Election Day 2010

I am a traditionalist when it comes to voting. I like walking to my neighborhood precinct — usually the library or the elementary school — and physically casting my ballot in our increasingly virtual world.



[Actually, I’m a deep procrastinator, so I wait until the last day, telling myself you never know what may happen during the campaign to change my assessment. [Only yesterday I read that a Seattle newspaper withdrew its endorsement of a judge who made public statements betraying his deep bias and limited understanding.



I also confess that, from the vantage of one who writes about politics and public affairs, I am less and less impressed with newspaper endorsements. They seem so after the fact. The paper’s decision makers favor this candidate, and then they set out to find reasons to convince voters who are undecided, wavering, harried, uninformed, preoccupied or lazy, why they should vote the paper’s way. Editorialists argue in a Mt. Olympus tenor that suggests they know best. Even if you know nothing about the candidates, it often comes across as so much b.s.



Much of the time it seems candidates are asked the wrong questions. Candidates talk about policies and what they intend to do. Their commercials bash their opponents. Too many exaggerate their virtues and demonize their opponents. When 80% of the electorate tunes out, the politicians get louder and more strident. This season, as the television blasted four, five, even six consecutive political ads in a single commercial break, I resorted to an old tack. I turned off the sound and observed their faces and body language, and looked for character clues.



Why is this candidate really running? Do they appear to have a real dedication to public service? Is their opposition to existing policy based on genuine analysis or the financial interests of their backers? Can they be counted upon to stay true to conviction when the discussions are private and compromises [“deals?”] are on the table? Are they special interest captives, reflexively parroting a party line? Depending on the nature of the office they seek, what evidence suggests they have the requisite components of executive, legislative, or judicial skills and temperament to be honest and effective public servants?



Seldom do I find my local papers giving me real help in discovering answers to these questions. And history tells us these questions mean more than platforms and promises, because the issues that arise during the term of service are often unforeseen. Bush 41 was elected president with presumed foreign policy expertise and was undone by domestic issues. Bush 43 had an intense domestic agenda that took a deep back seat to post-911 global issues. Lyndon Johnson had immense legislative skills that proved useless in charting a course in Southeast Asia. Neither Ike nor JFK was prepared to deal with civil rights.



The same considerations apply locally. Every current candidate for county executive proclaims that his administration will be honest, open, and efficient. I bet they all love their grandmothers too. Who among them, however, has the political and life experience to revamp effectively a huge public bureaucracy with requisite degrees of wisdom, tenacity, and fairness? Who is least likely to make critical errors that will erode the public support and confidence necessary for effective leadership? The “best” policies mean nothing without the ability to implement them. So who can work best with a new county council whose dynamics are totally unknown?



These are the kinds of questions I have been asking since the new county charter was approved. [I have been asking similar questions about state and federal races as well.] To answer them I have, like many of you, watched and listened to the candidates, read campaign literature, visited websites, reviewed platforms, talked with supporters and opponents.



So, for those of you are either undecided, wavering, harried, uninformed, preoccupied, lazy, or just curious, here is who I plan to vote for county exec when I go to Noble Elementary School Tuesday, November 2.



I think independent Don Scipione and Green Party nominee David Ellington are the "smartest" candidates. They are reasonable men who if elected, would serve in a true spirit of public service. If either were elected they would find themselves as unprepared as was Dennis Kucinich the day he was sworn in as mayor of Cleveland. This would only be slightly less true of independent Ken Lanci. His frustration would come as soon as he discovered that you can’t fire everybody who doesn’t want to do things your way, and that there are vast differences between running a company you own and having to pretty much negotiate everything you do with independently-based council members, civil servants, interest groups, media, and several score municipalities.



I respected Tim McCormack as county auditor and county commissioner and thought he got a political raw deal when business interests conspired to oust him in favor of pseudo-liberal Tim Hagan several years ago. He was an uncompromising commissioner in healthy ways. But his strong self-righteousness and thin-skinned persona would likely endanger the kind of coalition-building necessary to get our new charter experiment off to a successful start. I also have a sense that he is now a stealth candidate for some of the same business interests that consistently roam local corridors of power.



Republican Matt Dolan impressed me when he appeared this past April at an early nonpartisan forum sponsored by the Eleventh District Congressional Caucus. He was direct and surprisingly at ease in a gathering that was mostly black and Democratic. I am disappointed that he did not continue along the same path of positive engagement countywide. Instead, he seemed to retreat to his comfort zone in the mostly white, mostly wealthy corners of the county, from where he lobbed grenades attacking his Democratic opponent as a foe of charter reform and scurrilous attacks linking him to the county corruption.



I had never heard of Lakewood mayor Ed FitzGerald, the Democratic Party nominee, until after last year’s charter vote, even though he was mayor of one of the county’s largest and best run cities. I was initially cautious about him, especially because of presumed ties to the Bill Mason faction of his party. In twelve months of watching and investigating, I have found nothing to be concerned with on that score, even absent the mounting evidence that county prosecutor Mason’s political career is moving to a dead end with all deliberate speed.



