Endorsements for Cleveland and Richmond Heights mayoral races, East Cleveland City Council

The juxtaposition of East Cleveland and Richmond Heights may seem odd to many — and distressing, perhaps, to some.  We know some eyebrows were raised, including ours, when Richmond Heights mayoral candidate David Ali said last May his city was “slowly turning into a ghetto” like East Cleveland.

Ali’s comments were of course an insult to the good people of East Cleveland. While there are more $200,000 houses on any given block of Richmond Heights than in the entire city of East Cleveland, this should not obscure the fact many East Cleveland residents possess the civility, savvy and sophistication, and the resources, that would make them welcome additions to any community.

Ali’s remarks were the kind that unwittingly reveal more about the speaker than the subject. To begin with, much of the City of East Cleveland is indistinguishable from the neighborhoods on the eastside of Cleveland where Ali was born and raised as David Johnson. The family gas station on St. Clair Ave. at 117 St. he inherited and ran for forty years is but a few scant blocks from East Cleveland. That family enterprise made him a millionaire and enabled him to drive up the hill every night to his ranch house in a tidy, almost bucolic bedroom community.

Miesha Headen for Mayor of Richmond Heights

The clear choice to lead Richmond Heights for the next four years is Miesha Headen. She has the fiscal expertise to manage the city’s treasury, an understanding of the challenges the city faces, concrete plans to address those challenges, and the courage to lead the way.

Our conversations with Mr. Ali gave us the impression that he would not be running for mayor if the major intersection near his home were not so run down. He seems to conceive of the mayor’s role as that of development director. The fact that he could campaign for the job for five months and yet be wholly ignorant of the city’s budget or how many employees he would be responsible for speaks volumes about his interest and capacity to run a municipal government.

Dave Ali may be an excellent businessman and model neighbor, but he is wholly unprepared to be mayor of Richmond Heights. He has little concept of the job he has been pursuing for the last several months. He shows no comprehension of the difference between running a family neighborhood retail business and governing a diverse city full of economic and social challenges that have been unaddressed for more than a decade.

Finally, there are legitimate questions as to Ali’s motivation to be a candidate. Who would run for an office he knows so little about? And what is one to make of the fact that the discredited Josh Kaye, whose tenure as Board of Education president was inept, vindictive and abusive [see here, here, and here for examples.], has boasted that he is Ali’s campaign manager.

The incumbent mayor, Dan Ursu, is rightly criticized for his public aloofness, but Ursu’s public reticence is purposeful. He intentionally governs almost in secret, as if he were trying to lull city residents into apathy. Unfortunately, Richmond Heights requires leadership that is far more dynamic, imaginative, and sensitive than Ursu has provided over at least the past dozen years. It was telling that he had to be introduced to the principal of the Richmond Heights High School at the League of Women Voters Oct. 16 forum. City Hall is less than 200 yards from the high school, but the only interest Ursu has shown in his challenged school district in the past two years was in doing a photo opp with the boys basketball team after their record-breaking season.

If Richmond Heights wants to reverse its recent decline and begin to take advantage of its tremendous potential, it needs a both a pragmatic mayor and a visionary one. Miesha Headen best represents that combination in this year’s race.

Thomas Wheeler, Brandon King, and Gloria Smith Morgan for East Cleveland City Council

We were stunned the first time we covered an East Cleveland City Council meeting. It was about six years ago. Eric Brewer was mayor and Gary Norton was council’s president. The hostility between the executive and legislative branches was palpable. Norton subsequently challenged Brewer for mayor, defeated him in 2009. While his administration has begun to address some of the city’s key challenges — vacant and abandoned properties, ending the city’s political isolation, crafting a viable development strategy — one of his principal missteps has been his failure to foster any sort of collegiality with council.

Norton’s landslide victory over Council President Joy Jordan in last month’s Democratic primary means that he will embark upon a second term. The only chance for that term to be successful for the city is for a cleansing of the poisonous attitude that has too long infected City Hall. That is why we believe electing the slate of Wheeler, King and Morgan offers East Cleveland residents the best opportunity to move their city forward. The trio should not be expected to provide automatic support for the mayor’s agenda, but such a wholesale transformation of council is the best bet for moving the city out of its fiscal emergency and towards restoring residents’ confidence in their municipal government.

