Donkey Coffee manager launches campaign for at-large seat on City Council

Ben Ziff is a 32-year-old Donkey Coffee Manager running for City Council. He has no prior experience in politics, and has considered running for several years (Photo provided by Ziff).

Ben Ziff is still getting used to interviews. This whole “talk to people about myself thing,” as he describes it, is something he hasn’t had much practice with. 

Ziff, one of the most recent residents to declare their candidacy for Athens City Council, is a 32-year-old manager at Donkey Coffee. He has never run for political office before, but he said he’s been considering running for City Council for several years. 

He announced his campaign for Athens City Council Jan. 11 as an at-large representative, shortly after current at-large Councilmember Peter Kotses declined to seek reelection in 2021. 

Ziff is running as a Democrat. 

“Having learned that one of our at-large councilors won't be seeking reelection, I've decided, after rolling the idea around in my head for the past several years, to run for City Council!” he wrote in a Facebook post.  

Ziff, who is originally from North Carolina, moved to Athens in 1998, when he was in fourth grade. He went to school in the Athens City School District and went to college at Ohio University.

When he graduated from Ohio U in 2011, he got a job at Donkey Coffee and later worked as a paramedic in Zanesville and Columbus. When his wife got the position of head chef at Zoe, a restaurant on East State Street, Ziff returned to Athens and Donkey Coffee.

He decided to finally run for council when he saw a vacancy in Kotses’ seat. 

“I thought, well, why not now? Let’s give it a go,” Ziff said in a phone interview. 

He believes that having lived in Athens for most of his life, he can bring a fresh viewpoint to Athens City Council. 

“Hopefully, someone that’s being newly in their thirties, is a renter and also works in the service industry, hopefully I can provide a refreshing point of view,” Ziff said. 

Ziff said he has opinions on issues such as how renters are represented in Athens, but he doesn’t want to come into this role with “too determined of an agenda.” He’s focused on giving back to people, which he says is the reason why he’s running.

“I don’t claim to have all of the answers right out of the gate,” he said. “But I think the main purpose of someone on City Council ... is to listen to people tell you what are the problems that they are experiencing in their life, and then do your best to fix them, however you're able to do that.” 

He also said he cares about Ohio University students, and he would be “wildly remiss” to not put a large amount of emphasis on the problems and grievances that Ohio U students have. 

“They’re a huge part of this town,” Ziff said. “There’s always this rampant mentality that I’ve experienced around here that OU students are seen as the other, like, oh, there are the ‘townies,’ and there’s the OU students who come in and wreck the whole town, bluh bluh bluh, which is just blatantly not true. Athens would not exist in its current form without Ohio University.” 

He continued, “not that I don’t have problems with OU. OU’s administration is a nightmare.” 

Starting up a campaign has been an intimidating process, Ziff said. So far, he’s been focused on getting signatures. 

He said obtaining signatures had been difficult due to the pandemic. Rather than going door to door, Ziff has gone to the houses of people who’ve reached out to him through social media. He knocks on their front door, leaves a clipboard, pen, and a bottle of hand sanitizer, and stands about 20 feet away. 

He has received campaign help from two of his friends, Mayor Steve Patterson and Councilmember Beth Clodfelter. 

“As far as getting knowledge on campaigning, they’re probably two of the best people that I can ask,” Ziff said. 

He said he doesn’t want to be seen as an “establishment candidate” just because he is friends with Patterson and Clodfelter.

“I like to think that I know who I am at this point, and I know how I feel about things,” Ziff said. “But I’m definitely not trying to rely on a large financial backing from the Democratic Party in town or anything like that.”  

Clodfelter acknowledged her approval of Ziff. 

“I think that Ben would be a very good City Council member,” Clodfelter said via Facebook direct message. “Once he files to run, then I would be more than happy to help him some more.” 

Patterson also responded to Ziff’s Facebook post announcing his candidacy, commenting, “I will sign!”