CPT: Beachwood surprise, Progressive Caucus, precinct battles, Patmon redux

​June Taylor swearing-in highlights Greater Cleveland’s cultural challenge

June E. Taylor is sworn in
as member of Beachwood
City Council, Feb. 5, 2018

After June Elizabeth Taylor was sworn in as the newest member of Beachwood City Council last night, she took the citizen’s podium to thank her supporters and to share some thoughts about her life, her appointment, and her philosophy.

Her new council colleagues selected Taylor last week after an open and transparent process to fill the vacancy created when then-council president Martin Horwitz defeated longtime mayor Merle Gorden.

Following the November election, Taylor was among 17 people who responded to an open call for applicants. Every applicant was granted an 18 and 1/2 minute interview.

When Taylor finished speaking, there was little if any doubt among the 100 or so people gathered in council chambers that the best candidate had been selected. She thanked a small battalion of friends and mentors for their friendship and support. A few of the more recognizable names she mentioned and that we were able to capture illustrate the depth and breadth of the support she carries, both within the city and across the state — Mal and Barbara Mixon, Jim and Debbie Wert, Ed and Mary Crawford, Amy and Rob Frost [County GOP chair], Shontel Brown [County Dem chair], Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, former Ohio House Speaker Jo Ann Davidson, Gov. Kasich]. 

New councilwoman June E. Taylor, center, is surrounded by well-wishers,
L-R, Leon Anderson, Patricia Anderson, Tayloria Anderson, and Flossie Brisker.

None of these were idle or puffed references. In addition to her day job as president of the tech company, MAC Installations, Taylor chairs the Ohio Casino Control Commission and sits on the board of trustees for Cleveland State University. The public agency positions are both courtesy of Kasich appointments.

Taylor was also profuse in her appreciation of her neighbors, her daughter’s friends parents, and a host of others, including of course her family. Her prepared remarks were gracious throughout, and by turns politic and direct. She spoke of her own family values — her remark about her father wanting her to be smart in terms of book sense, common sense, and dollars and cents found an audible responsive chord — including education, preparation and excellence. She showed a respect for the city’s public employees and her own understanding that she was now an official public servant.

Conspicuous by its absence was any direct mention of Taylor’s race. There were likely more African Americans in council chambers last night than perhaps ever in that city’s history, but I heard not one reference by anyone that Taylor is the first African American ever to sit on Beachwood City Council.

That is more than likely something traceable directly to the candidate. As some good church folk say, the new councilwoman is unmistakably and unapologetically black. But Taylor chose in her remarks to focus on personal relationships, values, and standards, and the room took heed from her stance.

James Pasch, council vice president, seemed to confirm as much in a telephone call following the meeting. He added that he felt Taylor came to the applicant interview extremely well prepared and full of creative ideas on ways to improve municipal performance.

It seemed a rare moment in the county's Byzantine politics, when matters of race and ethnicity were subsumed by discussion of standards and values and community benefit.

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Progressive Caucus holding forum today for eastside State House candidates

Group also preparing to file for 100s of Dem precinct slots; Bill Patmon files for District 21 Senate seat

The Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus continues what has become its leadership role in presenting candidates to the public at numerous public forums all over the county.

Today at 6p, the Caucus is sponsoring what it had announced as a forum for State Senate District 21 and House Districts 10 and 12. The event is being held at the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Community Center, 3450 Lee Road, in Shaker Heights.

The event may have broadened significantly because last-minute requests for CCPC endorsements have come in from State Sen. Kenny Yuko [D-25] and State Rep. Kent Smith [D-8].

A caucus spokesman said the deadline for seeking CCPC endorsement is tomorrow, which is also the filing deadline for candidates wishing to be on the May 8 primary ballot.

Yuko is Senate Minority Leader but was recently denied the Cuyahoga County Democrats’ endorsement in the primary, at least partially because of issues being churned by the unsettling alliance between US Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-11 and regressive political forces best represented by former county prosecutor Bill Mason and his allies, most notably Cleveland City Council president Kevin Kelley. 

The Fudge-Mason alliance seems to be clashing for primacy with new forces within the Democratic Party, represented in part by the Caucus and also with the emergence of new candidates who don’t always feel the need to kiss the rings of party elders. The results can be be seen in how the endorsements came down late last month and in the shifting of lanes in county judicial races that may continue until tomorrow's 4PM deadline.

And of course the ever-present elements of race, class, gender and geography are always a part of these party dynamics. It certainly makes for more exciting and complicated politics than the Republicans experience. For them, underneath all the high-falutin’ discussions of states’ rights, limited government, individual freedoms, and strict interpretations, it’s almost always just about the Benjamin$.

At least until the summer of 2015, when, thanks to a certain candidate, it began to be more about race, ethnicity AND money.

But tonight, there will likely be a steady effort by almost all of the candidates to introduce themselves or in the case of Yuko and Smith, remind their constituents of what great service they are providing. Rep. John Barnes, D-12, who is challenging Yuko for his Senate seat, told RDP he is in Columbus preparing for a committee hearing tomorrow and will not attend tonight.

