Cuyahoga Politics Today
Sometimes you can't tell the players even with a scorecard
Some time
last century, when I was an observer if not yet a student of local politics,
and certainly not a regular political reporter, I eased myself inconspicuously
into an informal gathering on Cannon Road in Bedford Heights of a few dozen
black elected officials.
I suspect
it was in the early ‘90s, not long after George Forbes had closed the book on
his three decades long electoral career with a knockout at the hands of Mike
White in the epochal 1989 Cleveland mayoral campaign.
Forbes
nonetheless dominated the room, much like Joe Louis would have even years after
his ring destruction by Rocky Marciano. I found a space in the large room just
off Forbes’ shoulder, and during a hiatus in the proceedings asked him a now
forgotten question about how he had accomplished some particular political feat.
He paused briefly, and then said unforgettably, “I never made my move too
soon.”
Emboldened
by my success in mining that nugget, I later in the meeting asked the political
maestro another question about how he had managed to remain city council
president for so long. His reply was pithy as it gets: “I could count,” he
said.
Reflecting
on those racially charged days of the late ‘70s and the decade that followed,
coinciding as they did with the saga of court-ordered student bussing and the
unsuccessful effort to eradicate at least sixty years of de facto segregation and both public and private discrimination in
the “Best Location in the Nation”, Forbes said he knew he could always depend
on the votes of every black councilman. Given the council’s racial makeup,
Forbes said, he needed only to focus at critical times on getting the one or
two votes he needed from white councilmen to maintain his power.
Narrow-minded
tribal politics still dominates our political, commercial and professional
spaces here in Northeast Ohio. Our gross insularity and collective sense of
inferiority are primary to an understanding of why our Amazon bid was a vain
exercise and why we continue to live in small minded and selfish ways amidst
our abundant natural and historic assets. I suppose it also helps why so many
in these parts cling to the faded image of Chief Wahoo, and why it took the
modern day version of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis last month to ordain the
icon’s banishment with all deliberate speed.
Irrespective
of policy positions or level of government, a sense of timing and the ability
to count that Forbes recalled are indispensable elements in the toolkit of any
successful politician. Indisputably and lamentably, the events of the past few
weeks in the run up to yesterday’s 4pm filing deadline for this year’s May 8th
primary, underscore some pitiful realities of local politics.
First, racialized
and tribal politics continue to bedevil Cuyahoga County. Nowhere is this truer
than in our process for selecting judicial candidates and electing judges,
areas where voters have too little information and even less understanding.
County Democratic Party chair Shontel Brown famously declared the process of
selecting judicial candidates “broken” last month at the party’s executive
committee meeting.
Unfortunately,
while her description was accurate, Brown stepped on her message in many ways.
Following the lead of her acknowledged whisperer, the novice chair inexpertly
put her fist on the scale while standing behind a threadbare curtain. She
compounded her blunder by calling out the results of the process in a way that
was guaranteed to make the problem worse, especially in the short term. While trying
to speak of principle, she cast her argument in terms of race in a way that
revealed an underlying hypocrisy: she would have been happy with the process
had it yielded results to her liking.
This
assessment is not meant to assail Brown. It’s the way we too often deal with
race in America. We don’t have honest conversations on the subject. In fact, when a recent US
Attorney General said as much, he was vilified for his audacious candor. Clear thinking about race is hard work.
At the
meeting, Brown was able to secure a short-term victory for her handlers that
avoided their total embarrassment and that of the party, that would have
resulted if not even one of the half dozen capable candidates of color had
secured endorsement in any of the four open seats.
Congresswoman
Marcia Fudge would have been disastrously exposed by such a result. Not only
had she cut a deal with southwest side party boss Bill Mason to ensure a
different result; she had publicly declared her support for her two favored
candidates: Andrea Nelson Moore and Deborah M. Turner.
The
racialized gymnastics Brown indulged in her speech to avoid a humiliating
defeat for Fudge may have secured the party endorsement for Moore, but a
painful price will be paid for that fleeting success. Here’s why:
White
politicians frequently try to score rhetorical points by claiming some black
person “played the race card”, an assertion that race is improperly introduced
into consideration of some issue. This is usually a vile maneuver that black
people recognize as an attempt to deny voice to what is always omnipresent in
America: the consequences of our history as a slave nation which even after the
Civil War sanctioned all manner of racial violence and injustice in myriad personal,
legal, formal and structural ways, practices that continue even today, albeit
in more refined and subtle ways.
It
therefore cuts deeply and sets back the pursuit of racial justice, equity and
inclusion when naked appeals based on racial tribalism are privileged to the
exclusion of excellence and merit. So when outstanding candidates like Karrie
Howard who are African American strive and strain intensively over many months
to cultivate support on the basis of merit, that work can be undermined by
narrow racial appeals that facilitate personal agendas. The foes of racial
justice and equity derive aid and comfort in the hypocrisy, and the public
interest in a strong and competent judiciary is not served.
This
leads to a second pitiful reality underscored by the past few weeks: the manic dysfunction
of the county Democratic Party. It is of course chronically broke, but that is
the least of its problems. More seriously, it is devoid of vision and
leadership. Senior elected officials — county executive Armond Budish and
Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson are prime examples — are content to use it but
invest nothing of their considerable political resources into making it an
effective instrument that articulates, harnesses or advances the collective
will either of its members or those it purports to represent.
Thirdly,
this void at the top, and the thoroughly undisciplined and chaotic environment
it permits, is an open invitation to ambitious and self-serving politicians to
recreate the moral corruption of the Dimora-Russo era.
Fourthly,
while there are more black elected officials in Cuyahoga County than ever in
history, black people have less real collective political power locally than at
any time since at least 1965. This has disastrous consequences for every public
issue: health, education, transportation, public safety, workforce readiness,
infrastructure demands, regional viability, you name it.
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The
backlash from shortsighted and costly tactics employed to secure the Moore
nomination were evident in every open judicial race, and even some non-judicial
contests, leading up to yesterday’s filing deadline. Those tactics cost Howard
an endorsement on his merit — he needed 60% approval but was held to 59.3% by
Fudge allies. Consider the irony: a black man wins support from white people on
the content of his character and his accomplishments ; meanwhile some black people
fail to support him based on an agenda that has those same black people
calling out white people for bias.
The
situation, as we predicted, also brought a late flurry of “name” candidates into the
electoral mix. Thus there were last minute filings by a Gallagher, a Russo, and
a McGinty, all familiar ballot surnames. Meanwhile, another familiar
ballot name — Kilbane — moved from one slot to another, and then back to her
original slot, all within 48 hours.
We will have more to say on the primary races in our next post,
and maybe also on the radio. Details on that later, if it comes to pass.
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