Steve Patterson

Hometown: Portland, Oregon

Age: 63

Running as: Democrat

Identifies as: Democrat

Outside of politics: actively served in the Air Force for eight years; assistant professor and faculty senate member at Ohio University before mayorship

Incumbent Mayor Steve Patterson is running his third consecutive Athens mayoral race. He was first elected as mayor in November 2015 and took office in 2016; however, no other candidate ran against him during the mayoral race in 2015, resulting in Patterson winning with 100% of the vote.

During the 2019 mayoral race, Patterson faced his first opponent: Damon Krane. Ultimately, Patterson was reelected after receiving 77.48% of the total votes, while Krane received only 22.52% of the total votes.

Given his past connection with OU students, Patterson said he continues to highlight student engagement within the city. He is involved in several organizations and groups on campus, and Patterson was on the search committee to pick OU’s current president, Lori Stewart Gonzalez.

“My love of public service was my deciding factor (to run for mayor),” —Steve Patterson

He said it has always been an important part of his candidacy to build strong connections with students and be a familiar face to all.

Before deciding to run as mayor, he served on Athens City Council as a D-At Large council member for two terms. However, Patterson said he continued to want a larger role within the city to better serve Athens residents.

“My love of public service was my deciding factor (to run for mayor),” he said.

With two statewide issues on the ballot – Issue 1, which addresses the rights of Ohioans to make reproductive decisions, including abortion, and Issue 2, which would legalize homegrown marijuana plants and the use of marijuana by adults who are at least 21 years old – Patterson said he is strongly in favor of both issues passing.

He said he has been openly advocating and encouraging registered voters to vote “yes” on Issue 1 to ensure women have the right to choose their reproductive health care. He said in September, the Athens County Democratic Party also unanimously voted to endorse Issue 1.

“Now we have this ballot initiative for the state of Ohio to decide, and it really caused me to double or triple down (and) just go, ‘We've got to get Issue 1 to pass,’” Patterson said.

Patterson is also in full support of Issue 2. He was raised in Oregon, where marijuana has been decriminalized for the last 50 years, and lives in Athens, where it has been decriminalized for the last six years. He said making the drug legal is nothing new to him.

He suggested that people take the time to educate themselves on Issue 2 and then make the decision for themselves if it’s time to legalize recreational marijuana in Ohio.

It can be a challenge to get students to register to vote in Athens as many may permanently live elsewhere. However, Patterson said there is an Athens City School District bond issue and tax levy on the Athens County ballot this year that could interest students. The bond issue seeks to build a new Athens City High School and improve the district’s other buildings, and the tax levy would increase taxes used to improve the Athens EMS.

Both the bond issue and the tax levy could spark education majors, alums of Athens City Schools or those who have experience attending school in older buildings to register in Athens to improve Athens students’ learning spaces, he said.

However, Patterson said he would rather students be registered elsewhere than not at all. He continues to encourage student voters to vote on statewide issues. It is a complex process to get the word out to students to vote, but Patterson gives credit to his student engagement opportunities that allot to his ability to educate students on the Nov. 7 election ballot.

Though Patterson has been acclimated to the city’s needs for quite some time, he said he has three main initiatives he hopes to implement to improve Athens if he is reelected as mayor.

Patterson said he has been working on creating more affordable housing options in Athens for quite some time, and he is starting to rule out the causes of it in the city.

He said this is not only a prominent issue in Athens but nationwide, too. If the city doesn’t start creating more affordable prices for homes, then it will not bring in more people to live in Athens, he said.

His second initiative focuses on diversifying the local economy. Patterson said he wants to look at development sectors across the city–aside from Ohio University– that could increase income tax and accessibility of products and services to residents.

He said adding new businesses, companies and health care systems not only creates more job opportunities and draws people into Athens, but it could also create more tourism options if the city starts to get a wider variety of corporations.

His last initiative is to create more hands-on learning experiences for OU students. He said he wants to create opportunities and internships within the city to show students they can readily access those capacities in Athens.

“I am the kind of mayor who is totally open to opening that door to where you can treat the city as an urban lab and test what you're working on,” Patterson said. “I'm down with stuff like that happening because that's going to make the lived experience of the students that much better.”

