Four Progressive Cleveland City Council Candidates Endorsed by 'A Better Cleveland for All' PAC

Tanmay Shah, a truck driver and housing attorney running for Ward 12, said worker’s and tenant’s rights are his primary concerns, if he’s to be elected to City Council in November. Credit: Mark Oprea

Affordable housing, union organizing, and workers’ rights were on the minds of four candidates — one incumbent and three challengers — for Cleveland City Council seats, as they came together for a press conference on Mall B on Thursday morning.

As rain poured around them, the candidates —Tanmay Shah, Alana Belle, Nikki Hudson and Ward 12 Councilwoman Rebecca Maurer — were endorsed by A Better Cleveland for All, a PAC that aims to boost local progressives to office with the overarching mission that they not swayed by corporate money and influence. Campaign contributions will follow.

There are a little more than 100 days until September’s primary, when voters will cast their first ballots to decide who exactly will lead the newly shaped 15 wards following last year’s redistricting process. Those elected will then find themselves at the Council table in January.

It’s why A Better Cleveland for All, which was founded during the 2022 election, held up their banner on Mall B on Tuesday.

“Put simply, A Better Cleveland for All is the grassroots alternative to the unfair influence of wealthy corporate interests,” lead organizer Nora Kelley told press. A PAC, she added, “that works for all of us; not simply the wealthy and well-connected.”

As the Trump administration continues to slash jobs and funding, more of Cleveland’s caretaking will likely fall in the hands of those working close to Mayor Justin Bibb or in chambers of Council President Blaine Griffin.

Three of the four candidates chosen by A Better Cleveland for All were political newcomers. Tuesday’s endorsement, Nikki Hudson said, gives the “ability for regular people who don’t have political connections and who don’t have money—people like me—to be able to run for office.” Credit: Mark Oprea

Concerns that led candidates on Tuesday to remind the public that, in the world of Trump 2.0, political concern should always be seen from the bottom up.

“I’m a union organizer, a truck driver and a housing attorney,” Tanmay Shah, who’s running for the new Ward 12 seat against Councilman Danny Kelly and Andrew DeFrantis, said.

“I’ve noticed just how little the folks in power are actually paying attention to what’s happening actually on the streets,” he added. “Rent is rising, groceries are rising. And city services are becoming more and more unreliable.”

Nikki Hudson, a parent and community organizer running for Ward 11’s seat, fashioned her organizing experience—getting a crosswalk painted on Lake Avenue, stripping a problematic Dairy Mart of its liquor license—as transferable power to Council Chambers.

“What this endorsement means is the ability for regular people who don’t have political connections and who don’t have money—people like me—to be able to run for office,” Hudson said. “This isn’t something that I ever envisioned myself doing before.”

Though Bibb’s office has had its successes paying rent for 154 formerly-homeless, installing gender-inclusive bathrooms at City Hall, or advertising a “lakefront for all” in its North Coast Master Plan, progressive ideas haven’t always found the immediate green light.

In 2023, voters narrowly turned down a chance for the city to install its first People’s Budget, a method of giving Clevelanders a say on how two percent of its General Fund would be spent. (An entirely civic take-two of that People’s Budget is currently on track to be piloted in one of Cleveland’s neighborhoods.)

And that same year, County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley kept his seat after being contested by Matthew Ahn, an attorney who had espoused a more empathetic criminal justice system based on a “justice for all” philosophy.

A philosophy that easily overlaps with ABC’s preferred candidates.

“Cleveland is not under-resourced, it is under-represented,” Alana Belle, a Glenville-based organizer who’s running for the Ward 9 seat, said.

“St. Clair deserves the same safety, maintenance, artistry and wellness that our neighbors on Ashbury have,” Belle added. “And I plan to make it our reality.”

Maurer, who will be running against current Ward 5 Councilman Richard Starr, focused on her wins in the past four years heading Ward 12—upgrading the Stella Walsh Rec Center, for example —rather than selling herself as City Council’s progressive rep.

As it may have been easy for Maurer to do. In the past two years, Maurer found herself as Council’s clear ally to the pro-Palestine protestors on the other side of Chambers.

And in November, she spoke out in at a Monday Council meeting against a redistricting process rife with gerrymandering criticisms that, as she reminded others on Tuesday, “split my old ward into six pieces.”

Which doesn’t mean Maurer’s new seat will be an easy win.

“As we say in Cleveland, nothing is given and everything is earned,” Maurer said.