Stepping Up Inside the Ohio Democratic Party

A New Day in Ohio Democratic Politics

Young black voices make themselves heard at candidate forum

COLUMBUS — When you see something for the first time you can be hard pressed to find the words to describe it, especially if it's unclear whether what you’re watching is a one-off event or the harbinger of a new day. So we won’t say what happened this past Saturday in the heart of a Columbus ghetto was akin to the appearance of the black monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s epic film, 2001 — A Space Odyssey.

Chadd Smith, president of Central Ohio Young Black Democrats, with
OYBD media liaison Jewell Porter: "Black Votes Matter!"

But the presence of every major Democratic candidate for statewide executive office at a forum conceived, sponsored, and well-executed by a developing network of young black activists certainly seemed to augur a new reality in Ohio Democratic Party politics, where voters could see — up close and personal — candidates for statewide office being x-rayed by a cadre of smart, savvy, tough, organized young African Americans who wanted more than just direct answers to their prepared policy questions.[1]

The Ohio Young Black Democrats also wanted to send a message: Black Votes Matter.

The Setting

The tone for the day was set by Chadd Smith, president of the Central Ohio YBD chapter. He made clear that the intent of the “Black Votes Matter” program was “to show the power of the black vote both to the black community AND to the mainstream”. He said OYBD wants to engage black voters early in this year’s election cycle and had a three-fold strategy to do so that involved targeted precincts, holding events around the state, and voter registration.

One of the goals of the OYBD campaign, he said, was to counter misconceptions about the voting process, including the one that formerly incarcerated citizens are ineligible to vote.

The candidate forum and brunch at the Northern Light branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library was sold out in advance. At $5 apiece the tickets were scooped up by an interracial and intergenerational audience comprising a mix of sophisticated politicos and the civically curious.  The majority of attendees were black, but a healthy number were loyal white Democrats, present because they understood that the electoral victories they seek in November require the support of an engaged black community no longer content to have its concerns relegated to the policy sidelines.

The setting and the moderators combined to produce an atmosphere that prompted true engagement and discouraged pandering. The audience included at least one recently naturalized American citizen concerned that single language ballots in his community did not speak to his many neighbors whose first language was Nepali.

Esosa Osa is chief of staff for the Congressional
campaign of Ken Harbaugh, running in Ohio District 7

Most candidates arrived early enough to network with the audience. A few, including apparent crowd favorites Rich Cordray, running for Governor, and state treasurer candidate Rob Richardson, arrived in just-in-time fashion.

House Minority Leader Joe Schiavoni, also running for governor, brought his entire family from Youngstown for the day, in addition to his running mate, Stephanie Dodd of Buckeye Lake in Licking County.

Northeast Ohio was well represented on both sides of the mike. Cleveland’s Dennis Kucinich was there with his running mate, Akron councilwoman Tara Samples. William O’Neill, also running for governor, was joined by his running mate, Chantelle Lewis and his scheduler, Mansell Baker, both former East Cleveland city council members.

The Team

Dontavius Jarrells, a graduate of Cleveland East Tech HS and Hiram College, currently serves as president of the Ohio Young Black Dems. An early arrival, privileged to observe Jarrells and other group members arrive to set up the event, could not help but note the egalitarian spirit and camaraderie that animated the large team. All egos were pocketed as chairs were set up, food was fetched and arranged, the sound system was installed, the registration table prepared, and last-minute errand runners dispatched. The team even had an operative in place to keep tabs on the GOP spotter who hovered around, along with a knowledgeable media handler. This was a group intent on dotting its “i”s and crossing its “t”s.

Gabrielle Jackson and Antoinette Wilson were among the representatives of the Cleveland YBDs in attendance. Toledo and Cincinnati were also in the house.

Moderating the event were Chenelle Jones and Kyle Strickland. Jones is a

Professor Chenelle Jones and Attorney
Kyle Strickland kept the candidates on their toes.

faculty member at Franklin University with a research interest in criminal justice administration. Strickland, a Columbus native, is a Harvard Law grad attached to the highly regarded Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University.

