FitzGerald, Dolan win; Brady beats Ronayne to join political vets on council

Ed FitzGerald and Matt Dolan are headed to the general election. They won the county executive primaries yesterday, FitzGerald with 49% over Terri Hamilton Brown's 32%, Dolan with 68% over 19% for Victor Voinovich. To read my post from last night about why FitzGerald won, click here.

Dan Brady edged out Chris Ronayne, 46% to 43%, in the highest-profile county council race, on Cleveland's West Side. That makes Brady, a former state senator, one of five political veterans who won in safe Democratic districts and will likely take leadership roles in the new county council. Familiar ballot names beat young upstarts county-wide yesterday, expect in the near-east District 10, where Julian Rogers, an education-reform activist, won and former Cleveland Heights Mayor Alan Rapoport came in third. For my analysis of the new council from last night, click here.

Here are the complete results. To look ahead to November, check out my coverage of the county executive race, "A Fresh Start," in the September issue of Cleveland Magazine or online here.

County council majority starts to take shape

The county executive race is heading into November, but tonight we can already start to see the county council majority take shape.

Four longtime public officials, all Democrats, are off to big leads. State Sen. Dale Miller and Parma council president Chuck Germana seem to have their districts out west locked up, based on the vote-by-mail results. So do former Cleveland judge C. Ellen Connally and South Euclid councilwoman Sunny Simon out east. (Here's a map of the districts.)

They'll all be huge favorites in the general election and likely among the most politically experienced members of the new council. My bet is one of the four will be the council president.

A fifth political veteran may join them. Former state Sen. Dan Brady leads Chris Ronayne, 49% to 40%, in early results. If Brady holds that lead and beats the University Circle president, it'll be a huge victory for old-time populism and name recognition (Brady's been on the ballot on Cleveland's West Side many times) over youth, New-Democrat charm and campaign cash.

On Cleveland's East Side, Yvonne Conwell, wife of Cleveland councilman Kevin Conwell, and Pernel Jones, Jr., who's run twice for the city council, hold leads. The race in District 10 (Cleveland Heights, East Cleveland, Bratenahl, Collinwood) is neck-and-neck between newcomers Sharon Cole and Julian Rogers.

In all four of those districts, the Democratic winner tonight will probably win the November election too. (Way more Democrats than Republicans voted in the primaries there.)

That leaves three districts in the outer-ring suburbs where the two parties look pretty evenly matched in November -- three chances for Republicans to put an end to one-party government.

Urban Outfitter: my profile of Ann Zoller

Ann Zoller, executive director of ParkWorks, has taken her nonprofit far beyond trees and flowers. She believes creating exciting public spaces is not just about carefree recreation — it’s a key to making Cleveland a place more people want to live. She wants to guide downtown’s landmark public spaces from the dull, gray present to a spring-like rebirth.

Zoller, more than anyone else, is responsible for this summer's rebuilding of Perk Plaza, site of a shocking 2009 murder, as a safer, more welcoming park. She’s also helping the Medical Mart developer redesign the century-old downtown malls. Even more ambitious, ParkWorks and the Downtown Cleveland Alliance want to radically remake Public Square into a destination as inspiring as the best urban parks in the country, possibly even by building a giant hill right over Superior Avenue and Ontario Street.

That’s why I profiled Zoller in “Urban Outfitter,” my feature in the June issue of Cleveland Magazine.

Zoller's political savvy helps her get things done. The former Mike White aide enjoys a solid partnership with the Jackson Administration (though that doesn't necessarily mean the mayor will fund a radically remade Public Square). And she's emerging as a key ally of influential younger politicians, such as Joe Cimperman and Chris Ronayne, who are trying to put their optimistic stamp on the city.

“For some people, a plan is the world,” says Cimperman. “They just love to plan. For Ann, the plan is just a means of getting something done.”

(To read my profile of Zoller, click here. You can link to it with this shortcut: tinyurl.com/CMZoller.)

Ronayne vs. Brady race tops county council races so far

Chris Ronayne isn't running for county executive -- he's taking a shot at joining the county council instead. The former City Hall chief of staff has decided to run for the part-time council, as I suggested he would a couple of weeks ago, so he can remain president of University Circle, Inc.

But Ronayne will hardly have an easy path to the new council. He's running against Dan Brady, the former state senator, in the most dramatic matchup so far in the 11 new county council districts.

