Former Cleveland City Councilman and 2021 mayoral candidate Basheer Jones has formally endorsed Republican Lee Weingart in the race for Cuyahoga County Executive.
Standing on the corner of E. 79th and Hough Avenue Thursday morning, Jones said that he’d spoken with Weingart and believed his policies would bring economic opportunity to residents of Cleveland’s east side, at least more effectively than Weingart’s opponent, Democrat Chris Ronayne.
Jones framed his support, moreover, as a warning to Democrats both locally and nationally: that if they continually failed to provide for the Black community, they would continue to lose Black votes.
“The only R I care about is resources,” Jones said.
Jones added that he was not “turning in his Democratic card,” but that residents of Cuyahoga County, particularly Black and otherwise disenfranchised voters, should start asking what has been done for them lately by leaders who belong to the Democratic Party.
He criticized Ronayne’s leadership at University Circle Inc., referencing the overwhelming percentage of Black motorists stopped by UCI police under Ronayne’s watch, (the go-to attack line for Weingart and his surrogates), and the lack of Black employees in positions of upper management.
This is not the first time that a Jones endorsement has been interpreted by some as a defection. After the 2021 primary, Jones threw his weight behind Kevin Kelley in the Cleveland mayor’s race. He did so with messaging similar to what he said Thursday. He believed Kelley was the candidate who could deliver resources to Jones’ Ward 7, for example. At the time, those remarks were read by some as a preemptive hedge against accusations that he was backing a white candidate over Justin Bibb, with whom Jones had been aligned during the primary. (The endorsement certainly netted Jones resources for a couple of pet projects on his way out the door.)
In the partisan county executive race, both candidates are white. Jones acknowledged this his support represented a departure from the party to which he and his family had always been loyal, but said that Weingart’s policies around home ownership and entrepreneurship in the urban core, in particular, gave him confidence that residents in his neighborhood would be better off.
For his part, Weingart has been up front about his pursuit of support on Cleveland’s predominantly Black east side. He has promoted a policy platform concerned chiefly with the economic revitalization of the urban core. Thursday, he said he had pursued Jones’ support along with other east side council members last year and was honored to have it. Though he said he wasn’t in the business of offering jobs before he’d won an election, he said that Jones was the type of leader he’d hope to bring with him to county HQ if he were victorious.
Jones is now out of the public spotlight — which he joked he was grateful for — and said he planned to walk the wards of Cleveland with Weingart, knocking on doors in areas, like Glenville and Hough, where he performed best in last year’s mayoral primary.
“There are things I can say that Lee can’t say,” Jones said. “And the question I’ll ask is, what have Democrats done for you?”
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This article appears in Jun 29 – Jul 12, 2022.