They kept the discussion on point with strong and direct questions and were not hesitant to follow the occasional evasive answer with a focused challenge or in some instances even a rebuttal.

The "Down-Ballot" Candidates  

The program began with successive one-by-one dialogues with State Rep. Kathleen Clyde, running for Secretary of State; Cleveland lawyer Steve Dettelbach, candidate for Ohio Attorney General; former Congressman Zack Space, running to become State Auditor; and Rob Richardson, candidate for Ohio Treasurer.

State Rep. Kathleen Clyde, running for Secretary of State,
thinks Ohio should protect its voting equipment against cyber attack.

Each candidate had a few minutes to offer an opening personal sketch and to close with a pitch for support. In between they addressed questions from the moderators and the audience about their policy positions on issues relevant to the offices they seek. Clyde for instance, talked about automatic voter registration, GOP voter purging, and antiquated voting equipment vulnerable to cyber attack.

AG hopeful Steve Dettelbach answers
a question from the audience

Attorney General hopeful Steve Dettelbach emphasized the need to have one set of rules that apply to everybody. He singled out gerrymandering, payday lending, and the charter school industry as areas where special interests were served to the public’s detriment. He said consumer protection, doing a better job combatting the opioid crisis, and being smart on fighting crime would be among his priorities in office.

Former US Congressman Zack Space
is running to be Ohio's next Auditor

Auditor candidate Zack Space cited his Appalachian roots and talked about the communities he said had been forgotten by the political process. He said he would be a watchdog of taxpayer funds, and a fierce foe of partisan gerrymandering. He said he would fight to maximize the number of competitive voting districts. He also vowed to focus on the JobsOhio, the Kasich program that takes public tax dollars and converts them to an inscrutable private enterprise.

Asked what he had done to show that he was “not just here to pander to the African American vote”, Space talked about his middle-class upbringing and how he had volunteered in soup kitchens to learn about issues of poverty. He said that taught him to see people impacted by an unjust economy subject to rules they did not create and that aspirations to social, racial and economic justice were dependent upon political justice.

Rob Richardson of Cincinnati is
looking to become Ohio Treasurer

Rob Richardson talked about his leadership at the University of Cincinnati, where he founded the student chapter of the NAACP and later became the chair of the school’s board of trustees. He said that notwithstanding that his eight colleagues on the board were all Republicans, he nevertheless forged a consensus that effectively addressed the university’s positive response to issues of campus police misconduct, and fired the police chief. He said that he would use the platform of the Treasurer’s office to fight for people.

The state offices sought by the candidates discussed above are often referred to as down-ballot races because contests for those offices appear below the gubernatorial choices on the ballot. Too often voters —perhaps feeling overwhelmed by a tumultuous mix of attention deficit, information overload, and unfamiliarity with candidates and issues in these non-marquee races — will skip these important ballot choices or vote the straight party ticket they prefer. The consequences of their actions or lack thereof are often felt literally right where they live, in the measure of social, economic and political justice their neighborhoods receive.

Candidates for Governor

Following a short brunch break, the forum moved on to a lively exchange among the four candidates for governor.

Candidate O’Neill firmly planted his campaign flag on the issue of legalizing

Former Ohio Justice Bill O'Neill thinks Ohio should
legalize marijuana today, tax it and use the proceeds to
combat the opioid crisis and help the mentally ill.

marijuana. He wants to legalize it immediately, tax it at once to raise $500 million annually and combine those proceeds with a projected savings of another $100 million in annual savings realized from the release of an estimated 4,700 mentally ill people inappropriately locked in prison. He would use the $600 million to address the state’s mental health and opioid crises.

