Raymond Headen enters appellate court race • Stephens challenging Houser • Mike White speech tonight • O’Neill at City Club • Beachwood makes history • SOTU • Rep. Fudge on CNN

Cuyahoga Politics Today

Raymond C. Headen running for appellate court

Thirty some years ago, when young lawyer Ray Headen imagined his career trajectory, he always seemed to wind up as either a law professor or an appellate judge. An unexpected call from county GOP chair Rob Frost asking the now seasoned Headen, 58, whether he would consider running for the county's Court of Appeals, helped him realize that now is the time.

Attorney Raymond C. Headen

Headen is running for the 8^th District Court of Appeals. Given Frost’s support, he is likely to be unopposed in the primary and should sail through until November in the nonpartisan race.

Headen brings broad and deep experience to the race. His career includes working for several well-known corporate firms and serving as general counsel to then-Ohio Treasurer Ken Blackwell. He recently served as sole special counsel in the original drafting of the 2015 Ohio Economic Development Manual published by the Ohio Attorney General.

Headen has the education, experience, and temperament to be an outstanding appellate judge. We commend Frost for recruiting him. And we want to let the party chair know we will be watching closely to see what kind of support he lines up for his candidacy. The local GOP has a history of encouraging black candidates to run and then offering only token support. It takes around $100,000 to run a competitive campaign, and Frost needs to take ownership for raising at least half that amount on behalf of his stellar recruit.

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Stephens challenges Houser in District 10 County Council race

Cleveland Heights councilwoman
Cheryl L. Stephens

Cleveland Heights councilwoman and former mayor Cheryl Stephens has decided to take her bid for County Council to the voters. She has pulled petitions to challenge Michael Houser in the Democratic primary on May 8.

Houser was appointed to the seat when he narrowly defeated Stephens 24-22 in a January 11 vote of District 10 County Democratic Central Committee members.

This race will likely test the alliances of several prominent local Democrats. County Executive Armond Budish, US Senator Sherrod Brown, and Congresswoman Marcia Fudge are all expected to support Houser, who became the endorsed candidate as the [week-old] incumbent after the central committee vote. Fudge had mildly supported Stephens until the Jan. 11 vote but moved swiftly to endorse Houser.

District 10 encompasses the cities of Cleveland Heights, East Cleveland, and University Heights, Cleveland Wards 8 [all] and 10 [except precincts A, B, I, K & M], and the village of Bratenahl.

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O’Neill brings his gubernatorial campaign to City Club today

Bill O'Neill, who is running to be Ohio’s governor, will be in conversation at the City Club today at noon. The unconventional candidate has been an army officer, a registered nurse, and both a newspaper and television reporter. He

Former Ohio Justice Bill O'Neill

was elected to the Ohio Supreme Court in November 2012, where he served until he stepped down last week to campaign for governor. Prior to becoming a justice, he served on the Eleventh District Court of Appeals from 1997 until 2007. A Vietnam veteran, O'Neill is a graduate of Ohio University, Cleveland Marshall College of Law, and Huron School of Nursing.

O’Neill’s appearance today is part of the City Club’s series of conversations with candidates seeking statewide office in 2018. Call 216.621.0082 or more information.

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From Grasshopper to Greatness

Mike White was the dominant political figure in Cuyahoga County during his tenure as Cleveland mayor from 1990 through 2001. He remains both a compelling and an active figure in Cleveland politics today, although much of his work is below the radar.

Former Cleveland mayor Michael R. White

He will be speaking at 6PM tonight at JumpStart as the final speaker in the Leadership Series presented by the Black Professionals Association Charitable Foundation. Prior speakers included current Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson, network guru George Fraser, entrepreneur Alexandria Johnson Boone, Dr. Charles Modlin, and civic leader Randell McShepard.

White’s presentation is entitled “From Grasshopper to Greatness”. JumpStart is located at 6701 Carnegie Ave. in Cleveland’s midtown. Call 216.229.7110 for more information.

White was interviewed by Teaching Cleveland in 2013 about his political life as part of a Cleveland history project. The interview is available in a series of videotapes beginning here.

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State of the Union speech tonight

Most thoughtful people I know despair about the current state of our union under the malevolent and dangerous instincts of our president. Random inquiries reveal few who will admit to plans on watching Trump address Congress, the nation, and the world tonight.

