In a surprising revelation, Cummins said that due to multiple redistricting efforts by council leadership, this was the first time in his more than a decade on council that he was running to represent the same geographic area that he ran to represent in the previous election.
These days, Ward 14 spans the demilitarized zone between the destination neighborhoods of Cleveland’s near west side — Ohio City, Detroit-Shoreway — and Old Brooklyn. It is composed, mostly, of Clark-Fulton and Stockyard. Among other things, it is the city’s most densely populated Latino area.
The Tuesday evening event was supposed to have been a debate between, or at least a forum featuring, both of the Ward 14 council candidates: Cummins and Jasmin Santana. Cummins had challenged Santana to a debate on the steps of City Hall in early October and many of the ward’s divided residents wanted to see the opponents face off. The race figures to be very close and continues to be contentious. Santana was one of only two non-incumbents to win a primary. Scene featured her in a cover package about female council challengers this week.
But Santana was a no-show Tuesday. She announced in a Facebook video later that evening that she’d never been invited to the event. She hosted her own town hall Wednesday evening at the VFW Hall on W. 61st and Storer, at which the first neighborhood mayoral forum was held during primary season.
Here’s Santana’s statement from Tuesday:
Claims that Santana made in the video above are false. She said that neither she nor her campaign had been contacted by email or by phone to participate in the Tuesday forum.
But Gloria Ferris, who organized Tuesday evening’s event, said that that wasn’t the case. Not only did she send an email to Santana’s official campaign account and publicize the email on her Facebook page and website, Ferris told Scene that when she learned Santana’s campaign email and Facebook account weren’t regularly checked, she reached out to three of Santana’s known supporters to make sure she’d received the message.
Santana described “tremendous” pressure on her supporters to participate in a debate and said that typically, in political debates, a third party negotiates a date and time, “but this never happened.”
But it did happen. Gloria Ferris was the third party. She is an active community member and has been organizing debates in Ward 14 for decades, always, she said, in a non-partisan capacity. She told Scene that this year she supported another candidate in the primaries and has strongly disagreed with Cummins on several neighborhood issues in the past, but respects that he accepts criticism. Most recently, Ferris organized the Ward 14 primary debates, which Santana did not attend either.
The “tremendous” pressures that Santana described above, in another interpretation, might merely have been the attempts to contact her that she said she never received.
(For obvious reasons, Scene is especially touchy right now about candidates’ selective willingness to participate in debates.)
And while Santana said she has been firm in her commitment to only participate in a debate hosted by the League of Women Voters, ostensibly on the grounds of neutrality, the event Tuesday utilized the California League of Women Voters’ rulebook. Ferris said as much in her email invitation, sent to the candidates on Oct. 9.
It has been more of a challenge to find venues and available dates this fall than it was this summer because of the number of events being hosted by our venues.For Cummins and for others in the ward, Santana’s repeated refusal to participate in debates is evidence of at least two things: that she is being manipulated by powerful forces in Ward 14, for one; and that, if put to the test, she’d be unable to articulate a vision of her own. In short, they feel that she is a puppet.Therefore, there are three dates available for the community forum and one time frame 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm.
They are as follows:
Tuesday, October 24th 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
Wednesday, October 25th 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm.
Wednesday, November 1st 6:00 pm to 7:30 pmIf you could check your calendars and get back to me as soon as you possibly can, I will be able to confirm the venue and we could all begin promoting as quickly as possible.
We will again use the League of Women’s [Voters] format for the event.
· All Questions will be written.
· Keep questions clear, concise and to the point.
· Keep questions appropriate to the council race.
· Pose general questions that both candidates can answer.
· Screeners/sorters will be available for help with wording and writing questions.
· Pages will be in the room to pass out pencils and cards throughout the forum and to collect the questions.
Prior to the Q&A at Tuesday’s forum, two attendees advised the gathered crowd to attend Santana’s event the following evening as well, but to do so with different questions for the candidate, “to see how she thinks on her feet.” The assumption was that questions from Tuesday would get back to Santana and she’d have time to prepare. Both commenters were almost certainly Cummins supporters. One said explicitly that Santana was not equipped for political leadership and disparaged her lack of higher education.
Democratic Club Backing:
There are two main forces backing Santana: the region’s Latino leadership and the Ward 14 Democratic Club, represented prominently by Ward Leader Rick Nagin and Ward President Diane Morgan. For these forces, Santana is thought to be the means to two very different ends.