Mayor of Cleveland

Frank Jackson merits a third term as Cleveland mayor. His fiscal leadership has kept the city on an even keel and permitted him to initiate important developments throughout the city. His no-frills, unromantic leadership style turns a lot of people off but it has on balance produced good results for the city. He has made his share of mistakes and on occasion been too tolerant of mismanagement in key departments. The reality is that running the major city in our region is an enormous task.

Watching Ken Lanci try to make a case to be Cleveland’s next mayor has been an occasion for sadness. Like the energetic David Ali, Lanci’s campaign proves that business success counts for little in politics if you have no real appreciation for how to run a municipal government. Lanci has embraced and apparently taken considerable advice from an assortment of political malcontents and blowhards whose collective influence couldn’t carry a precinct. It gives one pause when trying to imagine what sort of cabinet he would have if the sky fell and he became mayor. It would likely make even diehard Republicans long for the return of the Grdina sisters from the Kucinich adminstration.

EAST CLEVELAND Seven candidates seek three city council seats

East Cleveland City Council is certain to have new leadership next year, as its five members will elect both a new president and a new vice president. The choice East Cleveland voters will make next week is just how much to shake up a council that, regardless of its makeup, has feuded almost nonstop with the city’s past two chief executives.

Mayor Gary Norton defeated his chief council antagonist, Council President Joy Jordan, in the October 1 Democratic primary. He will be unopposed at the polls next week.

Jordan, who opted not to run for reelection but to challenge Norton at the ballot box, will leave office when her council term on council expires at the end of December. Meanwhile, Chantelle Lewis, council’s vice president, chose not to run for reelection.

The remaining three council members, Mansell Baker, Barbara Thomas, and Nathaniel Martin, have all usually been found on the opposite side of any Norton mayoral initiatives, even though he was council president immediately prior to his election in 2009.

The most frequent issue raised at most of the candidate forums and debates held in the city over the past two months has been the dysfunctional relationship between mayor and council. With Norton assured of reelection and council’s leadership departing, voters can resolve that issue themselves.

Voters will choose next week among five candidates vying for two at large seats. Ward 3 voters will also pick among three candidates for a representative to succeed Lewis.

City Council candidates [seated L-R] Brandon King, Gloria Smith Morgan,
Genevieve Mitchell, Nathaniel Martin, Thomas J. Wheeler and Vidah Saaed.

Standing at left: Trevelle Harp, executive director of forum co-sponsor 

Northeast Ohio Alliance for Hope.

The at large candidates are Brandon King, Nathaniel Martin, Genevieve Mitchell, Ryan Ross, and Gloria B. Smith Morgan. Martin, an incumbent, has been on council since 1999. His serious approach to council is usually overshadowed by his relentless pomposity.  King is a businessman with deep roots in the community. Mitchell is more of a transplant, settling in East Cleveland after service as an elected school board member in East Cleveland. Smith Morgan retired after a 30+year career with General Motors, has been active with her Hanover-Brunswick street club, and cites the late Mildred Brewer as her political inspiration.

The fifth candidate on the ballot for an at large seat, Ryan Ross, appears not to have shown at any public campaign event. We have not been able to reach him.

Ward 3 council election

Three candidates — Vidah Saeed, Ernest L. Smith, and Thomas J. Wheeler — are running to succeed Chantelle Lewis. Saeed describes herself as a community activist and says she wants to transform East Cleveland into a city that commands respect.  Smith did not appear at last week’s candidate forum sponsored by the Northeast Ohio Alliance for Hope and the League of Women Voters, but his campaign literature, placed on cars in the parking lot outside the event, claims support from the Black Women’s Political Action Committee and the Carl Stokes Brigade.

Former Cleveland Safety Director James Barrett & lifelong
political activist Burt Jennings of the Carl Stokes Brigade
at a recent candidates forum in East Cleveland

Wheeler, who worked 12 years as a Cleveland police officer, describes himself as an experienced negotiator who wants to end the bickering between the executive and legislative branches. He argues that the city must show dependable civic leadership before private investors will return.

King, Smith Morgan, and Wheeler are running as a team. Should all three be elected they would likely be able to craft a workable council-mayoral relationship that East Cleveland hasn’t had in nearly a decade.

With East Cleveland mayoral race over, attention now turns to Council

Eight candidates seeking three seats means major council turnover possible

East Cleveland City Hall will see a substantial makeover even though Mayor Gary Norton’s reelection is a mere formality following his resounding victory in yesterday’s Democratic primary. 