I do plan to watch. I don’t expect it to be in the least pleasant or reassuring, not to even contemplate uplifting. But I am curious as to how he will handle what I think will be an especially daunting assignment: speaking with the sophistication required to simultaneously address multiple audiences. Trump is most confident playing to his base, where he needs no script, no teleprompter, no preparation. He is adept at reading his crowd and always has truckloads of red meat at the ready. Unless he is totally delusional, he will have to know tonight that he is speaking to many who oppose much of what he represents. Will he be completely defiant or will he attempt some mollification? And will he be disciplined or extemporaneous?

Whichever, we will be curious. And we will also be curious to see if our local Congresswoman, Marcia Fudge, can bring some critical light to bear on the president’s remarks. She will be a guest on the Don Lemon show tonight on CNN following the speech.

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Immigration, the FBI, and Ohio Democrats

It’s Tuesday, which means our friends Laverne Gore and Jack Boyle will be on air from 6-7PM hosting their show, “Race Relations in America”. Tonight’s topics are expected to include the national debate on immigration, the leaked FBI memo, and the contestants in the crowded Democratic field for Ohio’s gubernatorial nomination. The show airs on WERE/1490 AM.

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Beachwood makes Black History

Beachwood City Council made history last week by selecting a black woman to fill the vacancy created when former council president Martin S. Horwitz resigned after he defeated longtime mayor Merle Gorden in a close three-way to become Beachwood mayor.

The surprise for many was that this “first” did not go to Gail McShepard, who had just finished a very respectable fourth in a field of six candidates vying for three at large seats on the council.

Beachwood’s charter called for council to fill the vacancy caused by Horwitz’s elevation. They invited applicants and according to reports interviewed all seventeen privately, including McShepard. They then met in open session and selected businesswoman June Elizabeth Taylor, who became the “first”.

June Elizabeth Taylor

We know Taylor as smart, opinionated, with a sharp tongue and with no penchant to bite her tongue. Politically savvy, she is a confidant to Gov. Kasich and has been repeatedly entrusted by him with political appointments, including her current service as chair of the Ohio Casino Commission. She clearly was close to some Beachwood insiders, based on her appointment by then-council president Horwitz to the city’s Charter Review Commission.

Twenty or so years ago, a smart attorney, psychologist and educator — David Whitaker — was elected to the Beachwood Board of Education. The community was not ready for his candor or independence and memory says he did not complete his full term. As the city timidly navigates its own changing demographics, we will be interested to observe how the city’s insular political culture will inevitably shift under the impact of Taylor’s dynamism.

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Black History Month

Is your organization sponsoring an event in recognition of Black History Month?

Make sure we know about it.

As Stevie Wonder might say, “Don’t delay… Send it right away.”

News, that is, about your event. Email us here: rta AT theRealDealPress.com.

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Miesha Headen sees potential of a model Richmond Heights

 [Disclosure: I’ve known Miesha Headen for about 20 years. We have worked together on a couple of professional and civic endeavors but we’ve never socialized. I have known her husband Raymond even longer, pretty much on the same basis. I consider them friends.]

NOTE: we had hoped to offer a short video of Headen similar to the opportunity provided David Ali, but were thwarted by technical issues.

• • •

Miesha Headen is both a policy wonk and a serious politician. She is an auditor, trained to follow and account for the money. She likes to analyze an issue or problem, formulate a plan to deal with it, implement the solution, and then reassess. This is a process she follows so invariably that it's become part of her character. Who she is is what she does. What she does is who she is. WYSIWYG. [1]

So my first questions to her when we sat down over coffee recently were put simultaneously: when did she decide to run for mayor of Richmond Heights, and why. The first question gave her more pause, because she could not pinpoint a defining moment. In struggling to answer the "when", out tumbled all the "whys".

The Headens moved to Richmond Heights in 2002. They both had grown up locally in stable households, gone away to school [Columbia for her; Williams College, Penn Law, and London School of Economics for him] before returning home to northeast Ohio and planting new roots.

Like many professional couples, they were impressed by the city’s solid housing stock, and an apparent safe, open and tranquil character that augured well for starting and raising a family that now includes two boys, ages 9 and 6.

Over time, as she was acquiring a master’s degree in finance from Ursuline College [with a concentration in socially responsible leadership], Headen’s auditing eye began to detect some red flags in her sleepy suburban community. These included a succession of failed school levies [the number would grow to seven before one finally passed]; a good old-boy network of long-term residents [albeit one with a few women members, perhaps grand-mothered in]; questionable public finance decisions, and changing city demographics to which elected officials and others of influence seemed ignorant or indifferent, if not hostile. And all of this seemed strangely blanketed in the community that comforted itself as being “The City with the Forward Look”.