For Nagin and Morgan, the ends are merely removing Cummins from power. Both are virulently opposed to the incumbent for political and personal reasons.
Rick Nagin ran for city council against his employer, Councilman Nelson Cintron, in 2009. He even made national headlines for his Communist Party affiliations. He ultimately lost to Cummins in a close race. (Cummins’ races are always extremely close.) Cummins said Nagin has been working to unseat him ever since.
In addition to other tactics, it was Nagin who propped up the dummy candidate Kyle Cassidy in this year’s primary. Cassidy is a young white Republican and the nephew of sitting councilman Brian Kazy. Kazy lost to Cummins in the Ward 14 general election in 2013 and was thereafter appointed by departing Council President Martin Sweeney in Ward 16: the West Park, Jefferson and Bellaire-Puritas neighborhoods. Cassidy didn’t bother to campaign, and only secured 31 total votes in the primary.
For Cummins, the fact that Nagin is the Ward Leader of the Democratic club and worked to get a Republican on the ballot — even if the ultimate aim was to attain the seat for Santana — crossed an ethical line. Scene listened to audio of Cummins confronting a volunteer who’d collected signatures for Kyle Cassidy who admitted that he did it “as a favor” to Rick Nagin. The volunteer thought Cassidy was a Democrat.
(*Correction: Cassidy voted Republican in the 2016 primaries, but may have done so only to thwart Donald Trump. Scene has not verified with Cassidy himself, and we’re not certain with which political party he is currently affiliated.)
Diane Morgan was an early candidate in the current election cycle herself, but dropped out by late 2016. She currently serves as Santana’s campaign manager. When Scene inquired whether or not Santana would debate Cummins by email early this month, it was Morgan who responded, explaining that she had tried to set up a debate with the League of Women Voters.
The Latino Connection:
Scene spoke with Omar Medina at length Wednesday. Medina was a Ward 14 council candidate as well. He now officially supports Cummins. Medina was one of the first people to announce his candidacy back in 2016, but fared poorly in the primary, securing only 44 total votes. He attributes this dismal performance to Jasmin Santana and the Latino leadership behind her.
Medina said he was betrayed. Jasmin Santana, after all, had worked for his campaign. They had been friends since they graduated together from the Hispanic Alliance Leadership Development Initiative (HALDI).
“She was not my campaign manager,” said Medina, “but she was kind of my right-hand person.”
Medina showed Scene texts between himself and Santana through the fall of 2016 and the first two months of 2017. The extensive correspondence related almost exclusively to Medina’s campaign activities — printing flyers, setting up meet-and-greets with residents, etc.
On March 2, Santana invited Medina to Las Dos Fronteras restaurant on Fulton Road and told him she’d be running for council. Medina said he was confused at first, but offered to support her, assuming she was running in another ward. But Santana said that no, she was running in Ward 14.
“She said that God told her to run,” Medina said. (Santana is religious. Medina is a pastor at an Evangelical Christian Church.)
Medina had pulled his petitions in late January — he estimated Jan. 20 — and said that by early February, his campaign manager, Jerry Pena, was getting antsy, wondering why he hadn’t collected the required 200 signatures. Medina replied that he had ample time to collect them and was still getting to know residents and building his platform. (One of the knocks on Medina was that he resided in Ward 15. He said he is moving to Ward 14 on Dec. 1.) At the time, Medina’s campaign team consisted of Pena, Luis Cartagena, Michael Bowen, who is now running Mayor Frank Jackson’s campaign, and Jasmin Santana.
The turning point in the race came long before the heat of the summer primary season, in mid-February. Medina said he was summoned to a meeting with Juan Molina Crespo, the Executive Director of the Hispanic Alliance.
Crespo had been grooming Medina for two years, Medina said, and had long complained about Brian Cummins and the lack of Latino leadership in the ward. At their February meeting, Medina said Crespo told him the Latino community was now concerned. If Medina wanted the support of the Hispanic Alliance (and by extension, the rest of the region’s Latino leadership) he would have to agree to weekly meetings to keep Crespo abreast of his campaign “and to ensure that the Latino agenda was being met.”
Medina balked. He said his whole campaign was built around inclusiveness and “bringing everyone to the table.” He didn’t agree to the weekly meetings or to make Latino issues the central plank of his campaign.
