Zack Reed, Jeff Johnson, Brian Cummins win city council primaries

Zack Reed may be spending 10 days in jail soon, but he beat his DUI conviction at the polls today. Voters in Cleveland Ward 2 rewarded the longtime councilman for his work instead of punishing him for drinking and driving. They gave him 83 percent of the vote in the city council primary election.

Jeff Johnson’s election gamble is paying off. He took 55 percent of the vote in northeast Cleveland’s Ward 10 against fellow councilman Eugene Miller, who got 39 percent.

Johnson, whose old ward was sliced up in redistricting, looks likely to thwart council president Martin Sweeney’s gerrymandering. Sweeney designed the awkwardly stretched-out Ward 10 to set up Miller for re-election. But Johnson, who served on council in the 1980s and returned in 2009, saw an opportunity to unseat the younger Miller.

The two councilmen, who will face off again in the Nov. 5 election, have both been damaged by scandal. Johnson’s political career seemed over when he served prison time for a 1998 extortion conviction, but voters seem to be accepting that he’s followed a path to rehabilitation. Miller’s troubles, smaller by comparison, are recent: an impaired-driving case, a voting-address snafu just referred to the county prosecutor, and embarrassing 911 calls.

Brian Cummins, councilman for the near West Side’s Ward 14, came out on top of a four-way race in first place with 31 percent of the vote. He’ll face challenger Brian Kazy, who got 26 percent.

Kazy edged out an aggressive candidate, Janet Garcia, for a spot in the runoff. Garcia, running in a ward that’s 41 percent Hispanic, argued for electing a Hispanic councilperson. She won the Democratic Party endorsement and campaigned in a white car covered with her name in giant letters. But another Hispanic candidate, former councilman Nelson Cintron, kept her from achieving critical mass. A pending felony case against her, in which she’s accused of assaulting a Westlake police officer, probably didn’t help either. (She has maintained she’ll be found not guilty.)

November victories by Reed, Johnson, and Cummins would shore up the opposition to Martin Sweeney's council majority. But in Hough’s Ward 7, a Sweeney supporter did better than some expected today.

Councilman T.J. Dow won 47 percent of the vote and will face an energetic challenger, Basheer Jones, in November. Jones, a former radio talk show host, poet and motivational speaker, got 27 percent, while former councilperson Stephanie Howse got 21 percent.

Council drama: Jeff Johnson vs. Eugene Miller, Brian Cummins vs. Garcia & Cintron, Zack Reed vs. DUI charge

Zack Reed's running for reelection to city council despite his latest drunk-driving charge. Brian Cummins faces two Hispanic challengers. And Jeff Johnson's run against Eugene Miller threatens Martin Sweeney's council leadership.

Those are the big storylines we'll see in this fall's Cleveland city council races -- set in motion today, the filing deadline for the city's September 10 primary.

"I am now an official candidate in the race to retain the Council seat in Cleveland Ward 2," Reed tweeted last night. His toughest opponents may not be his four challengers, but his own legal troubles.

Reed is set for trial August 15 on his third drunk-driving charge, this one based on a March arrest. He could lose his council seat if a long jail sentence prevents him from showing up to enough meetings.

But Reed, who's been on council since 2000, has survived adversity before. A blunt maverick who ignores council's peculiar rules of deference, he beat an 2009 attempt to gerrymander him out of a job. He ran in a new ward in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood and won 65 percent of the vote.

Brian Cummins, another maverick who beat a nasty gerrymander four years ago, faces a challenge of a different sort. He's a white guy in a ward redrawn this year to maximize the number of Hispanics in it.

Cummins' Ward 14 includes the Puerto Rican neighborhood around W. 25th St. and Clark Ave. The ward's political atmosphere is charged this summer because of the May 6 escape of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight from Ariel Castro's Seymour Ave. home. Hispanic activists want to redouble their efforts to improve the neighborhood to help move it beyond the Castro case's stigma. For some of them, electing a Hispanic councilman is part of the agenda.

Nelson Cintron, a former councilman with a checkered past, is running against Cummins. So is newcomer Janet Garcia, an insurance agent who seems to have a well-organized campaign. Cummins and Garcia both attended a Hispanic town hall meeting at Lincoln-West High School two weeks ago. After the meeting split into breakout sessions to brainstorm goals, Garcia spoke for her group and called for electing a Hispanic political leader. Cummins let someone else speak for his circle, but he, too, is paying attention to Latino issues, talking up plans to develop W. 25th and Clark into a "Hispanic Village," a destination built on ethnic stores and restaurants, like Little Italy.

In northeast Cleveland, Jeff Johnson aims to thwart council president Sweeney's redistricting map.  The new ward lines seemed to force Johnson into a race against fellow Glenville councilman Kevin Conwell.  Instead, Johnson is running in a weirdly drawn district that was stretched from South Collinwood through Glenville along St. Clair Avenue to try to set up Eugene Miller, a young Sweeney loyalist, with a safe seat.

The race is a high-risk, high-reward move for Johnson, who was considered Mayor Mike White's heir apparent until his 1998 extortion conviction and could be a mayoral contender again once Frank Jackson retires. (You can read Cleveland Magazine's 1999 profile, "The Rise and Fall of Jeff Johnson," here.)

Over in Hough's Ward 7, incumbent T. J. Dow faces a crowded field, including former interim councilwoman Stephanie Howse and Basheer Jones, a former radio host, poet and motivational speaker.

That race and the Johnson-Miller race could help determine whether the controversial Sweeney can remain council president -- or, whether Sweeney can successfully hand off the presidency to his top lieutenant, Kevin J. Kelley.

Two Cleveland council members resign -- why?

Sabra Pierce Scott and Roosevelt Coats resigned from Cleveland city council yesterday, surprising their colleagues -- and the press. "WTF?" a journalist-friend wrote me this morning.

Coats' move makes the most sense. He's represented South Collinwood for 21 years, and now he's going to run for the Ohio House. It's a seat-switch with state Rep. Eugene Miller, whom Coats will recommend to replace him on council. Coats has tried to move up before -- he ran for county recorder in 1998 and lost to Pat O'Malley -- so this is a good chance for him to advance.

Pierce Scott's decision is the surprise. Not so much the timing, because by leaving at the end of April, she can recommend a successor who'll be the incumbent in the fall council elections. (She's tapping Shari Cloud, executive director of Sankofa Fine Art Plus, the Glenville-based arts organization.) Pierce Scott, a former aide to two city council presidents, was elected in 2001 (here's my article about that race), represented Glenville for two terms, and became council's majority leader, president Martin Sweeney's second-in-command. I interviewed her a few times, and she seemed pretty sharp.

I wonder if this article by Dan Harkins of Scene might help explain. Former state Sen. Jeff Johnson is thinking of running for Pierce Scott's seat this fall. It would've made for a tough campaign -- and with her out of the race, Johnson could be the front-runner, despite his 1998 felony conviction for extorting campaign contributions. (Click here to read Ian Hoffman's Dec. 2007 Cleveland Magazine article on Johnson.)