Dennis Kucinich inveighed strongly against “government taking our wealth and accelerating it to the top” with misdirected and inequitable policies. He vowed to stop private charter schools, crush fracking companies, and resolve the state’s burgeoning housing crisis with new construction. He mixed his policy prescriptions with several references to his running mate that came across as unsubtle reminders that she was African American. In response to a question put to each candidate about diversity and inclusion about their campaign organizations, Kucinich said, “I come from communities of color” and that during his time as Cleveland mayor [1977-78] half of his top appointments came from the black community.

Answering the same question, Rich Cordray listed Ben Espy among his campaign co-chairs, referenced his senior strategist and scheduler as people of color, and announced that he had just brought on Nelson Devezin as his political director.

To his credit, Cordray didn’t brag about the Devezin appointment, but it may

Nelson Devezin is political director
of the Cordray gubernatorial campaign.

be historic: no political observer with whom we spoke could identify a previous instance where a black man had been entrusted with running a major gubernatorial campaign. [We have reached out to Devezin, a native Clevelander, and hope to bring you a report on him soon. For now we note that he is the son of former Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Lillian Greene and was the state party political director until he resigned late last year to become public affairs director for the Franklin County recorder.]

Ohio House Minority Leader Joe Schiavoni

Joe Schiavoni attempted to score points during his presentation by emphasizing his work holding down the fort against Republicans in the General Assembly while Cordray was off in Washington and O’Neill was on the bench and Kucinich was on Fox News. He backed up in the face of subsequent retorts from his rivals.

Former US Congressman and
Cleveland  mayor Dennis Kucinich

The candidates were in agreement on the need to address disparities in our criminal justice system. Kucinich and O’Neill were vocal in their opposition to the death penalty.  Cordray talked about how “we’ve been warehousing people”. But the fireworks erupted around twin peaks of social injustice: race and sex. These issues were encapsulated in the discussion around Scott Kaepernick and other NFL ball players kneeling in protest during the national anthem and O’Neill’s bafflingly ill-conceived attempt to defend then-U.S. Sen. Al Franken against calls for his resignation over the latter’s repeated sexually predatory behavior.

O’Neill was somewhat apologetic for his Facebook post in which he boasted of having bedded upwards of fifty women, and did so in a way that allowed two of the women to be identified. He attempted to diminish his post by calling them “silly words.”

Rich Cordray, right, with Stacie Bryant
following the OYBD forum

But Cordray would have none of it. He told O’Neill his words were intentional and said that “words matter,” referencing how the current President’s words regularly cause confusion and hurt, whether  used intentionally or carelessly.

The tension between O’Neill and Cordray was also stark when the NFL protests were discussed. O’Neill said he was an Vietnam Veteran with a bronze star and that “I will not be at an event where people disrespect the flag.”

O’Neill’s comment was not well received by most in the audience, probably because they considered the notion of “disrespect” to be a red herring, meant to deflect attention from the very issues the players were calling attention to, namely, the unrestrained overuse of deadly force by police across the country.

Cordray caught the mood of the audience in his reply, which united both his view of the protest and his reply about “silly words” noted above. He said that while protest at first seems to divide us, “ultimately protest unites us”. He said that protest was about respecting other people and wanting to engage with them. It was during his response that the audience appeared most animated, the women old and young nodding heads and the occasional injunction to “Preach!” being heard.

The Takeaways

The flawless manner in which the Ohio Young Black Democrats and their constituent area chapters pulled off their maiden event makes them the clear winner in terms of outcome. As Rowena Jelliffe, the co-founder of Karamu House once observed after a similarly impressive debut by a now-forgotten organization of young people, “The trick is to do it again. And again.”

We would also register mild surprise that media coverage of this event seemed limited to one local Columbus TV station and the Columbus Dispatch, whose account is here.

One might have thought that more of the state’s major metropolitan dailies, each of which we understand to have a political reporting presence in Columbus, might have been present. Likewise, no local black publication — we think Columbus has three — saw fit to cover this event in its own backyard.

Whether that’s a commentary on the candidates, the sponsor, the venue or the times, it made us especially pleased to have been present.