In a separate interview, Brian Cummins — who is intimately aware of the blocs against him — said that Crespo wanted Medina to run a negative campaign against Cummins. Medina said an anti-Cummins directive wasn’t specifically mentioned at the February meeting, but it was implicit. He said the whole point of his being groomed was to oust Cummins and to secure Latino leadership.
Reached by phone, Juan Molina Crespo said that as a 501(c)3, the Hispanic Alliance does not endorse candidates. He confirmed that he had supported Omar’s campaign “to the extent that Omar was part of [HALDI]. In that capacity, we always support efforts by the individual candidates as they look for promotions and try to get into jobs or get into elected office. We encourage them all to seek civic leadership positions throughout the area, but to say that I was a supporter or him or Jasmin is a misstatement.”
When asked about the meeting Medina described, Crespo first said he “had no idea what [Medina] was talking about.” He then said that a meeting may have occurred, “but it wasn’t a meeting I was at.”
When pressed, Crespo said that he and Medina did in fact meet at about the time Medina described. “But that particular issue, in my recollection, doesn’t come up,” he said.
In any case, two weeks after what Medina described as that pivotal meeting, Jasmin Santana took him to Dos Fronteras restaurant to tell him God told her to run for office.
The announcement was an ugly one, as far as Medina was concerned, not only because Santana had been on his campaign team, but because Santana was an an employee of Crespo’s at the Hispanic Alliance. She worked in community engagement there until she stepped down in August amid complaints from her opponents.
Medina even referenced a line in Scene’s interview with Santana this week — “I want to serve the community as a whole,” Santana said. “I want to be more a public servant than a politician,” — and said that that had been his line, his idea.
Medina said he could only speculate, but that given his own relationship with Juan Molina Crespo, he had a good idea of what the relationship with Santana will look like.
“He wants money for the Hispanic Alliance and Hispana Villa,” Medina said. “But more than that, he wants influence. He wants someone he can control.”
For Medina — and for Cummins — the trouble with the support of Crespo and other Latino leaders is that many of them don’t live in the Ward. Crespo, for example, lives in Lorain County. Medina was among the first in a group of Latino religious leaders who came out in support of Cummins and said that there is now a divide. Many of the faith-based and grassroots Latino leaders (largely Ward 14-based) support Cummins; many of the non-profit executives and business leaders in the Latino community (across the region) support Santana.
This has created tension. Medina said that he has been getting angry messages from area Latinos accusing him of being racist or a race-traitor for not backing the Latino in the race. Medina showed Scene texts from two parties, and a Facebook screed, to that effect.
“But I can’t support corruption,” Medina said. “For me, it’s about ethics and principles.”
Jasmin Santana was unavailable for comment Thursday, but her campaign manager, Diane Morgan, responded to a series of emailed questions. She said that when Jasmin decided to run, “she did not discuss it with [Juan Molina Crespo],” and that Crespo had remained neutral in his capacity with the Hispanic Alliance.
As for Tuesday’s invite discrepancy, Morgan parsed Gloria Ferris’ account and said that neither she nor Santana had received personal invite emails.
“Reaching out to supporters is not the same as working with the campaign to negotiate a forum, or as Brian likes to call it, a debate,” Morgan wrote. “We never agreed to a date, a place or even to participate. I will add that we would never have agreed to participate in any forum run by Gloria. She is totally biased.”
Santana’s town hall Wednesday night, however, Morgan said “went very well.”
“The best thing to come out of the event,” she said, “was the chance for Cummins supporters to actually see Jasmin as a real person, not what Cummins has portrayed her as. She got to speak for herself and answer questions. Additionally, this was a chance to bring a sense of unity and a need to work together in the future. Some great ideas were put forth.”
No one reported on those ideas, though, because non-residents weren’t permitted.
“The event was for residents only,” Morgan said. “We did not want people from outside the ward involved in the town hall. The event was for residents to discuss the issues and concerns they have and live with on a daily basis. Regarding the media, the last thing we wanted was a media circus.”
This article appears in Oct 18-24, 2017.
