His repertoire today runs the raciest, nearest-to-X-rated topics and personalities on daytime television talk - when they can get a word in edgewise between the fists, that is. But just how well would Jerry Springer play on the contentious floors of Washington? (And what would he do if and when the chair-throwing begins?)
A top Ohio labor leader thinks he could play very well. Springer's money and notoriety could make him more competitive than other Democrats against incumbent Republican Senator Mike DeWine, according to Ohio AFL-CIO leader William Burga. "Something needs shaking up before we get the plain old, money-inherited, plaid-shirted DeWine again," Burga.
A former Cincinnati mayor, Springer has suggested he's considering a bid for the Democratic nomination to face DeWine. Reports indicate he will decide by Labor Day.
The talk host is far from a political neophyte. A one-time campaign worker for Robert F. Kennedy, Springer was a popular 1960s liberal in Cincinnati, where he was elected to the city council and proposed declaring the draft illegal within city limits.
His political career was nearly sunk when a police raid on a massage parlour turned up a check he had written to a prostitute. But Springer not only survived that scandal, he ended up elected as Cincinnati's mayor at age 33, being known as the "boy mayor".
As a Newsweek article this week says, Springer exercised his office his own way. Jerry Springer's Mobile City Hall took the city's business to the streets, a kind of prelude to Bill Clinton's reputed government-by-campaigning style. He also wrestled for and won lower city bus fares and even spent a night behind bars to highlight poor jail conditions.
Springer turned his back on electoral politics in 1982 and took up a television career. But now, others wonder whether a Springer candidacy would be as competitive as Burga and other supporters might think.
For one thing, the idea of Springer perhaps becoming one of its august ranks does not exactly amuse even incumbent Senators in Springer's own party of choice. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle dismisses him as a joke who would never join "our" Democratic Senate caucus. For another, letters to the editor and telephone calls to the Ohio media have question state Democrats' sanity, Newsweek says, for not stopping the idea of a Springer candidacy before it graduated from idle thought to active speculation.
On the other hand, Springer does have his encouragement, even among his political opponents. Springer himself is a liberal who believes in government spending, but he does have conservative admirers who respect his intelligence, his essential give-a-damn political and (believe it or not) television style, and his ability not to take himself all that seriously.
But Springer's cobra may have its own mongoose: falling ratings. The Jerry Springer Show has fallen down 29 percent below its ratings of a year ago. The show pulled down only a 5.2 percent rating for the week ending 1 August, a two percent drop from the previous week and well below last year's flaming 7.5 percent.
That's said to be the most severe ratings drop among the daytime talk television veterans, only one of whom (Maury Povich) saw his rating increase in a year-to-year ratio. On the other hand, the 5.2 percent was second only to Oprah Winfrey.
The Jerry Springer Show's ratings have dropped since USA Studios, his syndicator, demanded Springer scale the violence and raciness back. That demand came a week before Springer's controversial appearance before the Chicago City Council in June. The council was probing whether off-duty Chicago police officers should arrest those who brawl on the show for real.