It'll be a generational battle of sorts: the new guy with new ideas versus the old-school veteran. You could call both men "progressives," but with two different meanings of the word: Ronayne, a favorite of the young, professional, believe-in-Cleveland crowd, and Brady, a classic pro-labor liberal.

Brady moved up from Cleveland city council to the state house to the state senate in the 1990s, then aimed at Mike White in 2001, running for mayor when most people thought the embattled White would run for a fourth term. I remember the Free Times running a cover story on him and his candidacy, a hopeful profile by Roldo Bartimole. Once White left and the mayoral race got crowded, Brady tried to stand out with a left-of-everyone pitch that he'd lead a "labor government" at City Hall. The pitch fizzled: he finished with 2 percent of the vote.

Still, Brady was easily re-elected to his senate seat in 2002. His biggest strengths are his experience and knowledge of the district he's running in (the light green one on this map): it's Cleveland's middle-west side, neighborhoods he represented in the senate. (His wife, Dona Brady, represents part of the area on city council.)

Brady is about to launch a campaign website: I'll link to it once I get the address. He spoke with me for my October profile of Jimmy Dimora: click here to read it.

Nelson Cintron, the controversial former city councilman, also plans to run in the same district. He finished fourth in his attempt to rejoin council last year, so it's hard to imagine him beating Ronayne or Brady. But that makes three interesting personalities in one race.

The other races look less exciting so far. Well-known names include state Sen. Dale Miller, who's running for the Lakewood/Brook Park/West Park district, and Parma's former mayor, Gerald Boldt, and city council president, Chuck Germana, running in district 4.

To me, the most interesting candidate in the other races is C. Ellen Connally, the former Cleveland Municipal Court judge. (She's running in a district that sweeps from Shaker Heights and Cleveland's far-southeast wards to Orange and Bedford.) She wrote a feisty op-ed piece in August calling George Forbes an "out-of-touch, salty-mouthed curmudgeon" who overplays the race card (and that was before the Call & Post's Jemima-gate!). It's one of several entertaining missives Connally has sent to the Plain Dealer opinions page. (See my August blog post, full of links to her writing.) Weird trivia about Connally: She figures prominently (through no fault of her own) in a bizarre left-wing conspiracy theory about the 2004 election in Ohio.

Backgrounding all the county council candidates is too big a task for my little blog, but the Plain Dealer's county politics reporters are on the case: Henry Gomez surveys the field in this post at the Cuyahoga County Insider blog. Ohio Daily Blog has also been reporting on some new candidacies. To see the board of elections' list of early petition-pullers, click here. (Here's the district map again.) But it's a long way to the June filing deadline -- lots more people will probably take a shot.

Jackson vs. Plusquellic, reform's coattails: the Inside Business Power 100

Give up on those "quiet mayor" complaints already. Frank Jackson keeps gaining in power and influence, not in spite of his mild personality, but because of it. That's my conclusion in one of several pieces I wrote for the Power 100, in the January issue of Cleveland Magazine's sister publication, Inside Business.

Plenty of politicians appear among the business and non-profit leaders on our list of Northeast Ohio's 100 most powerful people. Jackson ranked #2, below only the Cleveland Clinic's Toby Cosgrove. Hotheaded Don Plusquellic, Jackson's mayoral polar opposite, came in at #12, after shaking off his enemies in last year's recall election while retaining the confidence of the Rubber City's business community. U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and congressmen Steve Latourette and Tim Ryan also made our top 25.

I handicapped Northeast Ohio's congressional delegation, scoring who's gained and lost power lately (George Voinovich down, Betty Sutton up). I also calculated Issue 6's effects on local political figures -- Jimmy Dimora, Tim Hagan, and Peter Lawson Jones dropped out of our top 100 entirely.

Of course, political buzz can shift fast: since IB went to press just before Christmas, Chris Ronayne seems less likely to run for county executive, Joe Cimperman lost some city council committee assignments, and Bill Mason's presence in the car when his campaign treasurer was pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving has sparked speculation about his political fortunes. (Oh, and Frank Jackson's "no layoffs" record? No longer true.)

One more Power 100 piece may appeal to political junkies: my interview with Sam Miller, Forest City co-chair and influential political donor. "The very person that, let’s say, is a precinct committeeman, a relative nobody politically — one day, you wake up and discover he’s a senator for the state," Miller counsels aspiring power brokers. "When you helped him as a precinct committeeman, that he’ll never forget."

