A perennial candidate with some actual credentials runs for Cleveland mayor this time around. He decides to walk up Lorain Avenue from the abandoned Tops at Kamm’s Corner to the West Side Market to kick things off. It’s a seven-mile jaunt, rain or shine. Smacks of Stokes, right?
Why no one paid attention: Norbert Dennerll is 80, and Frank Jackson is king.
“When I found out 90 percent of Mayor Jackson’s campaign fund came from outside the city, I thought, ‘Holy Christmas!’” he says, not realizing that no one has used that expression since St. Nicholas was actually alive. “Politicians used to think that Jack Russell was tough when he was president of Council.”
Who?
Dennerll, of West Park, is a retired Renaissance man of the workaday variety, so he’s got a right to make no sense sometimes. He’s a Korean War-era Marine vet, started out as an insurance salesman, then owned four real estate agencies, ran a small string of private schools, taught all of Lorain County Community College’s courses on real estate, and was a city councilman for three terms in the ’50s and ’60s. So he can reference Jack Russell all he wants.
He started running for public office at 20, after graduation from Baldwin-Wallace. Since retiring, he’s run a string of unsuccessful campaigns, including an ’88 bid for president. “I haven’t stopped yet,” he adds.
Dennerll was pleased with the reception to his impromptu march for symbolic recognition, but knows it probably didn’t matter. Jackson already had more than a half-million in the bank at the beginning of the year, a pot he won’t likely need to fill that much either — since Dennerll seems to be the only vaguely qualified candidate to say anything truly contrary about Jackson’s reign. And Dennerll doesn’t even accept campaign contributions. He sends out his press releases in hand-written, all-caps, snail-mail alerts.
“I just don’t accept money,” he says, explaining it all away. “I don’t know how you can accept money and not have to do favors. I’m not bragging. That’s just the situation. You could call it stupid too.”
This article appears in Jun 10-16, 2009.