Off the sidelines and into the fray

Headen decided in 2009 to become part of the solution. In straightforward fashion, she ran for an at large seat on city council. She won [for how, see here] and pretty quickly began to make waves that afflicted the comfort of the city’s entrenched and shadowy governing circle. She started a blog, aptly named Absolutely At-Large, began digging into the city’s finances and uncovering its loose and extravagant financial practices.

Her auditing skills paid off: she discovered that the city had not completed a bank reconciliation of the city’s books in at least ten years. This led to the state’s auditors coming in to examine the city’s books, and to the startling discovery that the city’s finance director had made a double-booking error in excess of a quarter-million dollars. [She later resigned under pressure.]

At Headen’s insistence, the city now acknowledges on its website the nearly forty land parcels the city has acquired under the Ursu administration. She is especially upset with what she sees as Ursu’s pet project, the purchase and maintenance of Greenwood Farms.

Headen’s energy seems to have inspired a number of other Richmond Heights residents to become more engaged in the civic process. A school board that housed a viper’s nest of socially and financially irresponsible members has been largely swept clean and replaced with a more thoughtful and less hysterical majority. And city council itself is flexing, in both in membership and style, towards a new openness. At a League of Women Voters candidate forum earlier this month, all four council candidates, including the incumbent Donald O’Toole, affirmatively responded to the idea of “streaming video of all public meetings so residents could be better informed”.

Tension surfaces as allegations fly

Headen's insistence on financial responsibility and accountability, and transparency, while producing results, have understandably not endeared her to all of her colleagues in city government or her rivals in this year’s mayoral contest. It is probably fair to say that she is the least favorite opponent of each of the other three candidates. The mayor, whom she regularly challenges on policy matters, has accused Headen of “smearing other candidates.”

Another candidate, Dave Ali, grows almost apoplectic when discussing Headen, calling her “racist” and saying, in reference to a June powwow of some black elected officials, that she formed a group to “intimidate” him into dropping out of the mayor’s race.

Headen and others say that the meeting Ali cites was an exploratory meeting designed to get to know Ali and assess his viability as a potential challenger to the six-term incumbent.[2] When it became apparent in their view in the first ten minutes of the meeting that the scope of the job was not a fit for Ali’s skill set [i.e., he was in their view, grossly unqualified to be mayor], they encouraged him to run for city council. He refused and filed his mayoral petitions as soon as the law allowed.

Speaking of law, what really frosted Ali were Headen’s allegations that he and Ursu are in cahoots over a potentially lucrative deal involving public land and public grants. [You can read about this here, here, and here.] Headen may have the last word on this however, as she posted this response from the Ohio Ethics Commission on Monday. As of yesterday, the State Auditor’s Special Audit Task Force had forwarded Headen’s complaint about the land deal to both the State Auditor’s Northeast audit region and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for further consideration.

Headen looks ahead 

Personal questions and conflict of interest allegations tend to overshadow the question of what Headen would do as mayor, and the questions posed at the beginning of our conversation. She says that she’s running to continue to “change the culture” of city government, to make it more accountable, transparent, efficient and open. She wants to modernize the city’s commercial districts, which she says are “crumbling”, and beef up enforcement of the city’s occupancy codes to deal with absentee landlords of both commercial and residential properties. She staunchly supports the reinstitution of various city services, including such recreational facilities as the city swimming pool and ball fields, which she notes are important to attracting home buying families.

Headen said there is an “urgency for new leadership” to accomplish these goals and others. It was only in mid-summer, after the meeting with Ali and her assessment of the other candidates, that she decided, in consultation with many constituents, that she was best equipped to address that urgency.

Headen sees herself as qualified by profession, study, and strength of character to help “lead Richmond Heights into the 21^st century”. She promises to recruit an “expert team” that includes many current Richmond Heights residents and reflects more closely the diversity that already exists.

She notes that in a city that is 57% female and that has become home to thousands of new residents since 2000, all fifteen of Ursu’s appointments to the vital governing boards — Planning, Civil Service, and Zoning and Appeals — are males who have lived in Richmond Heights for decades.

Headen sees bright possibilities for her city. Ursu, she says, “no longer sees a better world. … I want to make Richmond Heights a model community. I would love to be the community that shows how to get it right!”

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[1] What You See Is What You Get [“Wizzy-Wig”]

[2] This meeting included four members of the Board of Education and councilman Russell Johnson, in addition to Headen. Councilwoman Eloise Henry, who had already declared that she was running against Ursu, was not invited and did not attend. Although four school board members were in attendance, no sunshine laws were violated because school business was not discussed, according to those board members with whom we have spoken.

Conversations with a candid candidate: RIchmond Heights mayor's race

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.

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[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.