David Pepper
David Pepper is a candidate for Ohio Auditor.
He has a track record of stepping up to bring common sense, responsible leadership during tough times.
David made his first run for political office in 2001 at the age of 29, finishing first out of a field of 26 candidates for Cincinnati City Council. It was the first time a newcomer finished first in almost 40 years. David ran for re-election in 2003 again finishing first, this time by an even larger margin, over a field of 26 candidates. He won both traditionally Democratic and Republican wards across the City.
David arrived at City Council shortly after the Cincinnati riots in December 2001, at a time of deep concern among citizens of Cincinnati. Over the next four years, he helped lead the way to reform city hall, heal police-community relations, add officers to the street, reinvigorate economic development downtown and in other parts of the City, and lower property tax rates. His final year on Council marked the first increase in the city’s population in decades.
In 2006, David challenged Hamilton County Commission President, and former Lt. Governor candidate Phil Heimlich after the county’s direction reached a low point under the Heimlich-DeWine majority. Winning numerous cross-over voters, and winning outright in some traditionally Republican areas, David was the leading Democratic vote-getter of all the Democrats on the countywide ballot. David’s win marked the first time Democrats have held the County majority in 40 years.
Taking office as Hamilton County Commission President in January 2007, David inherited a County government that had been badly mismanaged—a squandered reserve fund, wasteful spending, questionable ethics and management practices, poor relations with the state and city, and underinvested and unsuccessful economic development. Since he arrived, David has fought to clean up the mess: adding fiscally prudent policies and reforms to assure responsibility and accountability while eliminating waste and reducing overall spending by tens of millions of dollars; implementing ethics reforms; improving relations with the city and state; pushing to reform the criminal justice system; and investing in new economic growth and recovery strategies, creating thousands of jobs and successfully moving forward on the Banks project to revitalize Ohio and Cincinnati’s riverfront.
Since 2000, David has also served as an attorney in the Cincinnati office of the law firm of Squire Sanders & Dempsey, where he concentrates his practice on appellate litigation. From 1999-2000, he clerked for Judge Nathaniel Jones on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati.
David graduated from Cincinnati Country Day in 1989 and earned his B. A. magna cum laude from Yale University in 1993, where he was Phi Beta Kappa and served as Managing Editor of the Yale Daily News. David earned his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1999, where he won several school-wide awards for his written work and was a published law review author three times.
David is a fifth-generation Cincinnatian, coming from a family with a long tradition of public service to the community and with roots throughout the region.
