Charles Lewis "Charlie" Butts (born February 16, 1942) is a former Democratic

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking ...

, who served as a member of the Ohio Senate from 1975 to 1990.

Education and early career

Butts attended Oberlin high school then Oberlin College in Ohio. He took a break from Oberlin from the summer of 1962 to 1964 to work as a

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

for the

civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

. He returned to Oberlin to finish college, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government in 1967. By then, he had married his wife, Alice (née Gould). Together, they had four children: John, Paul, Joanna, and Helen. Butts worked on the 1964 and 1967 election campaigns for

Carl Stokes Carl Burton Stokes (June 21, 1927 – April 3, 1996) was an American politician and diplomat of the Democratic Party who served as the 51st mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. Elected on November 7, 1967, and taking office on January 1, 1968, he was ...

, who was in the

Ohio House of Representatives The Ohio House of Representatives is the lower house of the Ohio General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Ohio; the other house of the bicameral legislature being the Ohio Senate. The House of Representatives first met in Ch ...

and became the first black elected mayor of a major U.S. city.

Political career

Butts served in the 23rd District from 1975 until 1990. Butts originally defeated Republican Senator Anthony F. Novak in 1974 to take a seat in the Senate, which represented the near westside of Cleveland at the time, including parts of the Detroit-Shoreway and Ohio City neighborhoods. He was reelected in 1978, 1982, and 1986. After the 1980 elections, Butts was elected as minority whip, and was elected as assistant president pro-tempore in 1982. Butts served on the Ways and Means Committee, Energy and Public Utilities, and the Rules Committees. He was appointed Chairman of the Elections, Financial Institutions and Insurance Committee, as well as chairman of the Public Improvements Inspection Committee. Butts was generally known as a hard working legislator, but he also could antagonize opponents, once considered of the "worst" legislators by ''Cincinnati'' magazine. The 23rd Senate District would later be gerrymandered, expanding westward to include the eastern portions of Lakewood. In 1990, Butts was defeated for reelection by former Lakewood mayor Anthony Sinagra.

1979 mayoral campaign

In April 1979, Butts announced that he would enter the 1979 Cleveland mayoral election, challenging fellow Democrat, the beleaguered incumbent Dennis Kucinich. Kuicinich was considered vulnerable, having narrowly survived a

recall election A recall election (also called a recall referendum, recall petition or representative recall) is a procedure by which, in certain polities, voters can remove an elected official from office through a referendum before that official's term of of ...

the year before by just over 200 votes out of more than 120,000 votes. The field quickly grew in July with additions of

city council A municipal council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, rural counc ...

majority leader Basil Russo and Republican George Voinovich, who was

Lieutenant Governor of Ohio The position of lieutenant governor of Ohio was established in 1852. The lieutenant governor becomes governor if the governor resigns, dies in office or is removed by impeachment. Before 1852, the president of the Ohio State Senate would serve as ...

. Also, Thabo L. Ntweng of the socialist worker's party would also join the race. One of Butts' top senate aides, A. Lamont Eanes, helped run the 1979 mayoral campaign. Eanes would eventually be nominated by President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...

as deputy Social Security administrator in 2014 Butts would finish fourth in the nonpartisan primary in the crowded field, garnering a respectable 19,431 votes, or 15.28%, behind eventual winner Voinovich, Kuicinich, and Russo.

After politics

As of 2015, Butts was a managing director for a blog, Takingonthegiant.com, which chronicles the work of creative young people who want to change the world.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Butts, Charles L. Democratic Party Ohio state senators 1942 births Living people Politicians from Hartford, Connecticut