Jerry Springer (13 February 1944 – 27 April 2023) was the Democratic Mayor of Cincinnati from 1 January 1977 to 1 January 1978, succeeding Jim Luken and preceding Bobbie L. Sterne.
Biography[]
Gerald Norman Springer was born in the Highgate tube station of London, England, the son of German-Jewish refugees who were taking shelter from a German bombing raid during World War II. His family moved to Queens, New York City in 1949, and Springer worked as a political campaign adviser to Robert F. Kennedy before becoming a lawyer in Cincinnati, Ohio. He served on the city council from 1971 to 1974 (resigning after being caught soliciting the services of a prostitute) and as Mayor of Cincinnati from 1977 to 1978 (his honesty about his earlier offense endearing him to the public), and he failed to win the Democratic nomination for Governor of Ohio in 1982. He became a political commentator at WLWT, and he hosted a syndicated tabloid talk show from 1991 to 2018. His show evolved from political commentary into a sensationalist show featuring dramatic everyday people, and he hosted the courtroom show "Judge Jerry" from 2019 to 2022. He died of cancer in 2023.