many years earlier in his political career, it almost reads like a John Clancy political thriller centered on his battle to save the publicly-owned municipal light and distribution company in Cleveland. What fascinates me about Kucinich and Cleveland is how similar that city is to the San Pedro Harbor Area. This is a cautionary tale about money, power and the conflicts over public ownership for those running for office and those in politics.

When the “boy mayor” of Cleveland took a stand against privatization of public power, the region’s elites deployed every weapon they had, including attempted assassination.

Dennis Kucinich is a career politician who has worked at the municipal, state, and federal levels and is joining Tom Fox on the Innovation in Compliance to talk about his newest book Division of Light and Power. This book is a story of corporate espionage, corporate sabotage, bank extortion of a city, and a mob-directed assassination plot that took place in Cleveland back in the 70s when Dennis was the mayor at only 31-years-old.

This book took me forty years to write. I hope people get a chance to read it. It’s certain to spark a lot of open discussion about what our expectations should be for democratic governance. What is a democracy? Do we have one? And if we don’t, how can we get it back?

‘In it, Kucinich, who also ran for president of the United States, unflinchingly exposes the corruption, back-room deals and threats of violence associated with the attempt by a private corporation to take over Cleveland’s public utility – which he fought back.”

Dennis describes in detail, his time as Cleveland’s Mayor and the challenges he faced battling to save the city’s own electrical system from corporate takeover. All this in his epic new book, “THE DIVISION OF LIGHT AND POWER.”

His latest book exhaustively details his quest to literally take on City Hall and restore, power to the people of Cleveland. His journey and choice of careers would take its toll on marriages, his health, and various assassination attempts but standing up to power most likely will find its way on his eventual tombstone. His story is one that details how “one person can make a difference…you can go into public life and exercise your conscience…you need to challenge the established order.” 

The book and the lessons gleaned from it detail a devotion to public service that would surely test the hardiest souls and offer a testament to those seeking veracity from our public officials and commitment to the greater good..

In his new memoir, Dennis Kucinich writes about how he took on powerful interests to save a public utility. That happened over forty years ago, but the story still carries critical relevance today.

In the late 1970s Dennis Kucinich—later to become a legendary congressman and presidential candidate—served two years as mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. Prior to reading his terrific new book The Division of Light and Power I had heard rumors about his battle with the Cleveland franchise of the Deep State. But I had not realized the extent of Kucinich’s heroism.

Dennis Kucinich, a former representative of Ohio's 10th congressional district and former mayor of Cleveland, is documenting his battle to block the sale of Cleveland's Municipal Light in his new memoir, "The Division of Light and Power." Kucinich joins CBSN's Lana Zak to discuss the events that unfolded.

Division of Light and Power" and talks about the principles which have guided his life, including what he gained from the Black church. KSL NewsRadio's Kelli Pierce also joins the discussion.

25 YEARS BEFORE he first ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, 31-year-old Dennis Kucinich was elected mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. At the time, that made him the youngest mayor of a major city in the country. His tenure would be dominated by the fight to prevent the privatization of the city’s public electric utility, a fight that would pit Kucinich against powerful politicians, the Cleveland Trust bank, and even the mob. Kucinich tells the story of the fight to save public power in his new book, “The Division of Light and Power.”

Dennis Kucinich peels back the layers of corruption in Cleveland during his years as Mayor, in his new book, "The Division of Light and Power."

In his new book, Kucinich gives an unprecedented, fully documented insider’s account of his battle against a shadow city government which allegedly engaged in corporate espionage, sabotage, price-fixing, cut-throat competition, anti-trust activities, organized crime, and wholesale fraud. That is, until Kucinich, then America’s youngest big-city mayor at age 31, fought back, risking assassination attempts and the destruction of his personal life.   

Former Congressman, Mayor and Presidential Candidate, Dennis Kucinich about his new book "The Division of LIGHT AND POWER".

We’re joined by the legendary DENNIS KUCINICH, author of the riveting new book DIVISION OF LIGHT AND POWER, about his spectacular fifty-year career as a crusader for the people.  Dennis starts as a twenty-something city council member in Cleveland who fights his way into the Mayor’s office and saves the city’s municipal power and light company.  This epic battle leads the local banks to shut down the city in an attempt to unseat Kucinich and his populist politics.

As state Senator Dennis and I worked to successfully defeat a radioactive waste dump.  Kucinich then served eight terms in the US Congress before being gerrymandered out by the corporate Democrats.

He’s now running again for mayor and the corporations will be out in force to keep him from winning. 

AM 560’s Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson interview Dennis about The Division of Light and Power, and the parallels to Chicago politics.

On the show this week, the first of a two-part interview, Chris Hedges discusses the American coup d’état with former Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich.

On the show this week, the second of a two-part interview, Chris Hedges discusses the American coup d’état with former Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich..

Dennis Kucinich discusses his new autobiography -The Division of Light and Power, a real life, life and death page turner about his time as Mayor of Cleveland Ohio. Kucinich has been an Ohio Congressman, a US Presidential Candidate and a liberal voice of reason. But he is also a frequent visitor to a village he describes in our interview as, "One of the most extraordinarily beautiful places in the world," Galisteo, NM. 

“He delivers with a tour-de-force exposé of deeply-imbedded corruption in Cleveland — while getting you to think about what is happening in your own backyard.”