It is an elementary principle of journalism that if a reporter interviews someone who makes charges against another person that the journalist tells the person charged about the comments and asks for their response. Sam Allard in this highly inaccurate one-sided piece did not follow that rule. He states I ran against my employer, Nelson Cintron, in 2009. in fact, Cintron was not a candidate in that race, which was in the former Ward 15. Cintron , who represented Ward 14, encouraged me to run in Ward 15 where I lived. The Ward 15 seat was open since Councilwoman Meryl Gordon decided not to run, but hoped that Emily Lipovan would take her place. Lipovan and Cummins made it through the primary and with my support in the runoff, Cummins was elected, When the wards were redrawn after the 2010 census, I found myself in the new Ward 14 and ran again in 2013, making it through the primary. but narrowly losing to Cummins in the runoff. Contrary to the drama , which Cummins,the media and now, without checking,Sam Allard has propagated, I am not motivated by any “grudge” against Cummins in my support for Jasmin Santana. I support Santana because she is far and away the better candidate and Cummins has been a lousy Councilman, who does not return calls from constituents or take any meaningful interest in the serious problems of our hard hit, low income ward. There is also the issue that the Latino community has no representative in any elected post in the entire county. This growing dynamic community deserves a seat at the table and it undermines the political, cultural and social fabric of Greater Cleveland that they are absent and are without leadership. Jasmin Santana has demonstrated outstanding leadership skills and is highly qualified to represent that community as well as every other group in our very diverse ward. The overwhelming feeling in Ward 14 is that it is time for a change and that is what I believe will happen in the November election.
Cummins/Allard also falsely accuse me of bringing Brian Kazy’s nephew, Kyle Cassidy into the primary, even though they know full well this was done by Kazy, who is my friend, and asked for my help to put his nephew’s name on the ballot. I agreed with his request. Kazy told me , that although Cassidy, voted in the 2016 Republican primary, he is not a Republican and has always supported Democrats. I know other solid Democrats who voted in that primary, hoping to stop Trump from getting the nomination. In any case, Cassidy got a small number of votes, far less than Jasmin Santana’s margin of victory over Cummins. Why Cummins, after 12 years in office was so alarmed about a cameo candidate is a mystery, but certainly shows how insecure he feels about his own base of support.
There are other inaccuracies in Allard’s report, which could have been avoided if Allard had brought Cummins’ accusations to the attention of Jasmine Santana or her campaign manager, Diane Morgan. Instead, for whatever reason, Allard jettisoned basic journalistic principles to publish Cummins’ desperate whining. The Scene can do much better.
Rick Nagin
Boo, Sam Allard.
You have published an untruthful, hatchet job.
I am disappointed that you did not check the validity of your claims with the individuals you name in your story, before you went to print.
Boo, Sam Allard.
I attended Omar Medina’s first community campaign outreach. Jasmin Santana opened the program and from the get go, it was apparent that most of the folks came to hear Medina, because of Jasmin. Medina was wishy-washy and evasive, alluding to his wonderful relationship with the fake CDC SCFBC – now MetroWest – really the mega CDC Detroit Shoreway. I could feel the immediate distrust of Medina by residents at that event. I knew then that Medina was a puppet run by MetroWest CDC as an easy Hispanic foil for Cummins-and frankly, I think most of the attendees, including Jasmin felt the same way..
Residents in Ward 14 HAVE NOT been well represented by Brian Cummins- Sam Allard knows this because we have discussed this. The divisiveness reported in this article is a response to the fact that the Jasmin Santana campaign knows better than to be trapped by Cummins’ tricks. Gloria Ferris IS NOT a neutral organizer. She is on the board of Detroit Shoreway now and served on SCFBC committees. There is a lot of behind the scenes real estate deals (see REALNEO) with respect to Detroit Shoreway and the special friends who are in on those deals. The power play for Ward 14 is about the federal monies allocated to CDCs through the council reps. Ultimately, the PAC also controlling the mayoral race plays into this race. And, while I despise clevelanddotcom they wrote about this if you google Mike White PAC and Frank Jackson.
