This year’s election
of a new county prosecutor is almost certain to result in positive change in
the office of the county’s most important law enforcement position. The
challenge is to figure out which of the five candidates vying for the office is
most likely to be successful in bringing about the necessary improvements in
what has for generations been a troubled office.
In 2010, county voters
were faced with a unique fresh choice, courtesy of the new county charter
passed the year before: electing the first-ever county executive. We very early
noticed a pattern as we attended many of the campaign events, including
numerous debates among the eight or nine candidates. The election was being
staged against a backdrop of failure: the system of county government was
broken. It was corrupt, outmoded, and inefficient. Things were done in a
certain way because that’s the way they had been done for decades.
Not one of the
candidates disagreed with this assessment. All promised they were the best
prepared to fix it. But what most of them actually focused on was “fixing the
problems”. For me, one candidate stood out, Ed FitzGerald, the eventual winner.
He was head and shoulders above the other candidates for several reasons: he
best understood the opportunity to seize the moment to create a new culture in
an affirmative fashion. He talked not just about transparency and integrity —
they all did, out of necessity. FitzGerald talked about making Cuyahoga County
government excellent. Fixing the problems was but a starting point. He was
clearly not going to settle for making the county average, or merely
functional, by solving the most dire problems, even though doing only that
would have represented a huge step forward. He wanted us to be first-rate and
he demonstrated the vision and the energy to take us there. And so far, so
good.
That 2010 race is for
me, eerily similar to this year’s campaign for prosecutor. Lots of qualified
candidates with good ideas about how to “fix” the problems in the prosecutor’s
office. And they pretty much agree on what those problems are: misuse of the
grand jury, an ugly propensity to over-indict, an unhealthy culture of partisan
politics and cronyism permeating the office, an institutional bias in hiring,
promotion, and plea bargaining, gross inefficiencies in the management of
professional resources.
All five candidates
have ideas about fixing these problems but only one has consistently talked
about a higher standard, about excellence, about giving the County as fine a
system of prosecutorial justice as exists in this country. That candidate is
Subodh Chandra.
What is important as
his vision is that he has a track record to back it up. He has been a federal
prosecutor. He has been Cleveland’s law director. He earned high marks in both
those positions.
We wondered for a time
whether Chandra’s demanding professionalism would engender resistance both from
within the office by assistant prosecutors and from outside the office among
the ranks of Cleveland and suburban police departments. Our conclusion is that
only such a demanding professionalism can force the necessary changes in the
county prosecutorial culture. All of the candidates promise change. To the
extent that any of them try, there will be resistance, even massive , if
passive, resistance.
To us, Chandra stands
out as the candidate with the vision, the commitment, the character, the will
and the determination to see the necessary changes through.
Subodh Chandra should
be Cuyahoga County’s next prosecutor.
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