Cuyahoga Politics Today • Election Limbo: What we see

By R. T. Andrews

Urban/Suburban vs. Small Town Rural. White vs. Other. Red vs. Blue. Looking Back vs. Forging Ahead.  False Narratives vs. Reality. Unlogic vs. Logic.

One day after the election, with the final results for the winner of the Presidency unknown, it is difficult to say The United States of America without irony.

More than 150 million people voted nationally in this year’s election, including a record 5,761,200 votes had been cast in Ohio, according to data from the Ohio secretary of state’s website as of this afternoon.

As of this writing, former Vice President Joe Biden holds a projected Electoral College vote total of 264, with 270 needed to win. Biden’s total includes Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan. If these projections hold, and Biden maintains his lead in Nevada, he will be the next President.

The remaining states where results are presently still in doubt include Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina. Trump won these states in 2016, and needs all of them this year to have any hope for re-election.

With the election still in doubt, Trump and his supporters are calling for a halt to continued vote counting in Pennsylvania, where his lead is diminishing, and are threatening to file suit to halt the process. His campaign has also filed suit to review the Michigan results.

With Biden nearing victory, and Trump having made plain that he will not accept such a result, concerns are shifting to how Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Vice President Mike Pence will respond to a presumptive Biden victory.

Ohio Election News

Perhaps the most significant statewide results come from the two Supreme Court races. Justice Sharon Kennedy defeated Cuyahoga County judge John P. O’Donnell by a margin of 55%-45%.  But Justice Judi French lost her re-election bid by roughly the same 55-45 ratio to challenger Jennifer Brunner, a Franklin County appellate judge and a former Ohio secretary of state.

The results narrow the Republican hold on the state’s highest court from 5-2 to 4-3.

Cuyahoga Results

While the state set a record for turnout, Cuyahoga County voters turned out at a less than impressive 67.85 rate, with 603,337 ballots cast out of 889,175 eligible voters, according to figures released by the county Board of Elections.

In a direct challenge to local area leaders, SEIU labor union spokesman Anthony Caldwell was quick to point a finger at Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson, and various Democratic “leaders”, tweeting that they “showed no effort, yielded no votes.”

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This article originally appeared in The Real Deal Press. Republished with permission. 

11th District Caucus forum: Spring Training for County Exec Candidates

Last Saturday the Eleventh Congressional District Caucus held a forum for the declared county executive candidates who will be running in the September 7 primary. The timing was a little out of kilter because of the heated battles going on in several local Democratic primaries, not to mention the heated statewide battle for the Democratic nomination to succeed retiring US Senator George Voinovich.

Nonetheless, the forum was a good opportunity for the county executive candidates to try out their campaign themes on a politically sophisticated audience. Nearly 200 people were in attendance at the forum in the new John Adams High School on Cleveland’s east side. The candidates — Opportunity Corridor director Terri Hamilton Brown; former state representative Matt Dolan; Lakewood mayor Ed FitzGerald, and South Euclid mayor Georgine Welo — each offered an opening statement and then answered questions prepared by the moderator, county recorder Lillian Greene, or written down and collected from the audience.

Dolan’s participation must have surprised many in attendance, and was certainly news to some in the party hierarchy. The caucus has come to be widely but inaccurately perceived as being a Democratic Party affiliate. Its leader, Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, D-11, has overseen the organization’s transformation from a strictly political organization to a non-profit, nonpartisan corporation. As such, the Republican Dolan was invited on the same basis as the others, and was in fact able to establish a connection with many in the audience.

Dolan told the crowd that the chief executive needed to set the vision for the new county government and council. He touted his bi-partisan bona fides and promised to use the position as a bully pulpit for public education. He came across as somewhat paternalistic when he talked about helping the new county council to see a broader vision.

FitzGerald stressed restoring integrity to county government and spoke of his experience as Lakewood mayor in managing a $100 million budget. He spoke optimistically of establishing a collegial relationship with the new council and indicated that a FitzGerald administration would emphasize human services along with jobs and growth.

Welo, styling herself as “the people’s candidate”, made it clear that a Welo administration would focus on the core issues of health, safety, and welfare. Her manner was direct and unvarnished as she strove to project a straight-ahead, commonsense, can-do approach.

The forum was probably most beneficial to Brown, who likely possesses the best resume as a professional manager but is a political novice as a candidate. She had difficulty in keeping her answers to a manageable length, and also struggled to find a natural, conversational tone. She is clearly more comfortable in a board room than on the stump, and whatever notion she had of making an easy transition to the microphone was quickly dispelled. To her credit, she acknowledged the challenge and her promise to meet it seemed to draw warm sympathy from the crowd. Brown also connected by tracing her Lee-Harvard upbringing.

Dolan likely has a clear path through the September Republican primary to the general election in November. Brown, FitzGerald and Welo will compete in the Democratic primary. The filing deadline for both primaries is June 24. Those who win the party primaries will be facing one and probably two additional major candidates. Conservative businessman Ken Lanci is running already as an independent, and rumors are rife that maverick Democrat and former county commissioner Tim McCormack will also run as an independent.