I posted this before – but it bears repeating. WHY no one should vote for Brian Cummins. Just a short list of his colossal failures:
–give-away of public parkland for NRP Foster Pointe – low income housing (built on contaminated fill)
–failed housing project Aberdeen Homes- later demo’d at tax-payer expense and given back to the shady developers
–failure to control unchecked house flipping and strawbuyers during 2008 housing crisis, including CMHA deal for former Art House director
–failure to save historic properties and legacy of fraud w/CDBG funds used to purchase Art House/Wirth House while he directed Old Brooklyn CDC
–YMCA flipping and deterioration under his council representation by Robert McCall, who is a listed LinkedIn friend of the councilman-over 118K wited out by Cuyahoga County Land Bank
–touting Masonic Building transfer to August Garfoli and John McCartney of Ginmark-White Gold LLC – now delinquent 40K and growing in unpaid taxes (Ginmark was also a County Land Bank demolition contractor)
–creation of non-representative CDC, Stockyard, Clark-Fulton, Brooklyn Centre- now rebranded Metro West in collusion with Matt Zone and Anthony Brancatelli under Detroit Shoreway Community Development Corporation (DSCDO)
–Dilapidation of Coral Group Brooklyn Plaza owned by DSCDO partner Peter Rubin Coral Group
–Aragon redevelopment w/use of public monies, still undisclosed by Brian Cummins- project is at complete standstill
–Loss of community services including grocery store ALDIs and Head Start daycare at UCC Archwood
–Pitching a complex redevelopment along West 25th that involved displacing a tire store, permiting said tire store in a pager building owned by Sam Nazmi Khaleq – who was named in Cuyahoga County corruption scandal-foiled by area residents
–Pitching the sale of the historic Carnegie South Branch Library for reuse using historic tax credits as part of fraudulent “Villa Hispana” -foiled by area residents, but resulting in a dangerous temporary relocation of the library to the commerical strip along Clark Ave.
–Attempted transfer of Storer Park to a commercial property owner – foiled by area residents
–Prior knowledge of City of Cleveland application for EPA clean up monies for WC Reed field that led to “remediation” and closure of vital community space from 2012-2017
–Continued dilapidation of housing throughout the ward with problematic conditions ignored when reported by residents, including a vacant house w/squatters adjacent to Denison K-8 school.
–Fraudulent dealing with Cleveland Housing Network to structure fake “Dream Neighborhood” (rebranded International Village) and fraudulent transfer of the YMCA to CHN-Eden for “permanent supportive” housing, less than one mile from an existing problem facility South Pointe Commons.
I’ve been reading Scene for a long time and honestly Sam Allard is equivalent to a Sean Hannity. He wants Cleveland politics to be ran his way and by who he believes worthy. He will tell the story the way he wants you to hear it with non-facts and accusations then will DAMN YOU if you don’t buy into it! He is NOT a journalist.
Correction I never told Rick Nagin to run for Office . He ran in 2005 In ward 15. while I was a councilman in Ward 14. He was my executive Assistance and was fire by Cleveland City Council for running for office while been employed by my office. I hire his wife Ann because they needed medical Coverage do to his health conditions.In the Year 2009 he ran in the new Ward 14 race in which I also ran. He made it beyond the primaries and ask me to endorse him. I refuse and Support Brain. The reason for supporting Brian Cummins had a lot to do with Rick Nagin Misconduct with Women. He should tell his wife the truth. If his Wife Ann would like proof evidence I’m willing to share it with her.
@RickNagin: It looks like I may have made an error. If indeed Kyle Cassidy is a Democrat who only voted Republican to thwart Trump, I got that wrong. I wasn’t able to connect with Cassidy personally because his campaign had no online presence / contact info. I’d be happy to reach out to him if you’d care to provide a working email or phone number. And if you and Kazy can get your story straight about the genesis of his candidacy, I’m all ears. You can reach me at sallard at clevescene dot com.
But just for the record, the piece doesn’t accuse of you bringing Cassidy into the race, exactly. It says you “propped up” a dummy candidate and “worked to get him on the ballot,” which you admit to doing in your comment. You admitted the same to Cleveland dot com. Don’t you see that there’s an enormous difference between simply “guiding [Cassidy] on how to get on the ballot,” as Kazy claimed he wanted, and actively enlisting volunteers and collecting signatures for him, especially when you’re ardently supporting Santana? If your favor to Kazy was not just guiding Cassidy but actually getting his name on the ballot, did you consider why this favor was asked of you? Seeing as Kazy told you that Cassidy’s “would not be a serious campaign,” what possible reason would there be to get him on the ballot, other than to spoil votes for Cummins? Cassidy did no campaigning and clearly had no interest in the seat. If you have an alternative explanation, than the one I’ve presented, I will not only make a correction but will write a new story explaining it more thoroughly. I’m not trying to be a jerk, but this just seemed obvious.
