Ohio’s election results last night were devastating for the democratic agenda to protect our region’s vulnerable communities and reduce inequities. It was not a bad night nationally—our peers in Wisconsin and Michigan elected Democratic governors. Even deep-red Kansas elected a Democratic governor. And perennially purple Florida passed a ballot measure by more than 60 percent to restore the vote to disenfranchised citizens who had served their felony sentences.
But Ohio’s entire Democratic ticket for statewide office lost, as did the ballot measure, Issue 1, that offered the best chance in decades to reform our broken criminal justice system.
In the coming days, experts will help us understand why the blue wave stopped on Lake Erie’s shores. But today, thousands of passionate, committed progressives in our state are waking up and saying: What now? What next?
These questions are particularly palpable in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, where Democrats racked up the most significant margins of any region in the state—far outstripping the margins in the counties surrounding Columbus and Cincinnati.
If Cleveland is a blue city in a red state—or, more generally, if Northeast Ohio is a blue region in a red state—then it is time to look locally and turn to our municipal and county leaders to step up for the citizens who will be left behind under a Republican governor and Republican statehouse.
And yet, the results of last night’s elections come on the heels of truly uninspiring public conversations around our region’s future. In his 13th year in office, Mayor Frank Jackson’s recent state of the city address was little more than a litany of quotidian accomplishments. He only vaguely alluded at the beginning and end of the speech to the goal of making Cleveland a “great” city rather than a technocratic bureaucracy that can fill potholes and run a balanced budget. And even if Jackson does believe Cleveland could be a great city, he provided no roadmap for how to get there in his speech.
In June, local attorney Jon Pinney tried to offer his own vision of Cleveland’s future during a City Club speech that has continued to circulate in the local media zeitgeist. But he merely conceived of Cleveland as an oligarchy, run by an elite group of nonprofit executives and businessmen who could save Cleveland through better alignment from the top down.
Indeed, there is reason to wonder what it means to be a Democrat in a region like Cleveland. The economic plans espoused by Frank Jackson and Jon Pinney are fundamentally Republican in nature. Both recognize the facts of growing inequality in our region. But they both propose trickle-down economics to fix the problem. Both want to funnel money into projects like the Q’s renovation, Blockland Cleveland, and developments in downtown, University Circle and Ohio City. Both hope that by generating economic activity for the already wealthy, there will be a spurt of economic activity that will raise the rest of the region along with it.
But these are not Democratic visions for a municipality or a region. Indeed, these proposals demonstrate a misunderstanding of economist Thomas Piketty’s fundamental insight into our society: So long as the growth of capital through investment outstrips the growth of the economy as a whole, inequality can only increase. The wealthy will become wealthier and the poor can only hope to not become any poorer.
Democrats at a national level have understood this insight and have begun to focus on reorienting economic growth around decreasing inequality and increasing opportunity for the marginalized.
But here at home, our politicians and civic leaders seem satisfied with filling potholes and putting on conferences. They have failed to give us a vision for where we could go, and as a result have squandered the democratic margins we have in this region in the hopes of placating the developers and landlords who they see as our future.
Cleveland could be presenting bold, innovative policy positions. Cleveland could be unlocking the potential of its children and citizens. Other cities are doing it, even on tight budgets. We could be that city. But instead we have chosen to accept the status quo as the best we can hope for.
To our politicians and civic leaders: Think outside the box. The status quo is not acceptable. We may have to live in a world of incremental change and marginal improvement, but our imaginations don’t have to live there too. And without some goals of what to reach for, the marginal improvements have been getting smaller year by year, until it feels like we are standing still.
To progressives and Democrats in Northeast Ohio: It is time to focus locally. It is time to show up to every city council meeting, every county council meeting. It is time to look to municipal elections in 2019 and 2021. With control of the House, national Democrats can hope to staunch the bleeding in national programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. But we won’t be making gains. And with the governorship and statehouse in Republican control, there’s little to look forward to from Columbus either.
It is time for us to focus on our strength—on paper we are a deep blue, Democratic city. We must take this strength and hold our leaders accountable to it in the real world.