FitgGerald’s charter opposition, rooted in a belief that a different process would have led to an improved charter, is not a reason to disqualify him from serving as County Executive, any more than it would be a reason to disqualify the more than half a million registered County voters who did not vote for the charter from voting for the new positions the charter created.



But I have found several positive reasons to vote for Ed FitzGerald. First, he has real leadership skills. He is a grounded individual, based upon his family, church, and community values. He has regularly articulated the clearest, most comprehensive, and positive vision of what Cuyahoga County can become, and he has done it consistently all across the county, with voters of every ethnic and class background. And no matter where he has been, or who he has been in front of, he has been himself, seeking to connect with people where there are, suggesting that a common journey to a better place is possible. He has done so earnestly, his message appropriately leavened by a deft sense of humor that the new county executive will surely need.


I think Ed FitzGerald is clearly the best choice to be our first County Executive.

If you haven’t voted, I hope you find the discussion useful. If you weren’t planning to vote, perhaps you will be persuaded to go to the polls and exercise your right and duty. And if you don’t vote, then in the words of a longtime friend, a true Republican, a retired judge who is still a feisty and active civic leader, “Nobody gives a damn what you think if you don’t vote.”

County Transition: Choosing the Messenger Sends a Message

The biggest question surrounding the new form of county government is this: will anything really be different? Will the new government be more honest? More efficient? More inclusive? More imaginative? More effective? More attuned to the 21^st century? Of better service to its constituents? More able to attract new residents, new jobs? Will it be a new form of the status quo, going to the same insiders to repackage the same approaches to the same problems and obtain the same results?

The old political structure is being swept away by a decisive electorate that wanted something new. But a new political structure does not preordain a new political culture. Whether a new culture emerges will depend in large measure on the extent that same electorate wants it badly enough to help create it.

One early measure of whether a new political culture is developing is the work of the various volunteer groups that are participating in planning for the transition. Earlier this week I attended a meeting of the Public Engagement Workgroup. The group’s membership includes several familiar names representing such well-known civic players as the League of Women Voters, Cleveland AFL-CIO, COSE [Council of Smaller Enterprises], RPM International, First Energy, and ThompsonHine.

Cuyahoga’s establishment power is often wielded in public settings by its law firms, public utilities, foundations and large corporations. If change is truly in the air, it will be reflected in new outcomes influenced by these establishment representatives.

Thanks to public attention and outcry, the work of these groups is public in unprecedented ways. Thus there were about fifteen members of the public, including this scribe, in attendance as the Workgroup heard presentations from three companies seeking to provide communication consulting services to the County’s Transition Advisory Group.

Briefly put, the work to switch from a two-century old commissioner structure to the new executive-council form ratified by the voters is an enormously complex operation. Cuyahoga County is a billion dollar plus government operation with roughly 8,000 employees providing vital services to more than one million people every day. It is about to undergo radical neurosurgery as it shifts to an all new management team that at present is wholly unidentified, unselected, and collectively may have zero experience in working together.

The idea of public engagement, it would seem, is to establish a two-way line of communication that will attract the public’s best ideas about how to go forward, and to keep the public apprised as much as possible about just what the heck is going on. Or, if you are a cynic about the whole process, public engagement will be about meaningless participation and opaque transparency: volunteers will be kept busy and feel involved, and information will be shared, but the real decisions will continue to be made offsite and out-of-sight.

Either way, the communications professionals who participate in shaping and broadcasting the transition process will themselves be central. Five companies submitted written proposals to the County. These proposals were evaluated and rated, and three teams were selected for further consideration. [When the team of Lesic & Camper Communications/ Cleveland State University decided to drop out, the fourth-ranked team — GAP/365 moved up and got a second chance.]

Tuesday afternoon’s meeting took place in a large second-floor room at COSE headquarters in the former Higbee/Dillard department store on Public Square. Each team was given 10-15 minutes to introduce itself and make its pitch, followed by a Q&A from the workgroup, with each member asking one of ten scripted questions to the team over the next 30-45 minutes.

All presenters came politically correct, with appropriate nods to race, ethnicity and gender. In fact, the majority of presenters were women, although men led or co-led every team. Every team featured people of color, with the first two teams emphasizing that their joint venture partners were longtime collaborators and not just accessories put on for the occasion. The third team, comprising two black-owned companies, had no need to offer such reassurance.

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But this is only partly about color and race and ethnicity, which are always in play, because we are human, and we live in America. It is also, and more importantly, about our political culture.

All of the teams are qualified in a competition like this. There is no test with an objectively marked grade. There are submissions, track records, auditions, and oftentimes winks and nods. But this process is about the public’s business, transparent to perhaps an unprecedented degree, and we submit, a likely harbinger of what is to come over the next year.

The first presenter was the team of Burges & Burges in tandem with Brenda Terrell & Associates.  Burges is the heavyweight of local political consultants. They have been around over a quarter of a century, they have been in lots of high-profile campaigns, they are super-connected. They know exactly what they are doing and how to do it. They have run, often simultaneously, levy campaigns, issues campaigns, and candidate campaigns. And, by the way, they were the hired gun for the Issue 6 campaign that stomped the opposition. So they know what to say, when to say it, who and where to say it.