The unofficial count from the County Board of Elections shows Norton garnered 1385 votes, two-thirds of the 2099 ballots cast. City Council president Dr. Joy Jordan won 563 votes, or about 27%, while political novice Vernon Robinson received 151 votes, about seven percent.

Since no Republican or independent candidate filed for mayor, Norton will be the only candidate for mayor on the November ballot.

Jordan’s decision to challenge the mayor means there will be a new council president next term. At least two new council members will be sworn in as first-termer Chantelle C. Lewis did not file for reelection from Ward 3. Lewis has been council vice president since last year.

There are eight candidates running for three seats on city council. Five candidates – Brandon L. King, Nathaniel Martin, Genevieve Mitchell, Ryan Ross, and Gloria B. Smith Morgan — are running citywide for one of council’s two at large seats. Martin is an incumbent.

In addition, three candidates — Vidah Saaed, Ernest L. Smith, and Thomas Wheeler — are running in Ward 3 to succeed Lewis.

With new top council leadership guaranteed, and a new council majority possible, East Cleveland residents may see an end to the mayor-council hostility that has existed for much of the past eight years, spanning the first Norton administration and that of his predecessor, Eric Brewer.

Candidate forums scheduled

All council candidates have been invited to participate in two candidate events. The first event, sponsored by the Ohio 8^th House District Black Caucus, will be this Saturday, Oct. 5 at the East Cleveland Public Library, 14101 Euclid Avenue. The Ward 3 candidates are scheduled to appear in debate from 1-3PM; the five Council at Large candidates are scheduled to appear from 3:30-5:30PM.

Council candidates have also been invited to a forum co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters and the Northeast Ohio Alliance for Hope [NOAH], a grassroots community organization. That event is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 26 at 12:30PM at New Covenant Lutheran Church, 1424 Hayden Ave, East Cleveland OH 44112.

NOAH and the LWV are also co-sponsoring a candidate forum for East Cleveland School Board candidates. That event is scheduled for Monday, October 21, at 6PM, also at New Covenant Lutheran Church.

East Cleveland mayoral debate tomorrow; 75 more police face suspension for chase roles

East Cleveland mayoral debate set for tomorrow at city library

Most of the news coming out of East Cleveland over the past year has been the stuff of misfortune and tragedy. To cite only a few of the lowlights: the city descended once again into fiscal emergency, the mayor called the police to escort the council president from his office, the school board rejected the favorable terms of offer to merge its shrunken and overburdened library system with the county’s acclaimed library system, more than 100 police officers from Cleveland gave chase to an unarmed pair of suspects, first cornering them in a school parking lot and then executing them on the spot, and finally, just last month, the decomposing bodies of three women were found in one of the city’s more desolate areas, victims of an apparent psychopath.

These and other issues are likely to be part of what should be a lively debate when the three Democratic Party candidates for mayor meet on stage at 1 PM tomorrow at the East Cleveland Public Library.

Residents will get to hear Mayor Gary Norton, City Council president Joy A. Jordan, and Vernon Robinson share their visions of better days ahead for their city, along with perhaps their plans for achieving their vision. Each candidate will have fifteen minutes to address the audience. A question and answer session will follow, moderated by Charles E. Bibb, Sr., president of the Ohio Eighth House District Black Caucus, the debate’s sponsor.

Bibb told the Real Deal yesterday that all three of the candidates have confirmed their plans to attend and participate.

The three candidates will square off in the Democratic primary to be held October 1. The winner will be the city’s next mayor as no Republican filed for the office and the city’s charter does not permit write-in mayoral candidates.

A suspect was indicted and arraigned this week in the suspected serial murders. He is being held in county jail in lieu of bail. No criminal charges have been filed as yet in the deadly 100 mph chase by dozens of police cars that led to the 137-bullet volley that killed Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams. That case, like the serial murders, is in the hands of County Prosecutor Tim McGinty.

Cleveland police to discipline 75 officers for role in deadly chase

Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath said today that 75 policemen would be disciplined for their involvement in the police chase last November that ended in the neighboring city of East Cleveland with the deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams.

None of the officers facing discipline is among the 13 who shot at the victims. Eleven supervisors have already been disciplined, including one who was fired.

Nineteen of the 75 officers will be referred to Cleveland’s Department of Public Safety and face temporary suspension.

Of the 75 officers facing discipline for violating police protocol, 19 will be referred to the Department of Public Safety for disciplinary hearings and could face temporary suspension, McGrath said.