The most celebrated political moment I’ve witnessed in Cleveland was the night Carl Stokes was elected mayor in November 1967. Last week the passage of Issue 6, which creates a new county government, had its historical significance as well. But instead of celebration, there was only exhausted triumph.
The fight to pull the county from the political dark ages had been
waged for more than a half-century, mostly against a tradition of
myopic and self-serving politicos who reigned over the demise of a once
great city. It’s hard to celebrate when you know the world passed you
by. Yet, despite the overwhelming countywide vote of 66 percent, the
issue passed as much on circumstance than any farsighted vision on the
part of the electorate. These circumstances created a perfect storm of
voter anger.
“To tell you the truth, I was shocked,” says Bruce Akers, mayor of
Pepper Pike, and a co-chair of the Issue 6 committee. “If you told me
beforehand that all 57 communities in the county would carry the issue,
I would not have believed it.”
The circumstances at work were substantial and came together
perfectly. First, the county Democratic Party had become a
self-sustaining cabal, devoted to greed and deceit, its energies
employed against the good of the community, some of its leaders morally
and ethically corrupt. Shame and guilt were brushed aside like lint on
a lapel.
“I’m not doing anything that anyone else is doing,” embattled county
commissioner Jimmy Dimora once said in an epithet that could well
characterize political lifestyle in Cleveland.
Another important circumstance was the awakening of the media,
particularly The Plain Dealer.
In recent decades, the media here became preoccupied with
themselves. They seemed to shun their traditional role as watchdogs,
idly mesmerized as a corrupt Mike White administration plundered the
town in the 1990s. A philosophy of passive objectivity was embraced in
covering government. That meant that reporters accepted public
officials at their word, a fatal mistake. When I was a young reporter,
a city editor would greet those of us coming back from city hall,
asking: “Well boys, what lies did they tell you today?”
It is the kind of cynicism that politicians hate, but there is more
truth to it than anyone wants to admit.
As time passed, politicians like county com-missioner Tim Hagan
seized on this passive nature. With growing arrogance, Hagan would
explain he was a public official and answered only to the voters, and
if you did not like what he was doing, run for office yourself. His
ramroding of the sales tax for the convention center/medical mart and
his skillful guiding of the project to MMPI — a company owned by
members of the Kennedy family, whom Hagan boastfully proclaims as good
friends — was blatant. These friends are so good that the county
sends them $333,333 month to build the $425 million center. While MMPI
was challenged by competitors for the project, the mainstream media
never engaged in a serious evaluation of the situation until it was too
late.
Two events changed the circumstances at the county administration
building.
In a moment ofsupreme frustration, Dimora ordered two Plain
Dealer reporters ushered out of a public meeting. It was like
shooting a cop, and the newspaper responded with all cars. This,
coupled with the federal investigation into county corruption, resulted
in frequent headlines of the size generally reserved for a major war.
And in a way, it was a war. Hagan complained that The Plain
Dealer reporting of Issue 6 was biased. He was right. What he
didn’t understand was the rules of the game had changed to meet the
arrogance generated by him and others.
The headlines were played out like Chinese water torture — a
steady, agonizing drip that permeated the soul of the community and
left the deep impression that we were being governed by the sinister
and incompetent. My favorite story was the revelation that city clerk
of courts Earle Turner worked four hours a month. Think of how that
resonated among those who suffered layoffs and mortgage
foreclosures.
The news coverage of the county corruption was driven like no other
story here since the halcyon days of the late Cleveland Press when it virtually ruled the city. This kind of journalism is on the
edge, but it is dangerous and can come back to haunt a newspaper in the
manner that the Sam Sheppard case did to the Press when the U.S
Supreme Court ruled his first trial unfair. Already defense attorneys
complain bitterly about the fairness of news coverage involving their
clients as they peer into their drinks at Johnny’s and speak of the
inability to get fair trials, even though most will plea bargain.
One of the more disappointing players in what turned out to be the
theater of the absurd was county commissioner Peter Lawson Jones, who
cast his lot with Hagan in promoting Issue 5, a commission to study
government change, a sham designed to disrupt real reform. Peter Lawson
Jones is a product of the post-civil-rights era. Harvard-educated and
blessed with an engaging personality, he is the kind of figure one
hoped would emerge in future generations to lead a city that suffered
from racial rift.
It turned out Jones lacked one ingredient: political courage. When
he joined Hagan in the thinly veiled effort to throw the community into
further chaos, he revealed himself to be a hollow man, Harvard and
all.
Interestingly, the future of the old-guard black political
leadership could well represent another historic watershed. Often
criticized as living in the past glories of the civil rights days, men
like George Forbes, Lou Stokes and Arnold Pickney were sometimes
accused by young blacks as being unyielding of their power. Stokes was
adamant in his opposition to change while Forbes said that the only way
he could join in a reform effort was if the school systems were
included. That was a deal breaker — suburban voters would never
agree.
Mayor Frank Jackson, fabled for lethargy in a declining city,
opposed the future as well. He ended up on the “it is what it is” side
of the issue while the rest of the community wrung its hands over the
stench of death on Imperial Avenue.
Of the 41 co-chairmen who made up the Issue 6 organization, nine
were African Americans. State senator Nina Turner played a key
supporting role and told the group that if you were interested in civil
rights, the place to be was in making change. Turner had been ridiculed
by the Call & Post as “carrying water for the white man” in
supporting Issue 6. It was the fading race card at play. The
President’s Council, an organization of black businessmen, offered
signal support.
It’s likely that blacks will occupy four of the 11 county council
seats, perhaps five. Black representation was never the issue that some
made of it.
But the question is where do we go from here? For the first time in
200 years, the county has a government of checks and balances. This
means there will be more debate over issues and hopefully an end to
failures like the Ameritrust Building and the suspect convention
center/medical mart project.
The move may give businesses more confidence in local government, a
much-needed ingredient if a partnership is to be forged between the two
to resurrect the area and region.
Will the same old political hacks who are not in prison bid for
seats on the council? Maybe. Or will this new beginning beckon others
to step forward and provide a bright destiny rather than more
darkness?
When pressed for conjecture, Mayor Akers says there is only one sure
thing that victory at the polls brought to the people of Cuyahoga
County: “At least we have hope now,” he said.
This article appears in Nov 11-17, 2009.