Regarding your 2009 candidacy, I was using results from the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, which I trust. As I report, you *did* run against both Cummins and Cintron in the primaries. Results here:
CLEVELAND COUNCIL WARD 14
NELSON CINTRON JR. . . . . . . . 245 / 13.93
BRIAN CUMMINS . . . . . . . . . 587 / 33.37
JAMES M. D’AMICO . . . . . . . . 24 / 1.36
GARY HORVATH . . . . . . . . . 29 / 1.65
RICK NAGIN . . . . . . . . . . 422 / 23.99
JOE SANTIAGO . . . . . . . . . 285 / 16.20
MOISES TORRES . . . . . . . . . 167 / 9.49
And then you lost to Cummins in the generals, as I report. (This was 2009, not 2013):
BRIAN CUMMINS . . . . . . . . . 1,522 55.45
RICK NAGIN . . . . . . . . . . 1,223 44.55
In 2013, it was Kazy who advanced to the general election and lost by a very slim margin.
As for any other factual inaccuracies, please don’t hesitate to bring them to my attention. I make mistakes and am always eager to correct them as soon as possible. For the record once again, I did bring the relevant material to the attention of both Jasmin and Diane, which is why Diane is quoted at length at the end of the piece. (Jasmin wasn’t immediately available).
For anyone else who needs evidence of the inordinate amounts of tension and subversion pulsating through Ward 14, look no further than these very comments.
I’m curious why Laura McShane would rather keep a city park as a toxic Superfund Site rather than hold the federal government accountable for the cleanup. I don’t know that I would have my family play in a former toxic dump without it being properly cleaned up. It might have taken time to clean up but I’m happy it’s done. That’s just me.
WC Reed Field was not a superfund site. It was test case for the City of Cleveland to use CERCLA funds on other City of Cleveland parks. Cummins gave away a portion of WC Reed field to the developer NRP, knowing full well that the site was contaminated fill. Later, several residents left the building due to environmental conditions that involved the sewer gases from the Denison interceptor. It took five long years for WC Reed to be reopened. The whole time, our park was fenced off – unlike, Clark Field which is also undergoing environmental remediation with EPA funds. I agree that the park FINALLY is starting to look good. It helps that there are FOUR majestic oaks saved by residents like myself -from annilhation by Anthony Bracatelli. Cummins also tried to give away part of the park to Riverside Cemetery- he was duplicitous in every move he has made as a councilman. WC Reed Field looks good now and was spared from development by residents who fought to save it. Diane Morgan had to work to save Storer Park in her neighborhood from a giveaway Cummins planned with a neighboring business.
Of course you started your rambling response with an easily checkable lie. It takes 2 seconds to find W.C. Read in the EPA’s Superfund database. Why should anyone believe or even bother to read any of you response after that?
Sam, you really should step back and think about your piece here.
You stated that the statements made by Santana in her video are false, but then go on to prove that they are false based on a conversation with Gloria Ferris. That is your proof?
Also, if a candidate is not responding to an invite, and the other candidate does, is it reasonable to go ahead with the event then attack the one that never accepted the invite for not showing up?
This story is a part of the ugliness.
Sam, with regard to your lead-in and to clarify, none of the questions Cummins handled were prepared in advance of the forum. All came initially in writing from the audience, were passed through a Cummins assistant and through Gloria Ferris, and then read to Cummins by a Santana supporter. The extemporaneous questions came from those of us who prefer an even more open dialogue.
–Tim Ferris
@Debbie. Because the temperature is so hot on these topics, I’ll try to be straightforward.
1) If you listen closely to Jasmin Santana’s video statement, it disproves itself. She states that neither she nor her campaign received an invitation to participate in the event. But she then states that the pressure *on her supporters* to get her to participate has been tremendous. One cannot claim to not have been invited if one has made oneself inaccessible. (That’s a page out of Frank Jackson’s playbook.) And it wasn’t just a conversation I had with Gloria Ferris, by the way. I linked to, and included text from, the email invitation itself, which was posted to Facebook. I wasn’t just taking Gloria at her word.
2) Santana has since said that there were errors in her email or something. And if you think about that dispassionately for a few seconds, doesn’t it sound fishy? What kind of an error? Gloria told me that she’d heard the email wasn’t checked — which is hardly an “error,” in the sense I suspect Santana intended — and that’s why she reached out to supporters.
