LIVE FROM COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS!

Parties have arrived early for what may be a pivotal hearing for the City of East Cleveland. As reported here last week, East Cleveland City Council president Joy Jordan is in a struggle to claim a place on the ballot in her city’s October 1 mayoral primary.

Today’s County Board of Elections starts in about ten minutes. Item 5 on the Board’s agenda is “Protest hearing regarding candidate petition filed for the October 1, 2013 East Cleveland Mayoral Primary Election.” This item presumably refers to Jordan’s petitions, which have yet to be certified by the Board, apparently due to her campaign’s failure to properly constitute her Committee of Electors, a requirement that may be unique to East Cleveland.

Present in the public gallery, in attention to Jordan, are a small number of her supporters, including her father, activist dentist Eugene Jordan. Also present is Gerald Silvera, a Republican who has filed complaints with the county and state challenging the ballot eligibility of East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton, who has been delinquent in filing campaign finance reports in several prior campaigns.

East Cleveland law director Ronald Riley is also here, as are a number of city hall regulars.

Former East Cleveland mayor Darryl Pittman has just arrived, along with law partner James Alexander. Pittman has represented City Council in the past in its frequent battles with the Norton administration.

Cleveland city councilman Jeff Johnson has also appeared, perhaps relative to correspondence he has submitted to the Board.

We will update this report as the day proceeds.

9:34

Meeting has just started with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Mayor Norton has arrived. 

Five Candidates File for East Cleveland Mayor

Council president working to resolve petition issue, may have to withdraw

The best-known secret in East Cleveland has been that City Council President Joy Jordan would challenge Mayor Gary Norton for the city’s top job this fall. In fact, some wags were betting she might be a shoo-in because the mayor’s repeated failure to comply with campaign finance laws would render him ineligible to run for re-election and might even force him from office before his term expires at the end of the year.

Norton and Jordan did file their mayoral petitions last week, as did two other candidates, Levester Adams and Lateek Rasheen Shabazz. While all four filed on the deadline day, July 3, only Norton’s petitions have been confirmed as valid thus far by the Board of Elections.

A fifth candidate, Vernon Robinson, filed last month. His petitions have also been validated. He, like the others who filed, all entered the Democratic primary. The only person who pulled Republican petitions, Robert L. Heflin III, did not file.

According to the Board of Elections, East Cleveland law provides for a mayoral primary if two or more candidates file for mayor from the same party. At this point, Robinson and Norton would be guaranteed spots on the November ballot unless the petitions of either Jordan, Adams, or Shabazz are verified.

The Real Deal has learned unofficially that at least one critical issue with Jordan’s petitions relates to questions about one of the three electors that each mayoral candidate is required to list as the candidate’s committee. It seems that this elector signed the petitions of multiple candidates and listed two different addresses for his voting residence.

If Jordan is unable to resolve this issue by Tuesday of next week, she runs the risk of being unable to run for re-election to her at large council seat if her mayoral petitions are eventually disqualified.

A call to the Board of Elections for further clarification had not been returned as of this posting.

Council candidates have until August 7 to file petitions to run in the November 5 general election. There is no primary for the nonpartisan council races. Council members whose terms expire December 31 are Jordan, Nathaniel Martin and Chantelle Lewis. Jordan and Martin are at large councilors while Lewis was elected from Ward 3.

Nonprofit Thursday a day early! Volunteers are looking for you!

One of our regular readers has a ten-hour court-mandated community service requirement courtesy of an expired license plate violation. She has solicited RealDeal counsel for a recommendation regarding a nonprofit agency serving the African American community where she might discharge her responsibility.

It occurs to us that others may have similar questions, whether court-mandated or otherwise.

So we are asking our nonprofit readers who know of volunteer opportunities akin to that sought by our inadvertent lawbreaker to forward appropriate information to us, either via the comment section here or via email to nonprofits AT cuyahoganews.net.

Useful responses would include name of contact, telephone and email, agency name, and a summary of volunteer possibilities [working with elderly, children, teens; office work, outdoor work, location, volunteer skill set/qualifications needed, etc.] We will compile and publish the information.

Strike while the iron is hot! There are legions of Greater Clevelanders just waiting to advance your nonprofit mission. Spread the word to your favorite executive director and submit your info.

• • •

Several readers have noted that they no longer receive regular email teasers announcing the latest THE RealDeal posts. This is due primarily a result of our having upgraded our Gmail account, which had the unexpectedly perverse effect of rendering more difficult the task of notifying our growing email list.