Ronayne: county executive or council?

Right after Issue 6 passed, buzz gathered around Chris Ronayne as a potential county executive candidate. The gregarious, energetic president of University Circle, Inc. got behind county reform in a big way this fall, pitching Issue 6 on the debate circuit. That fit his reputation for innovative ideas, dating back to his time in the Campbell Administration. He told reporters in November he was exploring a run for the county's new top job.

Then, last week, Ronayne told Henry Gomez he's still looking at the county executive race, but he's also considering a run for county council. That seemed significant, so I put in my own call.

"I'd like to be involved," Ronayne told me. He's assessing "which level, if any, I should go at."

Running for the 11-member council would be a less daunting leap for Ronayne. He's never run for office before, so it's unknown how voters would react to him -- or how he'd react to the pressures of a high-stakes county-wide campaign. He lives in Cleveland's Edgewater neighborhood, and campaigning in the council district there (the light green one on this map) might be a more manageable challenge. (Former state Sen. Dan Brady and former city councilman Nelson Cintron may also run in that district, Gomez reports today.)

Also, right now, much of Ronayne's appeal is in his potential. Four years at University Circle have given him executive experience. But Ronayne might be able to add to his list of accomplishments by remaining UCI's president while serving on the part-time council.

"I need to evaluate what we're doing out at UCI," Ronayne tells me. "If we have an agenda that's robust [over the next] three or four years, [joining the council is] another option to stay substantially involved."

The county executive job still appeals to Ronayne's instincts as a former city and county planner. "We have the opportunity to turn Cuyahoga County around," he says. "This job is an organizational turnaround, but it’s also a place turnaround. What interests me is turning around places."

But the council's tasks look good to him too. By overseeing budget and personnel, it can push for greater efficiency and more economic development, he says.

"Either [job] is important," Ronayne says. "You can’t have the new county system without a good county council."

He says he, like other possible candidates, will likely make his decision by March.

It looks like Ronayne will run for something. (Check out his new Facebook page, where you can "become a fan" of his.) I won't write off the possibility that he'll run for executive if the Democratic primary field looks weak or unexciting by March. But it sounds like he's tempering his ambitions a notch and aiming for the county council race.

Issue 6 approved: A new government for Cuyahoga County

Voters have reacted to two years of corruption and patronage scandals by throwing out every Cuyahoga County elected official. They approved Issue 6, a charter that creates a new form of government, with 66 percent of the vote.

We'll elect a county executive and an 11-member county council next year in a Sept. 7 primary and the Nov. 2 general election. The new charter will take effect Jan. 1, 2011.

The vote was overwhelming: Issue 5, the county commissioners' alternative plan to appoint a charter commission, failed with 72 percent of the vote. The Issue 5 side's vagueness about how they would reform government proved fatal. Their message failed to even make much of a dent in the 75 percent support for Issue 6 in a July poll.

Tim Hagan is on WMJI's Lanigan & Malone this morning, saying the vote for 6 shows how much power corporate political donors and Plain Dealer editor Susan Goldberg now have in Cleveland. Hagan complained the paper's county coverage was biased, and John Lanigan and Chip Kullik agreed that the PD's Oct. 2 headline about Hagan was misleading, which it was. But blaming the PD and business leaders for the new charter disrespects the voters. Hagan got it right later in the hour when he added that voters changed the government because they were disgusted with the behavior of some of their elected officials.

Everyone knows the biggest reason voters want reform: federal prosecutors are investigating Jimmy Dimora and suspect Frank Russo of stealing $1.2 million in cash. No one else in the current government noticed anything was wrong, and no one can fire Russo or Dimora now.

Hagan noted the charter will usher in a huge change in Greater Cleveland: the new county executive will be the most powerful elected official in the region, even more than the newly re-elected Cleveland mayor. Who might run for county executive? Jimmy Malone kept dropping Chris Ronayne's name. Hagan, perhaps thinking of Brent Larkin's August column on the subject, mentioned Gund Foundation head Dave Abbott.

Rokakis and Ronayne on Issue 6

I recently asked Jim Rokakis and Chris Ronayne their opinions of Issue 6 -- whether we should replace Cuyahoga County's government with an executive and council.

