Sandra Drabik never considered running for office.
Not as a child growing up in Toledo or as a student at Sylvania High School.
Not during her career in law and administration at the University of Toledo, where she met her husband, D. Michael Collins. Nor during her time in high-ranking roles with Gov. Bob Taft and Gov. George Voinovich’s administrations.
Not during her more than a decade of supporting Collins’ campaigns for City Council and mayor.
But on March 4, Drabik admitted she has “made a commitment to myself to explore” a run for mayor to finish her husband’s term. Collins died Feb. 6, five days after going into cardiac arrest while driving in South Toledo. He was 70.
The initial nudge came Feb. 22 when Drabik, 67, still reeling from her loss, answered a phone call at home. It was a “robocaller,” asking who should be Toledo’s next mayor.
She hung up.
“When that happened, it actually upset me quite a bit,” Drabik said. “I would think they would have been able to take D. Michael Collins out of their base. But it upset me so much that I knew I should think about it in the future. I think in my mind I said, ‘I will start thinking about this in mid-March.’
“They called twice, actually. I didn’t respond. But that call made me think that things are happening in this city. I really wasn’t watching what was happening for quite a while. I didn’t really see the news or read the papers. And that’s from a person who was seeing all the news every day and then talking about it with [Collins] when he came home. I went from that to a complete news blackout.”
The nudge came again after watching the election process for a new Toledo City Council president and District 4 representative. On March 3, Council voted Steve Steel president and appointed small business owner Scott Ramsey to fill the Council seat vacated by Paula Hicks-Hudson, who became mayor after Collins’ death.
“That reminded me City Council doesn’t get along real well, and there’s a lot of political bartering,” Drabik said. “The thing about Mike is, I think he made all of that irrelevant. He rose above that. And so it made me think, ‘I should think about this.’ But I still thought, ‘I will think about this in mid-March.’ Then I ineloquently answered a question today (March 4) that brought it all up.”
The admission came during a conversation with a Blade reporter.
“This was not planned,” Drabik said. “But Mike was so transparent. I couldn’t be any different than he was. And there was the question. And I answered it with, ‘I’ve committed to myself to think about it.’ Not that I’m thinking about it.”
Besides soul-searching, Drabik said she also needs to speak with her family, including Collins’ three daughters, before she makes a decision.
“I would never decide to do that without talking to family first,” Drabik said.
No matter who Toledo’s next mayor is, Drabik said she wants to see Collins’ hopes and plans come to fruition.
“I’ll tell you what he said to me on that Sunday morning after we went to Mass and I made breakfast. We were sitting here talking before he went to the meeting about the snow, and he was very excited,” Drabik said. “He said, ‘Southwyck’s gonna go. ProMedica is going already. And Chrysler, that’s so important, it’s going to go.’ I think those are important. But he had many others going on.
“When you talk about those things he was working on, the projects, those are the nuts and bolts and there is a lot of art and science to it. But on top of that was, if we can build trust in government and the people can know that it’s a great place to live and they tell everybody and we all help each other and we’re all ambassadors. He really believed this about Toledo. And he wasn’t a professional politician so he didn’t let politics get caught up in any of this.
“I do think Mike was a great leader and he already has a legacy. But I would like to see it achieved and even grow.”
Drabik, a registered Republican, said it’s premature to say, but that she would likely run as an independent, like Collins did.
“I think Mike turned me into an independent. I’m for sure Mike did,” Drabik said. “Mike was independent and this agenda is independent. And I can’t even imagine not doing it as an independent. That was something I learned from Mike. That was an important part of his strategy. I think to him the party affiliation was irrelevant and it became irrelevant to me.”
Drabik said she admired her husband’s drive, leadership, problem-solving ability and the way he persevered through a series of crises during his first year in office.
“The real leader in him kept many things moving at the same time as those crises occurred,” she said. “I think there would have been a lot of people who would have stalled, and he did not let it stall him.
“He was leading a team that was accomplishing economic development at the same time as all this. Because it can’t wait in Toledo. We’re on the threshold of an extremely positive time. And I really believe that’s because people trusted him. And he would live up to that trust. So they would trust government. I thought he really had it right.”
Drabik said she and Collins rarely disagreed on issues.
“I can’t even think of any case where we agreed to disagree, because I think when we got done sharing information, we got to the same point,” she said.
“The big picture of his vision, I would hope that’d be anyone’s vision for Toledo, that it really is coming into a new prosperous time and that companies will invest here and people will trust government and will love living here. And then the projects will go. So it’s really a time to figure out how to fulfill what the city can do to facilitate all that.”
Although she’s never held public office, Drabik’s job experience, particularly with state government, would serve her well as mayor, said Collins’ campaign manager and family friend Matt Zaleski.
“When you go over Sandy’s career in government, you need to really look at what she did, because the issues she would face as a mayor she’s already handled on a state level,” Zaleski said. “That’s really where, when we look at her as a possible viable candidate, that’s where it really resonates.”
As director of administrative services under Voinovich, Drabik’s responsibilities included public works, building projects, negotiations, land purchases, human resources, collective bargaining and purchasing, to name a few.
“To be director of administrative services, everything you do is a creature of state law and those are the same issues the city deals with,” Drabik said. “I touched city government in many ways at that time. For example, I was buying the police cars for the state and the municipalities buy off of that. I was supervising the construction of the prison that sits in Toledo. So that’s why I was Mike’s sounding board.”
The role of mayor would be a departure from her usual behind-the-scenes roles, which is part of why Drabik said she needs time to think.
“I don’t think it made me uncomfortable. I just didn’t seek political office. So I don’t know exactly what it would feel like,” she said. “But I was close to it.”
Collins would often remark that Drabik was more intelligent and politically savvy than he was, Zaleski said.
Drabik demurred modestly when asked about personal characteristics that would make her a good mayor.
“It’s harder to speak about yourself,” she said. “But I will tell you what a friend of mine said about me yesterday. She said, ‘I admire how you can get people to change their mind and they’re not even mad at you.’”
Both she and Collins were known as hard workers.
“I guess we appreciated that in each other,” Drabik said.
The couple met when she was serving as legal counsel and director of administrative services at UT and he was teaching there. He made an appointment with her to discuss funding reports he had to file with the federal government for the university’s Ohio Police Corps program. They hit it off and later made plans to go golfing. They married in 2005.
Drabik said the past month has been the most painful of her life, but she’s starting to feel a little more like herself again each day.
“All of the events surrounding Mike’s death were the hardest part of my life,” Drabik said. “But his daughters, our family, together we got each other through it. Eventually after a while you can start concentrating more on happy memories. It’s still a jolt every day when you wake up without him. But we had 14 years together, 10 years of marriage. Because we met each other later in life we didn’t really take anything for granted. We always said stuff. I don’t have any unsaid stuff to him. And he didn’t to me.
“Each day I am able to concentrate more on the beautiful things that he did for me and his family and the beautiful memories. Each day is hard and I know it will never go away, but I’m back to feeling more like myself for a portion of every day, not all day, and it’s because of faith and family and love. It’s very hard, but even a couple of weeks ago I don’t even think I could have answered your questions.”
Collins’ dog Chloe, a nearly blind and deaf 14-year-old golden retriever, still circles the house looking for Collins, Drabik said. He got her as a puppy shortly before the two started dating.
Now, they lean on each other as each learns to navigate unfamiliar territory.
“I sincerely made a commitment to myself to explore this in the near future. And I know that those words seem to slide together for some people, but I haven’t explored it. I made a commitment that I will,” Drabik said. “It’s just that I realized my timetable was maybe too generous to me and the city might need to know these things earlier for stability in city government.”