The following candidates are expected to participate this evening:

Senate District 21: Jeff Johnson [his opponent, Sen. Sandra Williams, did not RSVP.]

House District 8: Kent Smith

House District 10: Kyle Early, Aanand Mehta, Andrew Schriver, Billy L. Sharp

House District 12: Yvonka Hall, Dmitri McDaniel

 Democratic Central Committee contests

Every four years, all precinct committee seats appear on the ballot. GOP central committee seats are on the ballot in even years, alternating with the Dems.

With the filing deadline for all races at 4pm tomorrow, insiders are looking closely at files for the roughly 920 seats available countywide. It is these central committee slots that can influence a party’s direction.

The Progressive Caucus may run as many as 200 candidates for these seats. And we are hearing that the Mason forces are up to their old tricks. When Mason served as county prosecutor, his office served as a political factory. Despite electoral promises made in 2016 by then candidate Michael O’Malley, we are receiving reports that Prosecutor O’Malley’s office is doing a brisk business circulating candidate petitions during business hours.

LATE BREAKING NEWS:

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State Rep. Bill Patmon, D-10, who is term-limited from running for the House again this year, filed today for the 21^st District State Senate seat currently held by Sen. Sandra Williams. 

In other news, we hear Mueller Tire is doing a brisk business in retreads.

On White Evangelicals: Telling it Like it T-I-IZZ

Read this to see why Pulitzer Prize winner Leonard Pitts paid its author the highest praise one writer can give another: “Damn! I wish I’d written this!”

Former Cleveland Mayor Mike White Gets Real About Politics, Power, Race, Trump

Mike White talks to local civic group about everything from parenting, politics and power to leadership, race and Trump

Former Cleveland mayor Michael R. White made one of his infrequent public appearances Tuesday night when he appeared as the final speaker in a 17-month series on leadership sponsored by the Black Professionals Association Charitable Foundation (BPACF).

Former Cleveland Mayor Michael White
makes a point at BPACF event
[All photos courtesy of
WAKE UP CALL MEDIA]

Generational conflict was clearly on his mind as White spoke informally and extemporaneously, first in conversation with BPACF president Ronald V. Johnson, and later in a Q&A before an audience of at least sixty business owners, civic leaders, educators, and attorneys.

Echoing both his elders and the spirit of his youth, White repeated the wisdom of Frederick Douglass’ famous lesson that “Power concedes nothing without demand”. White displayed an enduring respect for the elders of his youth — “W. O., Carl, Lou, George, Arnold”[1] — who inspired and taught him the fundamentals of politics, supported his development, and then resisted him on generational grounds when, as a state senator, he decided to run for mayor in 1989.

BPACF President Ronald V. Johnson, left,
with business owner Ishmael Martin

White talked about how he soaked up the wisdom of these and other leaders in Cleveland’s black community. Feeling privileged to be in the room with these titans, White said he kept his mouth shut, his eyes open, and focused on doing what he was asked to the best of his ability. The result was a continuing rise in his responsibilities.

About 60 people attended the final session of BPACF's
Leadership Speaker Series at JumpStart in Midtown
on January 30, 2018.

Although he set his life’s goal on becoming Cleveland’s mayor after he “met” Carl Stokes at 13 (he saw him on television), White said he didn’t think of himself as having leadership qualities until 1969 and he arrived at Ohio State University, where he began to study leaders in a search for their common characteristics.

White expounded on a variety of topics, including Cleveland Schools — “No one in Cleveland should be happy with the state of public education.” — the impact of Donald Trump on race relations, the importance of vision, parenting, and some of his current work with the Mandel Foundation. And, of course, the Browns-Modell saga.

Among White’s observations:

Power: “you gotta take it.” When you have prepared yourself and you are ready, go for it!

Politics: “Politics is hard work… What prepares you to be a councilman is ward work.” You have to put in the time, work campaigns, get to know the issues. Formal education is important but insufficient in and of itself. White said he ran 6 or 7 campaigns, including those of Lou Stokes and Jesse Jackson [locally]. You have to stay focused on the task and not be distracted by the personal.

Parenting: One of “the most painful moments” of his life, on a par with losing his mother when he was 33 and his father a quarter-century later, “was realizing my children were gonna have to fight the same battles” against discrimination that he had fought.

Schools: “Education is so important to the future of our people... the school system has historically not been welcoming to working class people.

"Do not accept a high school graduation rate of 71%."

From left: Cosmo Danielly, Chris Nance,
Stephanie Hamilton Brown and Sanford Watson

The black community: We cannot be afraid of our young people. We must become more engaged with our children. We must nurture them.

“When everybody around you tells you can fly, you believe you can fly. That is half the battle.”

The stool of survival for our community has three legs, which are economics, education and politics.

“We need to continue developing and evolving our own businesses even as we penetrate institutions” at the professional level.

