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| David Ali, following LWV forum |
Dave Ali
would make a great neighbor and friend. He cares about his community, whether
that is defined as his Richmond Heights neighborhood around Chardon Road, or
the Glenville area where he grew up, worked for nearly half a century, and
became a successful business owner and financially secure private citizen. He
starts most every morning by walking his neighborhood and picking up the litter
he attributes to those who hell-bent on turning his town into a ghetto. If you
were sick, he would probably come over and cut your grass. If you were broke,
he’d probably lend you some money and help you get back on your feet. And his
loquacity makes him a fascinating conversational companion. Martin Luther King
Jr. stopped by his family store in 1963, and after he sold his business two
years ago for several million dollars, he traveled to Saudi Arabia for 23 days
in 2012. At age 62, he appears healthy, and radiates physical energy, great
pride and a strong work ethic.
Ali announced his candidacy
this past spring with no political experience beyond photo opportunities with
Cleveland public officials. On the
basis of a few random phone calls before the mayoral field was fully formed, he
has pronounced himself the frontrunner with a buoyant naïveté that exceeds that
of even the most optimistic political novice. With absentee voting already
begun, and after several months on the campaign trail, Mr. Ali told us he has no idea of
the size of the city budget and no idea how many municipal employees he would
be responsible for managing.[1]
Ali
sought us out for an interview on October 20, 2013. We spoke on the phone for
about an hour and met that afternoon and talked for another two hours or so. He
was forthright in all of his assertions, often speaking with intensity, never
more so than when disparaging councilwoman at large Miesha Headen, one of his opponents in the race. Headen has called
for an investigation [see here
and here]
into a land deal that Ali has been negotiating with Richmond Heights and county
officials to acquire valuable commercial property at Chardon and Richmond
roads.
It’s
easy to understand Ali’s upset with Headen. She is essentially alleging that
Ali is pursuing what would be an unlawful interest in a public contract were he
to become mayor. She has further suggested that Ali and mayor Dan Ursu — who is
running for reelection against both Ali and Headen, along with Councilwoman
Eloise Henry — reached a secret agreement for Ali to enter the race in the
expectation that he would attract votes that would likely otherwise go to Henry.
Henry, Ali, and Headen are all African American; Ursu is the lone white
candidate in the race.
Unsurprisingly,
Ali views this as preposterous on several counts. He asserts that he was the
first candidate to file officially, discounting that both Henry and Ursu had
declared months before Ali expressed interest in the race. [See here
and here.]
In fact, he says Headen is the one playing racial politics, citing her
attendance at a meeting in July with most of the city’s black elected
officials, including three school board members and councilman Russell Johnson.
[Henry was not invited] Ali says the purpose of the meeting was to drum him out
of the race, and that his rejection of the idea was emphatic.
While
Ali clearly has little respect for either Ursu or Henry as answers to the city’s
crying need for leadership, he reserves his deepest contempt for Headen. And he
makes it personal. He repeatedly said, “her husband doesn’t have a job” and
would not retreat from this position even when it was pointed out that her
husband, Raymond C. Headen, is an attorney in private practice, and former
counsel to former Ohio Treasurer Kenneth C. Blackwell. He twice asserted that
Headen was running for mayor with the intent to fire the city’s law director
and replace him with her husband, though he could cite no evidence for this
claim.
Ali
leveled other charges against Headen, among the kinder of which was that she is
“bipolar and power-hungry”.
Ali
described himself to us as “a decent guy who wants to give something back” to
his community. He would argue that acquiring and developing the property at
Chardon and Richmond roads is a manifestation of that desire. In fact, he is
hyper-focused on the redevelopment of Chardon Road, citing the deterioration of
the thoroughfare [he lives on Chardon Road], as evidenced by its many abandoned
storefronts and the trash he picks up daily. He cites the many commercial
vacancies as evidence of how the current mayor and council are “destroying the
city” and turning it into “a joke” because, he says, “none of them have any
business background.”
Ali, who
says that he will be “the people’s mayor”, also distanced himself from Ursu and
current council members David Roche, Donald O’Toole, Mark Alexander, and Marcia
Starkey Morgan, who he said had mutually resolved “we gotta stick together.”
Ali
claims not to see race as a factor in his campaign while simultaneously saying,
“America’s biggest problem is race.”
Following
the League of Women Voters’ candidate forum on October 16, [see here,
here,
and here],
Ali approached us to denounce Headen’s accusations against him. He had said
during the forum that he was planning to invest $500,000 of his own money into
the Chardon-Richmond project. When I suggested that would likely be a conflict
of interest if he won the election, his immediate response was that his 29 year-old
son would buy and renovate the property with his own money. It was that
statement, coupled with his insistence that he was misrepresented by his
critics, that led us to offer him the opportunity to speak directly to the
voters. He did so in this video,
recorded October 16, 2013 at the Richmond Heights Middle School.
We made
the same offer to each of the mayoral candidates after Ali recorded his
message, setting a deadline of last Friday at 5PM. Ursu did not respond;
neither did Henry. Headen accepted our offer; we expect to publish her video
later this week.
[1]
For the record, the current General Fund budget for Richmond Heights is $7.359
million. The current Total Budget, including all dedicated, special, and other
funds, is $14,754 million. The city presently has 54 fulltime employees,
including 22 in the police department, and 17 [fire], eight [service], four
[building] and three [finance]. Additionally, there are 39 part-time employees.
Source: telephone
conversation this afternoon with city finance director Paul Ellis.
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