Finally, politicians often find it irresistible to pander to the audience. Our pander meter was plugged in for this event, but stayed pretty much throughout on the low register. We think that's a credit to the audience and the candidates, and the sense on behalf of most of the latter that there would have been little tolerance granted. It certainly made for a more robust and useful conversation.

A quartet of Ohio Young Black Democrats [L-R]:
Chadd Smith, William Washington, Daniel Woodley and Julian Scott

All photos by Daniel Porter, digital director at Ohio Democratic Party

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[1] Lt. Gov. candidate Betty Sutton was the sole absentee, not counting Connie Pillich, who was negotiating her imminent withdrawal from the gubernatorial race. She withdrew yesterday and endorsed Rich Cordray.

Real Deal Press Editor on the radio today

This is a quick post to alert our loyal readers that I will be this week's in-house guest on "Red White Black Blue — Race Relations in America with Laverne and Jack”. The hour-long program airs Tuesdays from 6-7PM on WERE TalkCLE Radio 1490/AM.

We have written about this show a couple of times before, here and here.

You can listen either on 1490 AM Cleveland Radio or via live stream at www.newstalkcleveland.com. I think it's a call-in show so don't be shy. And if you listen please let us know what you think of the show. You can do so by commenting on this post.

Come back tomorrow for our post on an event we covered last weekend featuring almost every statewide Democrat appearing on the May primary ballot.

CPT | Lessons from George Forbes • Chaos in local Democratic ranks • Playing the Race Card

Cuyahoga Politics Today

Sometimes you can't tell the players even with a scorecard

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Some time last century, when I was an observer if not yet a student of local politics, and certainly not a regular political reporter, I eased myself inconspicuously into an informal gathering on Cannon Road in Bedford Heights of a few dozen black elected officials.

I suspect it was in the early ‘90s, not long after George Forbes had closed the book on his three decades long electoral career with a knockout at the hands of Mike White in the epochal 1989 Cleveland mayoral campaign.

Forbes nonetheless dominated the room, much like Joe Louis would have even years after his ring destruction by Rocky Marciano. I found a space in the large room just off Forbes’ shoulder, and during a hiatus in the proceedings asked him a now forgotten question about how he had accomplished some particular political feat. He paused briefly, and then said unforgettably, “I never made my move too soon.”

Emboldened by my success in mining that nugget, I later in the meeting asked the political maestro another question about how he had managed to remain city council president for so long. His reply was pithy as it gets: “I could count,” he said.

Reflecting on those racially charged days of the late ‘70s and the decade that followed, coinciding as they did with the saga of court-ordered student bussing and the unsuccessful effort to eradicate at least sixty years of de facto segregation and both public and private discrimination in the “Best Location in the Nation”, Forbes said he knew he could always depend on the votes of every black councilman. Given the council’s racial makeup, Forbes said, he needed only to focus at critical times on getting the one or two votes he needed from white councilmen to maintain his power.

Narrow-minded tribal politics still dominates our political, commercial and professional spaces here in Northeast Ohio. Our gross insularity and collective sense of inferiority are primary to an understanding of why our Amazon bid was a vain exercise and why we continue to live in small minded and selfish ways amidst our abundant natural and historic assets. I suppose it also helps why so many in these parts cling to the faded image of Chief Wahoo, and why it took the modern day version of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis last month to ordain the icon’s banishment with all deliberate speed.

Irrespective of policy positions or level of government, a sense of timing and the ability to count that Forbes recalled are indispensable elements in the toolkit of any successful politician. Indisputably and lamentably, the events of the past few weeks in the run up to yesterday’s 4pm filing deadline for this year’s May 8th primary, underscore some pitiful realities of local politics.

First, racialized and tribal politics continue to bedevil Cuyahoga County. Nowhere is this truer than in our process for selecting judicial candidates and electing judges, areas where voters have too little information and even less understanding. County Democratic Party chair Shontel Brown famously declared the process of selecting judicial candidates “broken” last month at the party’s executive committee meeting.

