CLEVELAND LEADS THE NATION? An unlikely claim in the best of times. Today it may be harder to point out any areas of distinction. Cleveland's rock culture is overshadowed even in Ohio by Devo and the other New Wave spuds sprouting in Akron, while readers of Fortune will note Cleveland's fall from third to fourth among corporate headquarters for major U.S. industrials. The businessmen may be inclined to blame the latter on Mayor Dennis Kucinich.

Kucinich is the local product who best qualifies Cleveland for national attention. He is the most firmly progressive of America's big-city mayors, and this marks him as a leading target for media ridicule. Next Tuesday he will be doing what he has practiced throughout his tenure: fighting for his political life. The nation ought to be watching the election to monitor a unique contemporary experiment in populism, not just to catch more of the mayor's antics. The press delights in portraying Kucinich as a sort of political punk-rocker: he's rude, he's vicious, he's noisy, he's politically outspoken, and he looks barely old enough to be the beau of Akron's hardnosed heart-throb, 16-year-old Rachel Sweet.

Kucinich is really 32 and has a "lovely wife" in the best political tradition. He can't help being baby-faced and short. Nor is he responsible for the school board president's mooning from a car on the highway. Likewise, the mayor had no way of knowing that the day he made a symbolic bank withdrawal that his disturbed brother would rob another bank. But the most important spectacle for which Kucinich has been unfairly blamed is the financial collapse of the city of Cleveland.

The previous mayor, Ralph J. Park, left the city's books in an exemplary mess. Park mixed into one simmering municipal slush fund the city's taxes, federal grants and special-purpose bond and note revenues. Hs financial methods have prompted an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Kucinich alleges that Park illegally spent bond revenue on general operations while the banks looked the other way and handed out money to cover the growing deficit. Park won their cooperation with business-oriented policies, including major tax cuts establishing a "free trade zone" for banks and large businesses. To keep the city afloat on a declining tax base, Perk sold such municipal assets as the transit system, the sewer system, the stadium and the zoo.

The banks were not as pliant with the new mayor. Kucinich opposed tax abatements and the sale of the city's most valuable remaining asset, the publicly owned electric company.

When the city needed to refinance $15 million in debt last December he offered the leading bank, Cleveland Trust, full collateral in the form of income taxes and city property, and a private investor agreed to underwrite the city's debt. The bank turned down these offers. Kucinich charges that at a private meeting he likens to a "street mugging," the chairman of Cleveland Trust made extension of credit conditional on the sale of the city-owned electric company to its private competitor. According to the mayor, the proposed sale called for the private company to pay the city about one third of the electric system's real value, and to spread payments over a 30-year period without interest. Kucinich refused, and Cleveland Trust declined to roll over the loan. As a result of what he calls "a strike by capital," the city went into default.

The private power company, Cleveland Electric Illuminating (CEI), has as many reasons to buy Municipal Light (Muny) as the city has to hold on to it. (Muny made a profit of more than $200,000 last year while charging customers seven per cent less than CEI. CEI resents this competition and has long tried to strangle the city's company. In 1977, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission found CEI had violated the antitrust laws, and it ordered CEI to take 10 corrective measures, including transmitting cheaper power to Muny. The city is now pressing a $327 million antitrust suit against CEI which would become moot if CEI purchased Muny.

CEI'S INTERESTS in Muny Light are clear; the next question is why Cleveland Trust backs them. Cleveland Trust controls 2.2 per cent of outstanding CEI common shares, registers CEI stocks, lends it large sums of money, manages a $70 million CEI pension fund and four bank accounts, and even has an interest in the utility's building. Cleveland Trust directors serve on CEI's 11-member board.

The chairman of Cleveland Trust, Brock Weir, denies the mayor's account of their meeting. But minutes of a Cleveland Trust meeting the same day also suggest the sale of Muny Light was a condition for renewing the city's notes. At a hearing held by a House Banking Subcommittee, Weir conceded Cleveland Trust's lending policies toward the city under Kucinich differed from those applied under his predecessor, Perk. Weir attributed the difference to Kucinich's rudeness; in particular, he mentioned the mayor's public characterization of him as a "blood-sucking vampire."

While Weir may not count himself a Dracula, his remarks demonstrate how much influence the private feelings of a powerful few can have over a city's lifeblood. Revealing how the city is run by "an unelected corporate shadow government" is a matter of duty for Kucinich. His targets react by branding him "Dennis the Menace," an enemy of the people. With the fervor of an Ibsen protagonist, he says, "We're going to keep exposing these liars, these crooks, who masquerade as good, upstanding citizens of the community but are morally rotten." Unlike most, this advocate of economic democracy communicates well with ordinary voters.

Sometimes Kucinich can sound like a stereotyped left-intellectual: in his Playboy interview he drops allusions to 1984, Ghandi, Prometheus Unbound, Salvador Dali and Woody Allen. But Kucinich grew up in a large Catholic family in the inner city. His father is a truck driver who quit school after the ninth grade. As mayor, Kucinich forced business leaders to meet with him at Tony's Diner. He hopes to unite blacks and white ethnics under his banner of "urban populism." It is this vision of "the coalition of the future" that makes Kucinich unique.

The nation has seen attempts by some politicians, such as Michael Dukakis or Jerry Brown, to pioneer a new politics by combining liberal positions on moral or social issues with fiscal conservatism. Kucinich does the reverse. Believing "economic democracy is a precondition to political democracy," he emphasizes declining public services, unjust taxes, corporate power and other economic issues while soft-pedaling social concerns unpopular with his white ethnic constituents. Kucinich claims public housing is unwelcome in both black and white neighborhoods, and he says busing leads to white flight and resegregation.

Opponents have accused Kucinich of using racist appeals in his campaigns. In the nonpartisan mayoral primary, Kucinich polled only 15.3 per cent of the black vote compared to 25.3 per cent for Republican Lieutenant Governor George V. Voinovich. Still, Kucinich delivers speeches in the black ghetto to tumultuous applause and former mayor Carl Stokes has strongly endorsed him, telling the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "I understand that in a diverse city in which racial politics has been the order of the day, that, if a man is going to survive, he has to do what everyone who has survived has done, including me...Kucinich has a record that deserves his re-election."

The mayor's re-election is unlikely. He beat back a recall try in August of last year by only 236 votes; in February he convinced two-thirds of Cleveland voters to raise their own income taxes and defeat a referendum to sell Muny Light; he finally won the approval of a hostile city council of his own plan to repay the banks. But in the primary October 2, Kucinich ran 11,228 votes behind Voinovich. Kucinich has heavy union support, but Voinovich is outspending him more than two to one. The deciding factor in the run-off may turn out to be the death of Voinovich's nine-year-old daughter, who was hit by a van October 8. The tragedy caused the Lieutenant Governor to spend less time campaigning, but he may receive a sympathy vote that will undercut Kucinich's strength as an underdog. It would be a shame to see Kucinich's presidential hopes dashed before he reaches the age of 35, but odds are he'll be back fighting even if he's crushed on Tuesday.