Damon Krane

Hometown: Eighty Four, Pennsylvania

Age: 44

Running as: Independent

Identifies as: Democratic socialist

Outside of politics: freelance journalist, social media consultant, community organizer

Damon Krane is running for Athens mayor for the second time after losing to incumbent Mayor Steve Patterson with 624 of the total 2,771 votes cast in 2019, but he said he believes he can make an impact even if he does not win this time around.

This is his third time running for office in Athens. He also ran in 2021 for an at-large city council position where he and another progressive independent candidate Iris Virjee received about 1,000 fewer votes than the three Democratic candidates. Krane said he runs his campaigns in a way to influence public policy even if he is not elected because he is not likely to win as an independent.

In every campaign he ran in, Krane said he focused on one issue to try to pressure the city government. This year, Krane said he wants to increase voter turnout among younger people by fighting against what he believes local Democratic leadership does to suppress it.

Krane said he wants to increase young voter turnout because younger voters tend to vote for progressive policies like State Issues 1 and 2, which concern abortion rights and the legalization of recreational marijuana.

He said it’s very important because, in Athens, the student population is greater than the permanent city resident population and students spend two-thirds of their year in the city. He said if students end up voting now it will turn many of them into habitual voters, many of whom will live in Ohio and continue to vote for progressive policy.

He said Athens Democrats try to lower the number of participatory voters to secure seats for registered Democrats over progressive independents like himself. He said the result hurts the performance of Democratic leadership and progressive policies at the state and federal levels.

Krane distributed fridge magnets and yard signs that told people to vote for him, for reproductive freedom and for legal marijuana. His campaign materials also included information about registration and early voting dates.

This year, Patterson declined an invitation to an on-campus candidate forum with Krane but the mayoral candidates did meet for a forum held by The League of Women Voters on Oct. 3. Krane and Patterson had previously participated in a candidate forum together in 2019, which was held by Ohio University’s Graduate Student Senate.

In 2021, there was a candidate forum scheduled by OU’s undergraduate Student Senate for the candidates for at-large city council seats, including Krane, but it was rescheduled after the Democratic candidates dropped out. Another forum was held by the undergraduate Student Senate, but only the Democratic candidates were invited.

Krane said the history of missed and canceled forums, as well as Patterson’s actions, are ways Democrats have depressed turnout. For Patterson’s actions, Krane said the leaked audio from a 2021 private luncheon with Athens Republicans was also evidence of this. In the audio recording leaked to the Athens News by Republicans, Patterson was heard criticizing progressive independent candidates and praising Republican State Rep. Jay Edwards.

“The city population might not be the most racially diverse, but they're also not 100% white ... Yet at the time, the average age on city council was 54, everyone was a homeowner and two people were landlords. There wasn’t a single renter on council. Everybody was cisgender heterosexual, and everybody was white.” —Damon Krane

Krane said the luncheon was a secret attempt to boost turnout among Republican voters. According to the Athens News article, Patterson defended the luncheon and said the purpose was to educate everyone about what platforms candidates were running on.

At the League of Women Voters candidate forum, Patterson said that although student turnout may be low, they cannot know how engaged students are because they could be voting at their permanent addresses. Krane referenced Patterson’s comment as evidence that he does not prioritize student voting in Athens.

Krane said his past campaigns have succeeded in putting pressure on elected officials. In 2019, Krane focused his mayoral candidacy on housing reform with his plan “slumlord smackdown.” It included implementing insulation and energy efficiency standards into rental units. He said Patterson did not have much to say about it then, but in the 2023 candidate forum, Patterson said he supported insulation regulation in rental properties.

His 2021 candidacy for city council focused on the makeup of the council. He said there were all homeowners on council, two of which were landlords, and everyone was white. Krane said he believes his advocacy put pressure on local Democrats to select more diverse candidates.

“The city population might not be the most racially diverse, but they're also not 100% white,” Krane said. “Yet at the time, the average age on city council was 54, everyone was a homeowner and two people were landlords. There wasn’t a single renter on council. Everybody was cisgender heterosexual, and everybody was white.”

In 2021, two members of council resigned and Ben Ziff and Micah McCarey, who are both tenants rather than homeowners, were elected to the open at-large city council seats. Ziff is a manager at Donkey Coffee and McCarey is the director of OU’s LGBT Center and the only Black member of council.

He said he has always run on tenant rights, student civil liberties, affordable housing and police reform. If elected, Krane said his first steps would be to make sure ordinances about towing and repeat housing code failures would be enforced, which he said current officials have not been doing.