On January 5, Cleveland City Council swore in three new members — Nikki Hudson, Austin Davis and Tanmay Shah — who ran campaigns centered on progressive promises for City Hall.
A couple of candidates hope a similar movement might be coming for Cuyahoga County Council as races heat up ahead of the May primaries.
In District 3, incumbent Democrat Martin Sweeney is being challenged by a pair of progressives who feel that the same forward-looking ideals that made their way into City Council should find a home at the county level.
That’s the goal of Anise Mayo and Stephanie Thomas. Both made the decision to run under the belief that current county leadership has grown dull in its attention to more liberal, boundary-pushing ideas on how to better government.
“This is not specifically about Martin J. Sweeney; this is more just standing up to the establishment,” Thomas, 41, told Scene in a phone call.
“You know, it seems to me like there could be a lot more progress made with a younger, fresher approach,” she added.
Mayo, a 42-year-old community health nurse and former professor, said her decades in healthcare pushed her last year to see if she could collect signatures to influence well-being rather than just tend to it.
“This nurse got tired of watching everyone in the county government drop the ball,” she said in a call. “I’m talking property taxes, cost of living, affordability, healthcare. All the things that make everyday life possible for us all.”
To do so, Mayo said she would back even more transparency in the county’s property tax payment process; advocate for more shared policing responsibility for Downtown Cleveland; and back grants to housing nonprofits that help the county’s estimated 5,000 homeless transition to a permanent home.
Those are areas where Mayo feels the current Council is falling behind on.
“To me, progressive means progression to move forward,” Mayo said. “Concepts and ideas you can advance to help everyday people.”
Which fits Thomas’ campaign, too. A trained architect and out member of the LGBTQ community who owns a sober home for LGBTQ people in recovery, Thomas’ platform really runs the gamut as far as how to shake up county government.
She wants to create a Cuyahoga County Labor Relations Board to prevent worker abuse; form a rent control board that, like New York City’s, caps all rent increases at 1.5 percent; and she wants to create county incentive programs to nudge smaller developers to build affordable housing over luxury mid-rises.
All ideas that Thomas, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, sees as natural extensions of her political philosophy.
“It’s all about the community, taking action to address things that we see as inequities or injustices,” she said. “We’re just very solution-oriented. That’s how I see it.”
District 3 has roughly 109,000 people, and covers an area that spans Old Brooklyn in the south, Ohio City in the north, and West Boulevard to the west. Despite rising home prices in Ohio City, District 3 isn’t wholly wealthy: nearly half of its residents are in or near the poverty line.
Reached for comment, Sweeney remained curt about his campaign for re-election.
“I’m just waiting for the filing deadline, and then we’ll stay focused. I’m confident I’ll continue serving,” he said.
“I’m excited with the current leadership,” Sweeney said. “And the ability to govern with this group. I think it’s going to prove some good results.”
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