Burges has such a big local footprint that they will not commit to avoiding representing candidates for either county executive or county council during the term of the contract.

And that’s pretty much what they said in their presentation. ‘We know what we’re doing, we’re the best around, we just got finished doing this stuff, and we are the safest, surest choice.’ Team leader Bill Burges was so laid back he was practically avuncular. His team answered all the Workgroup questions as if they had written them last week and donated them to the group.

Next up was Landau Public Relations. Principal Howard Landau had assembled a formidable team, including former Citizens League exec Jan Purdy, onetime East Ohio Gas man Terry Uhl, and the well educated, highly talented, broadly experienced and extraordinarily lovely Montrie Rucker Adams.

[Correspondent disclosure:  Montrie is a friend of longstanding, as are the aforementioned Brenda Terrell and the soon-to-be-discussed Alexandria Johnson (“I prefer to be called ‘Alex’) Boone.]

Landau was earnestness personified. His background is public relations, not political intrigue. His clients are mostly corporate or nonprofit, and he seemed drawn to this assignment out of a sincere desire to serve and participate. He appeared easy to work with and had a diverse and capable team. He would have been my second choice.

Last on the meeting agenda was the team of Gap Communications Group and Cleveland365.com. Alex Boone, who has been around at least as long as Burges and Landau, heads Gap. As a black woman, her opportunities have been restricted, her challenges more severe. But she didn’t present that way, because, well, this is 2010, folks, Obama is president, and there will be no reparations.

What she did bring was energy, humor, confidence, and excitement. She brought a tight, no-name team that has worked together for most of this century. She brought handouts. She brought a power point presentation. And she brought interactive, as presented and demonstrated by Terry Thomas of Cleveland365.

All of the teams talked about social media as a key part of the communications mix. All seemed to understand that you couldn’t rely on it totally in a community with large pockets of technophobes, the unwired, and the impoverished. But Thomas clearly had an edge when it comes to social media. He articulated a vision of transparent and instantaneous two-way communication, and he demonstrated it hands on with his audience.

The Gap/Cleveland365 presentation had the least polish and the most sizzle. It was the best prepared, the best orchestrated, and the most hopeful. Boone and Thomas have the fewest establishment credentials, but they are the most Cleveland. They presented with the most energy, verve, and imagination. You can bet that if they win the contract they will assuredly treat it as the best opportunity they have ever earned, as it surely will be. And it will be a signal that this community is ready to be open, bold, adventurous, and interactive.

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One final note. In summer 2008, I attended a Cleveland365 event at the Botanical Garden in University Circle. The topic was regionalism and the speakers included representatives from Cleveland, Akron, and Youngstown. The joint was packed. I was astonished because in my four decades of attending local civic events of this type, I had never witnessed such a diverse crowd: an extraordinary mix of generations, geography, color, ethnicity, and attitude.

Local civic and political leaders like to talk about our diversity as if it were an accomplished fact. People who hear that talk might believe it if they have never been to Washington, DC, New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc. We remain a very segregated and stratified community. It is rare when an event takes place in this community that is so democratic in tone, tenor, and style that you wonder who put it together. Cleveland365 has done it, and they have done it more than once.

Burges is the safe choice. GAP/Cleveland365 is the best choice. If they are selected, you can believe that a groundswell is afoot, and that a new political culture might just be on the way to accompany the new political structure.

Undeclared Ronayne impresses with low key, high energy speech

He may not have been auditioning for the job, but Chris Ronayne offered a vision last night to the Cleveland Heights Democratic Club of just what an effective county executive would look like. With a manner that was folksy but not phony, affable but analytical, and practical yet almost poetic, the former Cleveland planning director persuaded an audience peppered with skeptics that Cuyahoga’s new charter government could facilitate a promising new era of cooperation and prosperity.

Ronayne spoke directly but optimistically about tough challenges facing Cuyahoga and its new leaders. Embedded in his discussion of job loss, parochial attitudes, urban sprawl, the state government’s anti-urban attitude no matter which party was in control, the inefficiencies of 59 political entities within the county, and other daunting issues was a sense that workable solutions existed.

Ronayne, president of University Circle, Inc., conveyed an easy familiarity with the political process although he disavowed being “an insider’s insider”. He spoke of smart-growth policies and shared service networks as tools to build a better region. But he emphasized more than once that “personnel is policy”, stressing how critical it was for citizens to evaluate candidates for both county executive and the county council with extreme care.

It was only a brief talk but long enough to display a keen and supple intellect, an appreciation of Cuyahoga’s diversity, a practical but dynamic approach to problem solving, and a “yes we can” spirit.

Two declared candidates for county executive — Democratic mayors Ed Fitzgerald of Lakewood and Georgine Welo of South Euclid — were in attendance. They and several judicial candidates spoke to the club before Ronayne’s talk.

Following a brief Q&A, a retired public official from an old and distinguished political family seemed to speak for many when she said that, although she had voted against Issue 6 and for Issue 5, she was beginning to think the new county government could turn out to be a good thing.