We still have incredible opportunity in this region. We are a blue city in a red state, built by the sweat of generations before us who believed in a vision of progress and prosperity. That vision still exists, even if our leaders have forgotten it. It is time to remind them.
Rebecca Maurer is an attorney who lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of SerialLand, which discusses Cleveland history and the intersection of economic justice and criminal justice issues in Northeast Ohio.
This article appears in Nov 7-13, 2018.
The Ohio Democratic Party is as irrelevant as the Cleveland Cavaliers minus LeBron James.
Thinking that the defeat of Issue 1 is bad is a strong indicator of why Democratic ideas, and Democrats continue to get rejected statewide.
Great concept that this conservative supports. But it went WAY too far and had it passed we never would have been able to fix it since it would have been part of our constitution. Reasonable decriminalized drug laws are badly needed. But what we don’t need is a bad change to the constitution of the state.
Reading this well thought article could be giving me some glimpse into the real problem with the Democratic Party nationally. It sounds as if the party lacks an understanding of who they are, but more importantly who their opponent is. I hear Democrats consistently speak of morality and the high ground in a manner that denigrates the opinions of their equally free Republican counterparts. Its not necessarily that Democrats are wrong when it comes to morality i.e. gun laws and treating all people with respect, its that they demonize their opponent thus making the high ground much less elevated. The thing that really rung out in this article however was a strong undertone that Democrats are the working class whose blood, sweat, and tears are what our country us built on. This mindset consistently belittles a giant group of Republicans who should be respected as just as much a part of the working class. Democrats seem to assume that anyone who is a Republican is literally out of their mind and that is exactly why they struggle so much to win a popular vote. Who wants to be verbally spit on all the time. Look at our President if you want to see how people react that kind of treatment. Personally, I voted more than once for each of the three parties yesterday. I find it very hard to align with any side as morally superior. I feel it would serve the Democratic Party well, especially in the coming Presidential election to treat the voters as rational people whose opinions matter. We should all be looking for what we share in common more than what divides us and focusing on our commonalities could help sway the vote in the direction desired by the Democrats. Remember that many conservative Christians, military, and working class people think of themselves as Republican and that doesnt make them crazy or intellectually inept.
Oh, not to worry…Taxin Jackson will just come up with another massive tax for us city residents that actually have to work for a living, will have to pay for. And while were at it, Budish and his massive property tax valuations for 2019 will likely break the bank for the few remaining homeowners left in this city. Both of these crooks should be in jail! -Thieves!!!
Bob – Your Republican President routinely demonizes the Democratic Party and anyone else who opposes him including the media, or haven’t you noticed that?
Most cities these days are Blue and surrounded by a sea of Red. Trump has made the Urban/Rural divide even worse. I don’t know what we’re going to do about that, but I agree with the author that we need to address the problems brought by income inequality in this area – and not by pouring more money into Downtown and University Circle. Enough with that!
Rebecca Maurer for Mayor!
I still have some of those old “Green City, Blue Lake” buttons…”Blue City, Red State” has a nice ring to it…maybe someone can design a Cleveland-themed button or pin. Or put the slogan on a bright PURPLE baseball cap.
Ohio semed to be a purple state for a long time…both blue and red…look at its track record in siding with the winner in all but a handful of Presidential contests since before the Civil War. But at the state level, Ohio has been red for decades, with a few islands of blue…the largest cities.
Columbus has its Republican head up its Republican wazoo. Look at the way they nixed the idea of passenger train service between Cleveland and Cincinnati…so the Feds took the money away from them and gave it to Wisconsin instead. Ohio needs an influx of younger people, and in case all those old white farts downstate haven’t noticed, a lot of those youngsters are trying to avoid car ownership and driving in general, and are attracted to cities and states with rail transit and train service. So they are choosing places other than Ohio in which to live and work.
Cleveland is not going to get a whole lot of assistance from the clowns in Columbus, whose policies are going to repel newcomers, rather than attract them to this state. And now that Ohio’s voters have all guzled the red Kool-Aid and it’s going to be business as usual with the GOP still in charge, the Red Sea levels are going to be rising, and nibble away at the Blue Islands even more. But Clevelanders can wear their red-and-blue pins and their purple caps, and laugh it up until they drown.