We will continue to notify you as best we can. However, may we suggest you sign up as a follower of THE RealDeal [you may do so privately; all that's required is your email address, which we probably have already and will never sell, rent, etc.]. This will ensure that you receive prompt notice of all new posts. Additionally, it will signal your humble scribe that you place some value on our heartfelt digital scrivenings.

Revisiting the Negro National Anthem

A few weeks ago we shared our thoughts about one of the cultural gems of the African American historical experience, the inspirational treasure formally called “Lift Every Voice and Sing” but known for generations as the Negro National Anthem.

The post generated a few comments, most of them offline, and generally concurring with our discomfort at how the song is rendered in such dreadfully dole fashion by performers who seem to have no appreciation for the classic.

Today, we were pleased to see a public comment from our most prolific correspondent, Anonymous. He seems to say that he loves hearing the song so much that he doesn’t mind when it is rendered in funereal fashion.

One reader called our attention to a rendition of the anthem that is much to our liking, not only for its robustness but also because the performing artist, Cleveland’s own William Clarence Marshall III, has an appreciation for the work.

You can hear Marshall’s efforts here, from a 2011 Black History Month event at Cleveland City Hall. While few of us can match the voice of a trained professional, can we all take note of his tempo and his appreciation of the lyric?

Turner makes impressive first step on long road to statewide office

The rising star that is Nina Turner’s political career entered a new orbit this morning when the state senator from Cleveland’s eastside stood before an enthusiastic crowd of 200 supporters and officially made the long- expected announcement that she was indeed running for Secretary of State in the 2014 election.

Asserting that “Ohio needs to be the gold standard for elections,” Turner said her opponent, incumbent Secretary of State Jon Husted, was the nation’s best-known Secretary of State because of his partisan efforts to suppress the votes of Ohio citizens over the past two years.

Turner said that “everybody should have fair and equal access to the ballot” and that she would “rumble for righteousness” to produce that status for Ohio voters. By way of contrast, she denounced Husted as the “Secretary of Suppression”.

An impressive collection of elected officials and Democratic Party leaders joined Turner on stage for her announcement, including Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson, State Representative Nickie J. Antonio, D-13, county party chair Stuart Garson, and Chris Redfern, who chairs the Ohio Democratic Party and also serves in the Ohio House. All but Redfern spoke, in perhaps tacit acknowledgement of the state party’s mostly dismal record in support of African Americans who run statewide.

Jackson, whose eloquence generally goes unacknowledged because of his preference for pith to piety, said in introducing Turner that he had observed her career from its beginning, and that she had always been a “fierce advocate” and fervent “fighter” for the causes she believes in.

Turner was well prepared for today’s program. Her unusually smart professional appearance was noted by several of the veteran politicos in attendance.

State Sen. Nina Turner standing with youthful admirers after announcing her candidacy for Ohio Secretary of State. If she wins both a primary and the general election in 2014, she will become the first African American Democrat ever to win a statewide election.

“She has obviously stepped up her game,” said one, while another noted that was one of the benefits of running for statewide office. “Your network of supporters and advisers gets bigger”, he said.

The upfront support from Congresswoman Fudge and Mayor Jackson augur well for the huge local vote Turner will need if she is to become the first African American Democrat ever to win statewide office. Just last year Turner was publicly mulling a primary challenge to Fudge for the Eleventh District seat Fudge has held since 2008. And Turner stood virtually alone against the entire black political establishment in 2009 when she stumped for Issue 6, a reform measure that tossed out Cuyahoga County’s centuries-old system of governance that had rotted under old party leadership.

But today, standing in the Harvard Community Center, just a few blocks from the John F. Kennedy High School she graduated from as a first step to an eventual master’s degree from Cleveland State, and a position on the faculty of Cuyahoga Community College, Turner was surrounded and applauded by almost as many former political foes as longtime friends, including many labor and religious leaders who had sought to preserve the old-time political structures Turner was intent on demolishing.

As the first in her family to attend college, Turner likes to refer to herself as a “cycle-breaker”. If she goes to win the Democratic Party nomination next spring and then defeats the Republican incumbent in November 2014, she will be even more of a cycle-breaker. She will need a broad coalition of support to accomplish her goal. If the smoothness of today’s program and the support of those in attendance, who also included leaders of Cleveland’s feminist and gay communities, and key financial supporters, as well as political leaders from across northeast Ohio are any occasion, she is off to a good start in what will undoubtedly be a long and difficult campaign.

Turner is scheduled to campaign later today in Toledo. She will be in Dayton tomorrow, Columbus on Wednesday, and Youngstown on Thursday, July 4.