We need to be about business and not make things personal.

“We gravitate around personalities when we should gravitate around vision.”

Front: Marcella Brown, BPACF executive director

Vision: "Vision is always more important than the individual. There is no leader who is more important than the vision. The vision must remain intact and undefiled.”

The Cleveland Browns campaign: “The whole Save Our Browns strategy came out of the Civil Rights manual." Number one, do we have legal standing? [Yes.] Number two, talk to a broader audience. [Build a base of support.] Number three. Be disruptive. White said had Cleveland relied on the courts, “we would have lost” because of the time factor. By taking the fight to select cities and teams, the opposition got nervous and anxious. Cleveland won, he said, essentially because the National Football League paid us to go away.

Cleveland’s future: The city’s neighborhoods are moving in the right direction, albeit more slowly on the east side. There needs to be physical development, business development, and human development.

Question about Trump

White responds to question from BPACF President Johnson

Perhaps the most sobering moment of the evening came in White’s response to a question about the impact of Donald Trump upon race relations. The former mayor’s answer was ominous.

“We all know what it is, but that’s only a part of it. Much of it is under the radar. We don’t see ICE [deporting and harassing people].” 
We don’t see the move towards the development of a national database that will track license plates nationwide. We don’t see the rollbacks that are degrading our air and our water. We don’t see the “real insidious nature” of this administration.

Lisa Bottoms of Bottom Line Consulting, Christopher Howse
of Howse Solutions, and Gloria Ware of JumpStart 

There is a 21^st century kind of lynching going on of blacks, Hispanics, Arabs, people who don’t look like them. We have to fight back 24 hours a day.

White said, “Trump’s rise was enabled by millions and millions of people who think just like him, and worse.”

White warned the audience that we can’t be so holed up that we don’t understand what’s happening to others. We can’t take the attitude that because we live in Solon we can be dismissive about what goes on in Hough. White referenced the time when he became a state senator, and his constituency included Jewish citizens for the first time, causing him to broaden his perspective. He quoted a snippet from the famous poem that begins, “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist.”[2]

White said we should all be repulsed by what is happening to the Dreamers.

“We are all Dreamers,” he said.

White today

White was relaxed and outgoing, betraying little of the trademark intensity that characterized his governing style during his three mayoral terms from 1990-2001. Now 66, White was the first in his family to attend college. He earned two degrees at OSU and after graduation went to work for the Republican mayor of Columbus before returning home to pursue his goal of becoming Cleveland’s mayor. He left direct political combat close to two decades ago, moved several counties away, and now sees himself as a farmer. He has become a winemaker and a rescuer and hospice steward for horses. In what he said was a rare admission, White said he was an introvert, one who needed regular time away from the madding crowds. He attributed his attendance in large measure to his respect for BPA, which recognized him as its Black Professional of the Year in 1993.

White has been a consultant to the Mandel Foundation almost since his retirement from active politics. His work for Mandel brings him to Cleveland about once a week. While his Foundation work is most visible in his direction of the Neighborhood Leadership Development Program (NLDP), White has quietly become an influential political adviser to a reigning power structure that prefers to sit offstage until its interests are threatened and preservation of the status requires direct, albeit discreet, intervention. Politically speaking, he knows both how and when to wield a hammer and thread a needle.

Those interests were seriously challenged twice last year, most notably in the bitter fight to force public subsidization of the Quicken Loans Arena expansion to serve private interests. Strings were pulled from national to ward to parish level to thwart an engaged Cleveland citizenry. The second direct intervention was required following the September primary, when Mayor Frank Jackson’s surprisingly poor showing led to an “emergency cash transfusion” to beat down the quasi-populist challenge of Zack Reed.

White described his NLDP work as helping to identify engaged community leaders and building their capacity to be more effective. He likened it to “fishing for zealots”.

The event drew a Bell-shaped crowd age wise, from Millennials to seniors. Reed was among those in attendance, listening closely as his one-time hero turned adversary, showed that while removed from the ring, he still retained the sharp instincts honed during decades of political combat: White donated several bottles of wine from his Yellow Butterfly Winery as part of the evening’s refreshment.

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[1] W. O. Walker was the longtime editor and publisher of the once influential Call and Post weekly newspaper widely read throughout Cleveland’s black community. Carl Stokes was Cleveland’s first black mayor [1967-1971] and the inspiration behind both the 21^st Congressional District Caucus, in its heyday the strongest black political organization in the nation. Lou Stokes was Carl’s brother, an outstanding lawyer who became Ohio’s first black Congressman, serving from 1969-1998. George Forbes amassed unprecedented power during his tenure as City Council president from 1974 to 1989. Arnold R. Pinkney gained renown as a master campaign strategist power broker and was highly sought out for advice and campaign assistance by politicians near and far, including Jesse Jackson, Hubert R. Humphrey and Jimmy Carter in their presidential campaigns.

[2] First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

– Martin Niemoller

Niemöller  (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.