We have too many poor and illiterate people. Growing businesses cant find quality staff, so they leave. Good businesses that succeeded against the odds cant get capital and are bought, with their IP shipped away, and shuttered buildings left behind.
If we were serious about doing something, why not offer free natural gas and free water to industry? Make our ghetto a tax free enterprise zone. But the business has to be highly automated or need lots of unskilled labor, because thats all weve got, if they decide to show up for work.
Otherwise, stop welfare so people leave, or open a nail factory for the poor to staff.
It’s obnoxious that we have to choose between these two corrupt parties. Our choice is to either get in line with the subversive and destructive agenda of the commycrats or lose to the maga men.
Squid – Yes I noticed that, and he is scum for doing so. I am guessing you didn’t notice when Obama and the rest of the Dems did the same. We were just uneducated idiots that clunge to our guns. Many of us used the term Liberal Elite at the time because that is how we felt like we were being treated. Obama declares war on the coal plants. Good plan, but he did it in a dismissive way with no regard or compassion for the blue collar folks that war put out of work.
Shame you didn’t notice, if it had been toned down and had we been listened to you might not have Trump as your President.
It actually started in the Bush years, remember all the memes of him being portrayed as a monkey?
Sure it’s worse now, but it has been escalating for a long time.
And I am totally with you on fixing income inequality. It will take a ton of money to make that happen. Lots of Police to make them safe. Lots of counseling and extra school help. It will cost a fortune, and I will gladly take a big hit on my taxes to pay for it.
Great. Another essay on the ‘suffering working class,.”
In order to properly counter what is truly occuring, let’s recognize that in fact Ohio is an extremely valuable State for operation REDMAP which, not surprisingly was born here in Ohio.
There is a concentrated takeover attack on this state coming from the Koch machine and many wealthy businessmen, large and small, to whom Ohio has been very very very good.
Even some of the comments here reflect the strategy: which is to turn the considerable and diverse economic power, institutional strength, and human capital, (resentful and frustrated as Hell,) of Ohio into their ‘free market’ experiment. A power center here for ideas that have demonstrably failed elsewhere are an easy sell to a gullible, stuff-addicted populace.
Ohio remains a relatively wealthy state for much of the 99% and of course, especially the rich Republican core team members. Several studies have unmasked tiresome white working class mythologies as highly perceived, but poorly substantiated loss of status. These myths are perpetuated mostly by outsiders, those who leave, and are readily believed by a typically self deprecating native population.
It’s no surprise Trump spends a lot of his never ending campaign here.
The Republicans know a gold mine when they see it.
The author of this article neglected to mention that people like Mayor Jackson are a guarantee that the city of Cleveland will never be a great city again. His defense of thuggish behavior as kids being kids, is emblematic of the decline of Western culture and civility found throughout cosmopolitan areas. She keeps mentioning inequity as if it was avoidable. She appears to have bought into the Leftist mantra that not only should there be equality in opportunity but also outcome. This flies in the face of the Pareto Principle, and everything we know about human populations. I think the author would have been better served if she would have spent less time in the Social Sciences of gender and race studies, and just took an anthropology or physics course.
A big part of the reason the Blue Wave stopped was the gerrymandered House Districts in Ohio.
Ohio shows the importance of winning statehouses and governor races. From the PD story on the GOP-designed districts in Ohio:
The unofficial tally shows that the Republicans won 75 percent of Ohio’s congressional seats (12 of 16) with just 52 percent of the vote statewide in the races combined.
The GOP claimed 12 seats in 2016 with 57.4 percent of the vote, 12 in 2014 with 59 percent of the vote, and 12 in 2012 with 51 percent of the vote.
Thank you, sir. Finally a voiece of reason amid all the pissing and moaning and whining and crying about “the decline of Western culture” and “Leftist mantras” and “poor and illiterate people”…most of which appear to come from the same trollish person, over and over and over and over and over and…