Neither has been quoted much in the 5 vs. 6 debate, but I thought their opinions would interest a lot of voters. Thanks to his work on the foreclosure crisis and the county land bank, Rokakis (left) has emerged as the most innovative elected official in county government. He favored good-government reform before it was a trend in Cleveland: he's given his treasurer's office employees civil service protection. Ronayne (right) has also developed a reputation for new, inventive ideas, first as as former mayor Jane Campbell's chief of staff and chief planner, now as president of University Circle, Inc. Rokakis opposes Issue 6; Ronayne supports 6.

Rokakis says he attended some early meetings of the group that wrote the Issue 6 charter. "I was discouraged by the lack of inclusiveness," he says. "The first two meetings I was in on were all white men." It's a common argument from Issue 5 supporters, who think a charter commission is a more democratic way to reform government than a charter by initiative petition.

"I kept insisting two items be addressed that were critical: money and politics," Rokakis recalls. Campaign finance reform had to be part of a new county charter, he argued. "The county offices are the only offices that have no limits on contributions." It's perfectly legal for a single donor to give a county-wide candidate $25,000 -- or more. Also, "I railed about this issue of raising money from employees." (Under pressure from Issue 5 supporters, prosecutor Bill Mason recently promised to return up to $100,000 in contributions from his own staff.)

Rokakis argued that all county employees should be classified as non-political civil service professionals, prohibited from donating to their bosses' campaigns or volunteering for them. "If you want to reduce the number of employees in county government, hire the best employees possible and remove politics from their hiring," he argues.

The county treasurer's concerns didn't faze the Issue 6 charter writers. Only this fall, under pressure from the Issue 5 side, have they promised that a new government would regulate campaign finance.

"I also insisted you cannot have a large county council," Rokakis says. "It would become balkanized." He thought the proposed charter's 11 councilpeople elected by district were too many, and that some ought to be elected county-wide, so they could rise above geographic disputes.

Parma Heights Mayor Martin Zanotti, a leader of the Issue 6 effort, argued otherwise, Rokakis says. "[Zanotti's response was,] we need black votes. We have to go to the black community and say, 'You’re going to have all this representation.'" (The county council boundaries were drawn to create four black-majority districts.)

Rokakis thinks Issue 6 is a recipe for new political conflicts. "Most of what [the county] does is fairly set in stone. People talk about making this the new economic development engine. The fact is, the county is a large social service agency. Are we going to start to politicize decisions about that?"

Chris Ronayne disagrees. The 11 council districts in Issue 6 "lend themselves to collaboration across city borders and ward boundaries," argues the former Cleveland and Cuyahoga County planner. "They’re drawn large enough that they can create cooperation."

A single county executive can offer a "one-stop shop for economic development," Ronayne argues. He also thinks a county with an assertive charter government can help create buying power for governments purchasing services, by bargaining for itself and smaller local governments.

Ronayne says county government badly needs the separation of powers Issue 6 would create. Right now, the three county commissioners are the executive and legislature -- and the public rarely sees their decision-making process. Their meetings are mostly a long string of unanimous votes.

"You need a check and balance," he says. In the Issue 6 charter, he says, "The check on the executive is council, to help support economic development and administer human services, and be a budget monitor that you need in a normal system of government -- which we haven’t had with the county."

Ronayne, a co-chair of the Issue 6 campaign, says he's liked the idea of a county executive and council for 13 years, ever since the day he was hired to be a county planner. As he sat at a meeting, waiting for the commissioners to approve his hiring, he listened to political science professor Kathleen Barber present her 1996 reform panel's plan for an executive and council. The commissioners shot it down.

"It’s well past time," Ronayne says. "What’s happened since then is, we've lost 100,000 jobs."

(To read my 2007 feature about Jim Rokakis and his personal connection to the foreclosure crisis, click here. To read Andy Netzel's 2008 Cleveland Magazine profile of Ronayne, click here.)

Ronayne calls for metro government, state plan to fight sprawl

Chris Ronayne, president of University Circle Inc., writes in Sunday's Plain Dealer that Cleveland and Cuyahoga County should merge to fight sprawl.

"Since 2002, we've consumed more than 100,000 acres of farmland in Cleveland's metropolitan area without any growth in population," writes Ronayne, who was former Mayor Jane Campbell's chief planner and chief of staff.

Like Indianapolis and Louisville, Ronayne says, our city and suburbs should merge into a larger Cleveland 0f 1.3 million people. He says it would save taxpayer money and encourage "sustainability" -- investing in our older cities instead of abandoning them. "What if Westlake's mayor became a borough president like in New York City?" he asks.