3) *MY SPECULATION*: Santana and her team didn’t want her to participate in a forum with Cummins — perhaps because they thought she wouldn’t do well in a debate setting, or perhaps because they thought Gloria would set up an unfair event, or perhaps for another reason — and so they ignored the invitation. Diane Morgan claimed to me that *Jasmin wouldn’t have participated anyway* even if they HAD been invited. But that’s just sloppy. The video statement might have said: “We did not approve of this event and chose not to attend.” Instead, it very clearly said that Santana was never invited. In my interpretation, that’s just not true. And it’s important to expose that.
4) And maybe others disagree, but my view as a reporter is that some things don’t require extensive proof to state. It seems crazy to devote additional words to *prove* that Gloria Ferris is a third party, for example. That’s just self-evident. She is a community member who’s not affiliated with either campaign. That’s a third party. Surely, she supports one of the candidates at this point, but she’s supposed to. She’s a civically engaged voter who wants others to be civically engaged as well. It’s not like CNN is going to come in to host a community forum in Ward 14.
5) The debate stuff, by the way, was merely the latest news in the Ward 14 race, but the most interesting material (for me) came from the interview with Omar Medina, re: the shifting allegiance of the region’s Latino leadership. That hadn’t been reported before and struck me as important for the ward to know about. I’m interested to continue reporting on that if there’s more to the story that others would like to share. (But I wasn’t just mindlessly reprinting accusations from Cummins, as some have said.)
6) Santana was also literally on the cover of Scene this week in a story about female council challengers. I personally think she has some good and actionable ideas, and that in general, too much is made about candidates’ lack of experience and/or education. Dedication goes a long way on City Council. But I also think, if she’s a serious candidate, that she owes it to voters to appear alongside her opponent to discuss — or debate, if you like — the ideas and struggles facing her potential constituents. It would be impossible to discern any “bias” in the questions at Tuesday’s event — What would you do to make the ward feel safer? What sorts of programs would you institute for seniors? etc — and if the ward is so divided that these questions are seen as unfair, getting to the bottom of those rifts should be near the top of any committed councilperson’s priorities.
7) But to your last question, I actually DO think it’s fair to attack — or at least point out — that a candidate is avoiding a public event, esp. in the context of a campaign. That’s what campaigns are all about! Diane Morgan, in her capacity on the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus, was pleased to do precisely the same thing when Frank Jackson didn’t show up at the second neighborhood mayoral forum on July 24. Jackson had told Channel 5 at the time that he’d never been invited, and CCPC produced an email for me showing that he had been. Jackson was properly dinged for it. The situations are nearly identical. The only thing that makes this situation even stranger is that Jackson is the incumbent; Santana isn’t. Even though she won the primary, she’s still the challenger, and one would expect that she’d be leaping at every opportunity to confront Cummins and present her ideas before voters.
Poor Sam Allard. I want to feel bad for him. He gets attacked by the establishment when he reports the unbiased truth of the situation (like the Q deal scam), and he gets attacked by the same activist community when he reports on other situations like this…. It looks to me like he just cant win, which is fine, because I think that is what journalism is all about, and if that’s the case I do feel bad for him, but tbh, I also wonder if perhaps maybe he has just gotten himself too personal and too involved with many of the issues where he cant be anything else but biased, so maybe he is bringing this all on himself. I dont know what to think of his reporting anymore, but what I do know, is that once the reporter is a subject in the story, it might be time to move on to other stories and let someone else handle that beat for a while.
Sam,
Thanks for your response but I dont think that your response stands up.
You make a claim then state that you dont have to prove it. Then you go on to cite a Facebook post. Must be true if its on Facebook, right?
Then the comments that the attacks on Santana are ok, and one reason is that her campaign manager (?) went after Jackson for refusing to debate.
That event was canceled, Sam.
It was not held by supporters of one candidate who then went after Jackson for not attending.
I still see your story as a part of the hot mess of this campaign, but I will point out that Ward 14 campaigns are always a hot mess.
We have a Latina woman running, and she is being the brunt of being the first.
Also, you wrote about Cummins surprise revelation that this is the first time that he has been able to run with the same boundaries as the previous election
This isnt a surprise. ALL council reps have this condition. Its isnt unique.
What is unique is that Cummins switched parties after the last election (again).
BTW, Sam, did you notice that the timelines provided as evidence doesnt add up?
The invites per Gloria Ferris blogpost give a date of October 9 but the declination Gloria posts as proof of receiving the invite by Santana was something Santana released in August?
time for Hispanic leadership once again for an area that is predominately Hispanic…