Ava Blair

Craig Greenberg has not served Louisvillians or kept his campaign promise, and for the city’s sake, he should step aside in the next election.

I warn you that my criticisms will have to be shallow, only because there is so little about Mayor Craig Greenberg’s administration that deserves writing. To read his website is to see that, in almost three years, he has accumulated just three things to brag about. And they aren’t exactly heartstoppers.

First, he says that homicides and shootings went down by 30% in his time. This move is a favorite of politicians: he said something that isn’t quite a lie, so people like me can’t call it a lie, but may as well be one. Yes, violent crime is down in Louisville, largely because it is down everywhere. Greenberg got power after the pandemic which, with its traumas and recessions, made crime worse in ways that naturally taper off. Nationwide trends show the same thing. 

Greenberg is right that gun violence has gone down more in Louisville than elsewhere. This is great. No matter what he said in June, though, he is wrong to credit himself for any of it. 

His Safe Louisville plan’s website says, in the first graphic, that it has decreased homicide by 30% since 2024, the same number I just broke down. Greenberg implemented Safe Louisville in April 2025 which is, since Greenberg seems to struggle with numbers, after the year 2024. He wrote up real, community-driven progress to a program that didn’t exist for the first third of this year. 

Second, he says that “homeless encampments have decreased by over 60%.” This is a clever way of saying that he has cleared out massive numbers of homeless encampments and shoved people into streets lined with pricier and pricier homes. (More on that shortly.)

It would be another thing for Greenberg to say that he rehoused 60% of homeless Louisvillians — that’d be incredible. He hasn’t. In his first two years, he financed a pathetic 6,400 new units (we need 32,000), and 4,600 of those were under construction. Greenberg aims to build 15,000 new units by 2027 (still 17,000 too few), so he will have to increase his office’s rate of home construction by 2,200%. The trust fund for affordable housing just lost $2.5 million of its $15 million budget, and for the entire year of 2024, Greenberg could boast that he housed just 265 people. And again: he wants to house 15,000. Fat chance. 

Last, he says on his website that Louisville created 5,000 “good-paying” jobs in 2024. (It’s actually, by his own admission, 4,800.) Twice that many people are born here every year, and given that a host of cost-of-living crises in big cities have ingratiated places like Louisville to other parts of America, I don’t think we can laud Greenberg for creating those jobs — which, by the way, employ a shattering 0.35% of the population.

Greenberg is absolutely, permanently average. In his first run, it was a superpower: the pandemic had ended, Trump’s first-term chaos had abided, and Louisville was bound to like an approachable, lovably awkward local guy who wouldn’t push too fast or move too far. He turned out not to push or move at all, and doesn’t seem bent on trying anything else. Meanwhile, the cost of living keeps on rising. When the people vote against the status quo over and over again, it’s time to see that these are the campaigns that win people over. This is who we are now. 

Just look at New York City. Andrew Cuomo, the embattled former governor with a million corporate ties, and Eric Adams, the president’s across-the-aisle concubine with a bad record of helping New Yorkers, are both set to lose easily to Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist who makes practical solutions for working people pretty much his entire campaign. 

Greenberg, if he reads this piece, and given his obviously relaxed governing schedule, I suspect he’ll have time to do so, will say that we don’t need a divisive candidate, that we need someone to bring Louisvillians together. Alright. But uniting people means nothing without lifting them up, and three years of Greenberg have naught but kept us down. 

We may not need a far-left candidate like Mamdani. Louisville is, halt the presses, not New York City. But after Republicans won three Metro Council seats last November, and after the state made local elections partiless, it is easy to see how a Republican without the party name could run on a message of serious change and win. The Louisville Democrats need to run a candidate who can win and who can actually improve things for their constituents. Greenberg is not that person.

Will a party that let three of its seats go without much of a fight be able to organize enough to do this? Probably not. I still hope that more people will see how weak Greenberg is and challenge him before somebody nasty enters the field. If that happens, consider this a direct call for Greenberg to step down and endorse that person, and for everyone reading this to pressure him to do it.

There is still a full year before the mayor’s race next November — more than enough time to pull this off. I will vote for the first time in that election, and when I do, I hope it doesn’t have to be for such a drab, fruitless, dishonest leader as Craig Greenberg.