Since our urban sprawl extends beyond Cuyahoga County, Ronayne also says our region should share tax revenue, like in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. He wants Ohio to follow Maryland's lead by "requiring new exurban developments to build sewer lines, roadways and schools without state aid unless urban core communities were fully built-out."

I could easily get cynical here and say that Ronayne's proposals are radical for Ohio, that mayors won't want to give up their power, suburbanites won't want to attach themselves to the city, and nothing is likely to stop people from moving to big homes on big lots with low tax bills in Lorain County and Bainbridge and Sagamore Hills.

But metro government is the logical end point of our area's fashionable but vague talk about regionalism. It's an obvious idea to examine as we decide how far to take county government reform. Ronayne's op-ed is significant because he's Cleveland's first prominent political figure (that I can recall) to say all these ideas could work here. The question is, will any more join him?

I wonder if supporting metro government will help or hurt Ronayne's political ambitions. He has said he's interested in being mayor of Cleveland someday. See Andy Netzel's Cleveland Magazine profile, from last year, for more about him. (If you'd like to link to Netzel's story, use this shortened link: tinyurl.com/RonayneCM)

More on the mayor's race

Picking up on my post about the mayoral race, Henry Gomez at cleveland.com drops a few more names of possible Frank Jackson challengers, including former city tech czar Michael DeAloia and councilmen Mike Polensek and Zack Reed (I will bet that Polensek and Reed won't run, but we'll see). Gomez also pointed out something I should have mentioned: Joe Cimperman is a political ally of Jackson's -- another reason Cimperman won't run.

In that previous post, I wrote that Chris Ronayne had thought about running for mayor this year. Actually, Ronayne was too coy to name the year he wanted to run. I just tweaked the post to reflect that.

The quiet mayor

I’ve had this same conversation a few times in the last couple of months. Hey, when is Frank Jackson up for re-election? someone asks. November, I tell them. Oh, good! they say, with a sigh full of frustration. Then they ask, Who’s going to run against him?

No one, I say.

So they ask about Chris Ronayne (if they’ve been paying some attention to local politics) or Joe Cimperman (if they haven’t).

Nope, sorry. I’ve asked a few of my political sources: Who’s thinking of running against Jackson this year? The word is: no one of any stature.

This prospect -- the mayor coasting to re-election in November -- will drive some people crazy. What’s he done? they complain. But in his own quiet way, Jackson's been pushing regionalism, making deals with suburbs that include promises not to lure city businesses away. He’s flown to Costa Rica, Germany and France to try to attract foreign investment. He’s kept the city’s books in decent shape, while nearby cities such as Detroit are slashing budgets.

So far, Jackson has avoided one of the biggest cliches about mayoral leadership: he is the rare big-city mayor who is not accused of favoring downtown and neglecting neighborhoods. Jackson's years as a ward leader help him with this. I’m hearing that he is quite popular in most city neighborhoods, and that he even went door-to-door this summer to ask random citizens how the city can improve its services. I bet the news that the mayor showed up down the street gets around the block fast.

I’m sure that's why Chris Ronayne, president of University Circle, isn’t planning to challenge Jackson. A year ago, my colleague Andy Netzel profiled Ronayne, wrote about his interest in being mayor someday, and sized up his prospects if he ran against Jackson. But in December, Ronayne told the Plain Dealer's Mark Naymik that he does not plan to run for mayor in 2009.

A lot of Clevelanders remember the buzz eight years ago about Joe Cimperman running for mayor someday. Cimperman is definitely ambitious – just look at his run for Congress against Dennis Kucinich – but I’m hearing he’s more likely to try to move up to a county office next time one opens up.

Naymik's piece explained some of the other reasons that Jackson will be tough for anyone to beat. For instance, he came up with a graceful way to say that black candidates have an advantage because the city’s population is 54 percent black.

The column upset Norm Roulet at RealNEO – check out his funny poll: “Plain Dealer Has Declared Frank Jackson Re-Elected Mayor in 2009... is that what you want?” (Click here and scroll down.)

But I’m hearing what Naymik’s hearing. So another online survey ought to ask, “Who should run against Frank Jackson in 2009?” and, more important, “Who can beat him?”

If you’ve got a name, let me know.

(Photo by Mike Raby, from flickr)