Ralph Joseph Perk (January 19, 1914 – April 21, 1999) was an American politician of the Republican Party who served as the 52nd mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. Early life Born to an ethnic Czech American family in Cleveland, Perk dropped out of high school at 15 and later took correspondence courses to earn his high-school diploma. He studied history, political science and mathematics at the Cleveland College of Case Western Reserve University and St. John's College in Cleveland. During the Great Depression he worked as a patternmaker, then worked with his brother George in running the Perk Coal and Ice Company. He went on to work in real estate, but returned to patternmaking during World War II to aid in the war effort, after the military rejected him due to earlier health problems resulting from kidney stones. Perk then moved into politics, becoming a precinct committeeman for Cleveland's Republican Party in 1940 and then assuming the leadership of the Southeast Air Pollution Committee tasked with fighting industrial pollution in the Flats. Political career Beginning in 1953, Perk was elected to five two-year terms on Cleveland City Council from the city's Ward 13, representing his native Broadway–Slavic Village neighborhood. During his service on Council, Perk founded the American Nationalities Movement, an umbrella agency for 35 nationality groups. In 1962, he was elected auditor of Cuyahoga County, the first Republican to win countywide office since the mid-1930s; he was re-elected in 1966 and 1970. In 1965 and 1969, Perk ran for mayor of Cleveland and was defeated both times in the general election. In 1971, Perk won the Republican nomination for mayor for the third time. He defeated future mayor, governor, and U.S. Senator George Voinovich, then a member of the Ohio House of Representatives, in the primary. Perk went on to win the general election, "propelled into office by a heavy ethnic [Eastern European] vote." He became the first Republican to serve as mayor of Cleveland since the 1940s, and proceeded to make future mayoral elections nonpartisan. He was reelected in 1973 and 1975. Mayoralty As mayor, Perk benefited from his good connections with President Richard Nixon, allowing Cleveland to obtain federal funds to aid neighborhoods and to help crack down on city crime in the era of Irish American mobster Danny Greene. He also greatly expanded Cleveland's international ties by initiating several sister city partnerships. It was Perk who also