Unfortunately, while her description was accurate, Brown stepped on her message in many ways. Following the lead of her acknowledged whisperer, the novice chair inexpertly put her fist on the scale while standing behind a threadbare curtain. She compounded her blunder by calling out the results of the process in a way that was guaranteed to make the problem worse, especially in the short term. While trying to speak of principle, she cast her argument in terms of race in a way that revealed an underlying hypocrisy: she would have been happy with the process had it yielded results to her liking.

This assessment is not meant to assail Brown. It’s the way we too often deal with race in America. We don’t have honest conversations on the subject. In fact, when a recent US Attorney General said as much, he was vilified for his audacious candor. Clear thinking about race is hard work.

At the meeting, Brown was able to secure a short-term victory for her handlers that avoided their total embarrassment and that of the party, that would have resulted if not even one of the half dozen capable candidates of color had secured endorsement in any of the four open seats.

Congresswoman Marcia Fudge would have been disastrously exposed by such a result. Not only had she cut a deal with southwest side party boss Bill Mason to ensure a different result; she had publicly declared her support for her two favored candidates: Andrea Nelson Moore and Deborah M. Turner.

The racialized gymnastics Brown indulged in her speech to avoid a humiliating defeat for Fudge may have secured the party endorsement for Moore, but a painful price will be paid for that fleeting success. Here’s why:

White politicians frequently try to score rhetorical points by claiming some black person “played the race card”, an assertion that race is improperly introduced into consideration of some issue. This is usually a vile maneuver that black people recognize as an attempt to deny voice to what is always omnipresent in America: the consequences of our history as a slave nation which even after the Civil War sanctioned all manner of racial violence and injustice in myriad personal, legal, formal and structural ways, practices that continue even today, albeit in more refined and subtle ways.

It therefore cuts deeply and sets back the pursuit of racial justice, equity and inclusion when naked appeals based on racial tribalism are privileged to the exclusion of excellence and merit. So when outstanding candidates like Karrie Howard who are African American strive and strain intensively over many months to cultivate support on the basis of merit, that work can be undermined by narrow racial appeals that facilitate personal agendas. The foes of racial justice and equity derive aid and comfort in the hypocrisy, and the public interest in a strong and competent judiciary is not served.

This leads to a second pitiful reality underscored by the past few weeks: the manic dysfunction of the county Democratic Party. It is of course chronically broke, but that is the least of its problems. More seriously, it is devoid of vision and leadership. Senior elected officials — county executive Armond Budish and Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson are prime examples — are content to use it but invest nothing of their considerable political resources into making it an effective instrument that articulates, harnesses or advances the collective will either of its members or those it purports to represent. 

Thirdly, this void at the top, and the thoroughly undisciplined and chaotic environment it permits, is an open invitation to ambitious and self-serving politicians to recreate the moral corruption of the Dimora-Russo era.

Fourthly, while there are more black elected officials in Cuyahoga County than ever in history, black people have less real collective political power locally than at any time since at least 1965. This has disastrous consequences for every public issue: health, education, transportation, public safety, workforce readiness, infrastructure demands, regional viability, you name it.

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The backlash from shortsighted and costly tactics employed to secure the Moore nomination were evident in every open judicial race, and even some non-judicial contests, leading up to yesterday’s filing deadline. Those tactics cost Howard an endorsement on his merit — he needed 60% approval but was held to 59.3% by Fudge allies. Consider the irony: a black man wins support from white people on the content of his character and his accomplishments ; meanwhile some black people fail to support him based on an agenda that has those same black people calling out white people for bias.

The situation, as we predicted, also brought a late flurry of “name” candidates into the electoral mix. Thus there were last minute filings by a Gallagher, a Russo, and a McGinty, all familiar ballot surnames. Meanwhile, another familiar ballot name — Kilbane — moved from one slot to another, and then back to her original slot, all within 48 hours.

We will have more to say on the primary races in our next post, and maybe also on the radio. Details on that later, if it comes to pass.

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