When Luken left office at the end of 2005, he was the longest serving mayor in Cincinnati's history with 12 years and one month of service in that role.

Luken graduated from Purcell High School in Cincinnati,[1] then earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Notre Dame (Indiana) in 1973.

After a change in the Cincinnati city charter that made the mayoralty a separately-elected office and established a "strong-mayor" form of government, Luken returned to politics.

In his first return term as mayor, Luken had to deal with the 2001 Cincinnati Riots resulting from perceived racism on the part of city police, as evidenced by a pattern of racial profiling and the shooting deaths of several unarmed black men.

The Hamilton County, Ohio, Board of Elections initially questioned the validity of Fuller's campaign because he had moved into the city only just before declaring his candidacy.

Luken, however, discouraged the board from its inquiry, stating that it would be bad for the city if he had no opponent for re-election, as the Republican party had failed to field a candidate for the office of mayor.

In September 2004, he briefly flirted with running for Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney as a write-in candidate because scandal plagued incumbent Michael K. Allen had no opponent.

With the previous election following the city's racial divides so closely, the race of the candidates — Pepper is white, Mallory is black — was considered significant.