Cuyahoga County's problem is the process

The Cuyahoga County Democratic Party owns the endorsement of Cleveland Councilman Joe Jones whether its leaders like it or not.

Cleveland Ward 1 Councilman Joe Jones will face State Rep. Juanita Brent in November’s General Election.

During its first meeting after taking a summer recess, Cleveland City Council voted to censure Councilman Joe Jones, the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party’s (CCDP) endorsed candidate for Ward 1.

Jones reportedly threatened the life of a City Hall employee, though, in his defense, Jones claimed to be joking.

Despite the censure, Jones is still favored to win reelection in the General Election in November and will be featured on the CCDP’s sample ballot with the other endorsed candidates who passed the party’s popularity contest.

Like other big-city Democratic strongholds in Ohio, getting on the CCDP’s sample ballot is key to getting elected in Cuyahoga.

However, the endorsement process has recently come under scrutiny.

For example, Chris Quinn, editor of cleveland.com (ironically, a key player in the city’s political propaganda), seemingly came out against the party’s sample ballot operation in his Letter from the Editor on Sept. 20:

“We could have good government with a county executive and county council, if we elected good people to serve, just like we elected high-quality county commissioners.

Instead, we blindly vote for whoever the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party says we should vote for, without consideration of who they are or what they stand for.”

But the endorsement process, which is what allows for candidates like Councilman Jones to be featured on the CCDP’s sample ballot, still has its loyal defenders who want you to know that the process works well as long as it benefits the people they like.

---

The screenshot below illustrates the dissonance many Cuyahoga Democrats employ to justify an extremely anti-democratic endorsement process.

Adam Rosen is an appointed member of the executive committee in Cleveland Ward 7.

It’s a comment from Adam Rosen, an appointed Executive Committee member for Cleveland Ward 7, which includes the relatively wealthy and white West Side neighborhoods of Detroit-Shoreway, Ohio City, and Tremont.

The comment was made in response to The Rooster’s tweet announcing that the Democratic Party’s Executive Committee for Cleveland Ward 1, which includes the predominantly Black East Side neighborhoods of Lee-Harvard and Union-Miles, doubled down on their endorsement of Councilman Jones.

Now, two bits of background information.

First, for those unfamiliar with Cleveland geography and demographics, Cleveland’s west side is very white, while its east side is predominantly Black.

Second, earlier this summer, CCDP chairman David Brock called for a second Ward 1 endorsement meeting after the latest report of Jones’ misconduct at City Hall surfaced.

For what it’s worth, during the first endorsement vote, the Ward 1 Executive Committee overwhelmingly endorsed Jones despite his history of bizarre and criminal conduct.

What seems odd about the chairman’s intervention is that Jones is the Ward 1 Democratic Party Ward Leader, and therefore the most powerful actor in his ward’s endorsement process.

Calling for another endorsement vote among a group of precinct-elected folks who had already elected Jones to be their ward leader is certainly an interesting choice—one that the chairman likely made knowing that Jones would still win.

Nevertheless, Chairman Brock called for a re-vote on an endorsement in a race in which CCDP Vice Chairwoman (and State Rep.) Juanita Brent is running.

Sources close to the Chairman revealed Brent wasn’t pushing the Chairman to call for another vote, but rather party elements from Western Cuyahoga County.

One likely area where that pressure came from is Cleveland’s Ward 7—the home ward of the above tweet’s author.

The ward leader for Ward 7 is Paula Kampf.

The Ward 7 Executive Committee that Ms. Kampf oversees has the city’s largest number of appointed Executive Committee members at 70 percent.

That means 14 of the 20 members were appointed by Ms. Kampf, Chairman Brock, or a combination of Kampf, Brock and other CCDP insiders.

Only one member of the 20-person committee is a person of color, and 60 percent are men.

By contrast, the Ward 1 Executive Committee is mostly composed of Black women elected to their seats. But even then, 45 percent, or 11 out of 20, of the Ward 1 Executive Committee are appointed.

Like several other wards throughout the city of Cleveland this election year – see ‘Campaign Chatter’ about Ward 8 – Ward 7’s Executive Committee endorsement process was filled with its own internal drama.

According to CCDP sources, Ms. Kampf’s desire to use procedural tactics to advance her own interests was so out of control that the Chairman and the CCDP’s attorney had to repeatedly explain to her why her purposeful attempt to exclude a candidate, whom she views as a piece of shit, from running in Cleveland’s Ward 7 race was prohibited.

It strains credulity, then, that it was only an unfortunate coincidence when that same candidate was not notified about the correct time of the Ward 7 Executive Committee endorsement meeting.

When confronted, Chairman Brock called for a re-vote in this situation as well, among a committee in which 70% of its members were appointed.

Whatever Ms. Kampf’s reasoning behind such behavior, an observation comes to mind: If there is no systematic recourse to prevent pieces of shit candidates from locking down elections without engaging voters, then perhaps there shouldn’t be a way for any candidate to lock down elections without engaging with voters.

But as we see in the aforementioned screenshot, this unelected Cleveland Ward 7 Executive Committee member wants you to think that it’s only the “yahoos” in Cleveland’s Ward 1 who are flawed in Cuyahoga’s perverted political processes.

In Rosen’s mind, it’s not the Party’s fault that it allows elected officials to also serve as the ward leaders responsible for overseeing their own elections—it’s just a problem of the “yahoos” in Cleveland’s Ward 1.

It’s not the Party’s fault that it allows its ward leaders to appoint their own supermajority to their ward’s executive committee so they can then influence local elections—it’s just a problem of the “yahoos” in Cleveland’s Ward 1.

It’s not the Party’s fault that voter turnout in Cleveland has barely surpassed 50 percent in the last 10 years, while it spends all its energy on promoting uncompetitive elections through backdoor machine politics—it’s just a problem of the “yahoos” in Cleveland’s Ward 1.

Councilman Jones is definitely a piece of shit. But it’s the local Democratic Party that is responsible for such pieces of shit being able to consolidate and maintain power while also ignoring voters.

And this corrupt system within the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party persists thanks to the logic displayed by party members like Mr. Rosen and Ms. Kampf.

And the party’s chairman, too, who, in an attempt to protect the reputation of the local Democratic Party, reflected Mr. Rosen’s sentiment when he said, “…only members of Ward 1—not the roughly 750 total members of the party’s wider executive committee—voted” shortly after Jones won the second endorsement vote.

No, no, no—you own that, Mr. Chairman. Every Democrat does.

Its endorsement process should be abolished.

THOSE WMDs. Disability, domestic abuse, and the death of Lacey Fletcher... Clean energy, dirty tactics: Inside the shady world of door-to-door solar sales… Philippines erupt in protest over flood-control corruption… The most colorful house in Queens has a dark secret… One vigilante, 22 cell phone tower fires, and a world of conspiracies.