Kieran Cartharn ran for City Council in 2017. He was nineteen. He was the youngest person to win a Columbus City Council primary. He was young, Black, and Republican and the GOP enthusiastically support candidates like him in personal attachment sort of way. “We have a Black candidate” is not that different from “I have a Black friend.” The press he got was enviable for any candidate. Here is an example: “In my own personal assessment, Mr. Cartharn is one of the brightest shining lights in all of the current American Political spectrum’s dim-lit glory.”
He hoped Republicans would coalesce around him, but he came in last with just under 9 percent of the vote.
In 2018, he approached a woman walking to her dorm after 1 a.m. and said he was a police officer and would walk her home. She demurred, but he insisted, so when she got to her dorm she went to the check-in and security chased him off. They got a picture so the police put it out and were inundated with tips identifying Cartharn. After all, he just ran for City Council.
The investigation discovered that was the third time he had done it. He pleaded guilty and got a year’s probation and an order to stay away from campus.
He also served 30 days for domestic violence and a woman filed a police report in 2017 accusing him of exposing his penis and groping her. No charges were filed by the police, though.
But he was not done with politics. In 2020, he was elected to the Republican Party Central Committee. He announced another city council run for 2021, but was not on the ballot. Instead, in 2021 he got arrested for three burglaries, one with rape. He was sentenced to four years in a plea deal that dropped the rape charge to gross sexual imposition.
- NBC4i: Former Columbus City Council candidate pleads guilty to impersonating officer
- The Rooster: Kieran Cartharn Goes Again
- ABC6onyourside: Former Columbus City Council candidate accused of entering woman’s near-campus home
- The Sussi Report: Former City Council Candidate Sent To Prison For Sexual Assault