Rebecca Maurer Running for Reelection to Cleveland City Council in New Ward 5

Ward 12 Councilwoman Rebecca Maurer Credit: Mark Oprea

The recent Cleveland City Council ward redestricting produced more than a few shakeups.

While reducing the number of seats from 17 to 15, the process became an overt display of political will and biases despite the ostensibly independent nature of the proceedings, most chiefly evidenced by what happened to Councilwoman Rebecca Maurer.

Maurer in past public comments has said Council President Blaine Griffin targeted her specifically, carving up the current Ward 12 into six other ones, essentially leaving Maurer with no current base from which to run. This, many believe because it’s the only plausible explanation, was punishment for perceived disloyalty and outspoken honesty by the first-term councilwoman, a progressive who unseated Griffin-backed Tony Brancatelli in 2021, since taking office. She’s bucked council tradition, challenged leadership, and been vocal on issues ranging from increased campaign finance contribution limits to council’s silence on Gaza.

The animus has spilled into public more than a few times, most recently when Griffin responded to Maurer’s criticisms of what she and others called an accelerated and secretive redistricting process by taking the rare step of inviting Kerry McCormack to preside in the president’s chair during a council meeting last November while Griffin took the floor to make his own comments.

“Quite frankly, members of this body encouraged me to get rid of Ward 12 because they don’t trust the council member in Ward 12,” Griffin said at the meeting. “They don’t feel that she’s a team player… Council lady, we’ll make sure that we don’t play any games with your house, and we’ll make sure that you end up exactly where you need to be. And I look forward to whatever race you have this year.”

Months later, during the aftermath of the Joe Jones misconduct investigation, other members of the body publicly confirmed their distrust of Maurer (again, because of perceived disloyalty). Both Anthony Hairston and Richard Starr, in an interview with Cleveland.com, accused her of leaking a council group text discussing the Jones issues to the media, with Starr going so far as to call Maurer, who is Jewish, a “rat.”

Now, the “whatever race you have this year” is official, as Maurer announced today she will run in the new Ward 5 against fellow incumbent Starr.

Given all that’s happened, and the headwinds against her colleagues, a fair question would be why.

“I feel my work isn’t done yet,” Maurer told Scene. “I’m ready to get back in and fight for the Cleveland I ran to create in the first place. I feel really clear eyed that I’m not running against anybody. I’m running for a vision of Cleveland that isn’t her yet and that I believe is possible. I believe I can make a difference in people’s lives, I believe council can do that.”

The new Ward 5 — or as Maurer dubs it in a press release, Today’s Ward 5 — includes Central, Downtown, Slavic Village, and Kinsman.

That’s a racially, economically and geographically diverse slice of Cleveland.

“I think the biggest similarity [between the new Ward 5 and the current Ward 12] is there are really disparate communities with different needs,” she said. “There are shared hopes though — everyone wants a safe place to live, the dignity of getting a call back. Navigating east and west [while on council] has been great training for taking on this next race where we’ve got the center of development and investment in downtown and places like the heart of Central, an historic neighborhood that canonically has not gotten the investment it deserves.”

The new ward also includes majority Black neighborhoods — “Ward 5 still has the Central neighborhood at its core. It’s the Carl & Louis Stokes Ward and the Lonnie Burten Ward,” she noted in a press release — and Maurer says that’s something she thought a lot about in deciding whether or not to run.

“The first thing is I have to say that out loud: I’m navigating how to be a white woman in this diverse ward where we have Central, a majority African-American neighborhood that’s the home of Black political power in the city,” she said. “I really wrestled with this question of whether this was the right thing to do — where my house had been drawn into the ward — because of the history of race in this country. Where I ultimately landed was that the center of Black political power was in the voters. I’ve gone up against CMHA, I’ve done good work as a housing attorney, I also have a track record in Slavic Village which has seen similar struggles. I’m going to lay out who I am to the voters and let them decide.”

Hers will be one of two races following the redistricting process that will pit two incumbents against one another — the other being Mike Polensek and Anthony Hairston in the new Ward 10.

Hers will also be a slightly different sort of race, though she hopes that the same “gentlemen’s agreement” between Hairston and Polensek — a pledge to run a clean campaign where colleagues would stay out of the race — would be something that she and Starr would benefit from as well.

Maurer has said she wouldn’t accept any contributions from the Council Leadership Fund — the well-funded PAC used to support councilmembers in good standing with leadership — but admitted she didn’t know whether Griffin would use the PAC to support Starr. She will likely benefit from A Better Cleveland for All, a nascent PAC formed before the last election cycle that supported Maurer and other candidates for council including Stephanie Howse and Jenny Spencer that touts itself as supporting “streets, not special interests.”

Other challengers in the ward include Beverly Owens-Jackson, Johnnie Brown, and Myras Holmes.