Four candidates in the general election, each reasonably well-financed and with a well-defined political base, means the first Cuyahoga County chief executive could be elected with as little as 30% of the vote in November.
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Grits ain't Gravy [Miscellaneous Political Notes]

The caucus meeting offered some interesting side stories:
• Congresswoman Fudge, for instance, unlike many office holders, was content to make some brief remarks and then sit down without trying to dominate the proceedings.
• Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, running for the US Senate, arrived with her campaign team, made some concise remarks, and sat attentively throughout the meeting.
• A campaign tracker, said to be an operative of her primary opponent, Lt. General Lee Fisher, kept a camera focused on Brunner the entire time.

Brunner the Best for Ohio Democrats

Democratic voters have an excellent chance this fall to send a strong new voice to Washington as Ohio’s next U. S. senator. Almost from the day George Voinovich announced in January 2009 that he would retire at the end of his term this year, it was clear that Democrats would be choosing their nominee between two of their best state officials, Lt. Governor Lee Fisher and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.

The last 15 months of head-to-head political campaigning have made two things clear: Jennifer Brunner would be a stronger Democratic standard bearer against the Republican nominee in November, and Jennifer Brunner would be a stronger US Senator for Ohio and the nation.

When voters are faced with two strong and capable candidates who hold roughly similar political views, who to vote for becomes less a matter of policy positions and more a question of character and style. This is perhaps especially true when the electoral prize is one of just a hundred seats in the US Senate, often referred to as “the world’s most exclusive club”.

Ohio’s Democratic leaders seem to have had that paradigm of exclusivity in mind as they fell into near lockstep behind Fisher. For Gov. Strickland on down through the party apparatus of Democratic state legislators, county party chairs and the rest of the old guard party hierarchy, Fisher has been the sanctioned choice.

That he would serve capably there is really no doubt. He is an experienced legislator and was a very good Ohio attorney general. He is a well-seasoned politician who would fit easily in the Senate. He is a prolific fundraiser, but is a two-edged sword. The ability to put big-time contributors at ease seems to make even the best-intentioned politicians less like public servants and more like leaders who follow lobbyists. In the wake of the recent abominable Citizens United decision by the US Supreme Court that seems to encourage unprecedented corporate intrusion into the electoral process, this is likely to be an even larger problem.

Brunner is much less likely to be a handmaiden to the corporate interests that dominate the club. For starters, she hasn’t been a career politician, having been in public office only since 2000, when she ran successfully for common pleas judge in Franklin County. Two years later, she was re-elected, serving about six years before resigning to run statewide for Secretary of State.

Notwithstanding her relative freshness as a public official, Brunner, 53, possesses considerable political savvy. She worked four years for Sherrod Brown in the mid-eighties when the latter was Ohio’s Secretary of State. Additionally, she represented many elected officials during her private practice on issues involving election law and campaign finance. She was an innovative judge in Franklin County, not from the standpoint of being an “activist” judge, but as a jurist who sought to improve the system by working with her colleagues. We think she can help President Obama do the same in Washington.

My direct observations of Brunner in different settings — as public official and on the campaign trail — suggest that she is a thoughtful and committed public servant, both open and approachable. She gets the idea of servant leadership. She acts from a strong and secure principled base, with more quiet tenacity and much less bombast than most politicians. What you see in public is likely what you will get in private.

Probably no place is that attribute more significant — and rare — than in the US Senate. Our local daily, in its weakly-supported endorsement of Fisher, suggested that he was more likely to get along in the clubby Senate than she. No doubt. But it’s not clear why that was a virtue.

Ohio has never sent a woman to the US Senate, where women are outnumbered by worse than four-to-one. And it should be noted that among GOP senators, it is the women senators from Maine who are the least doctrinaire and partisan. As the junior US senator, we think Brunner would be inside the room, but more likely than most to insist that the door be open for the public interest.

All the Democratic bigwigs are behind Lee Fisher in this race. That Brunner has neither bent, buckled nor broken in the face of the behind-the-scenes bullying is telling. She has stayed the course in the race, connected with voters in large settings and small, campaigning with a quiet ease and grace that have been impressive.

While some who have worked with her express concern about her administrative skills, she has run an impressive and imaginative campaign with far fewer resources than her opponent. She is clearly but quietly a formidable candidate. If she wins the nomination, she will have an outstanding to chance to win in November and become an equally formidable Senator for progressive issues.

Democrats who have yet to cast their primary votes should put Brunner at the top of the ticket. President Obama told us during the campaign that he could not bring change by himself. Nominating Jennifer Brunner as Ohio’s Democratic candidate for Senator would signal change about the role of money in campaigns, and address the concerns of many local Democrats about fostering a more open and transparent party process.

Party rank-and-filers: if you want to feel better about your party and your choice -- both in November and for the next six years – vote for Brunner.

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