Arnold Pinkney (1931-2014), veteran Cleveland political organizer and strategist

Arnold Pinkney during his 1971 run for mayor.  (clevelandmemory.org)

Arnold Pinkney ran for mayor twice, but that's not why most people in Democratic Party circles remember him. Nor is it the main reason they're mourning today's news of his death at 83.

Pinkney lost in his attempt to succeed Mayor Carl Stokes in 1971, and in his second run in 1975. His political talents lay instead in getting other people elected.  He ran successful campaigns for all three black mayors of Cleveland -- Stokes, Mike White, and Frank Jackson -- and Louis Stokes' successful run to become Ohio's first black congressman.  

He worked on national presidential campaigns too. He was the No. 2 guy on Hubert Humphrey's 1972 campaign and Jesse Jackson's run in 1984. He also served for years on Cleveland's school board. But Pinkney was best known locally as the go-to guy for get-out-the-vote efforts in black neighborhoods on Cleveland's East Side.

In 2001, I spent a day watching Pinkney and his machine work on behalf of mayoral candidate Raymond Pierce.  I rode with him in his car as he visited his ragged army of polling station canvassers, employed for a single 13-hour shift.  At one stop, he got out, shook hands, and asked people to choose Pierce in that day's primary race.  Most of the voters recognized him. "How come you're not running?" one asked, 26 years after Pinkney's second try.

His job that day was a challenge: mobilize political support for Pierce, a former Clinton Administration lawyer and political unknown. On a floor of his Pinkney-Perry insurance agency, converted into a war room, volunteers fired off phone blitzes based on mid-day precinct vote counts and a floppy-hatted professor's projections. He deployed 400 people across "each side of town, northeast and southeast," as he put it.

His effort lifted Pierce into the runoff election (where he lost to Jane Campbell). That night at the victory party, the crowd cheered for Pierce, then chanted "Arnold! Arnold!" I remember Pinkney's offhand confidence, even cockiness, as he talked to one side of the stage.  I'm paraphrasing from memory, but it was something like this: I don't know why people are so surprised. We've been doing this for 30 years. 

Jesse Jackson, Louis Stokes, others recall King's 1967 Cleveland campaign

In 1967, Rev. Jesse Jackson was a 25-year-old aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., accompanying him on his many trips to Cleveland. King visited the city about every two weeks between April and November 1967, trying to prevent a repeat of the Hough riots and to help elect Carl Stokes the first black mayor of a major American city.

But, in one of the great ironies of the civil-rights era, Carl Stokes felt he could not afford King's help. In a meeting at the Call & Post offices, Stokes, fearing a backlash from white voters, asked King to cancel his plans.

"I remember that meeting," Jackson told me last month for my new oral history of King's 1967 Cleveland campaign. "Carl felt he had to have a coalition to win. That meant relieving white fears. ... Dr. King was the anti-war guy. He was the challenging-the-white-power-structure guy. He was, for many, an object of fear rather than a source of hope. So I think Carl was walking that thin line."

My oral history, "King's Speech," appears in the April issue of Cleveland Magazine and is online now. It tells the often-overlooked story of King's many visits to Cleveland in 1967, leading a major activist effort by his Southern Christian Leadership Conference, one of only two campaigns King ever conducted outside the South.

My piece includes interviews with Jackson; Andrew Young, a top aide to King who later became U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; Louis Stokes, the former congressman and Carl's brother, who spoke with King on the night of Carl's victory; former city councilman George Forbes, who often accompanied King on his barnstorming tours of Cleveland's East Side; and several other Clevelanders who knew or met King.

The civil-rights leader's Cleveland connections have attracted renewed interest this year, the 45th anniversary of King's Cleveland campaign, with the re-discovery of a recording of King's April 26, 1967 speech at Glenville High School.

Today, at 3:30 p.m. downtown, Louis Stokes and three other Clevelanders are speaking about their memories of King in Cleveland. The event, hosted by the law firm Ogletree Deakins, takes place on the 27th floor of Key Tower. Admission is free, but there are space limitations, so RSVP to salona.novak@ogletreedeakins.com if you're interested.

To link to "King's Speech," use this shortcut: tinyurl.com/MLK-CM.

(photo: Cleveland Public Library Photograph Collection)

Arcane Game: the old machine has to go, our columnist says

"Our public officials’ corruption, political ineptness, hubris, incompetence and lethargy have created a crisis," writes Michael D. Roberts in his latest column, "Arcane Game," in the April issue of Cleveland Magazine.

"The county commissioners deal with major decisions as if they were playing a pinball machine. They flip and flap at answers, buzz and bing for the public and light and lurch for the developers. They like the lights and noise, but never know the score. An ever-wary media reports another 'Tilt!'"

Roberts wants us to retire the antique machine. "County or regional government reform would save millions in tax money by doing away with redundant layers of government and institute checks and balances that currently do not exist."

We'll soon see if Roberts gets his wish. As I reported in February (here, here, and here), Parma Heights Mayor Martin Zanotti and county prosecutor Bill Mason are both shopping reform proposals around town. The Plain Dealer updates us today. Some people once allied with Zanotti have split with him over strategic differences, slowing down that effort. Mason has embraced the idea of a county council as well as an executive.

The two groups meet today to try to unite. They aren't far apart. If they come together, their next task is forming a coalition with black political leaders. Since Louis Stokes killed a similar reform idea last year, the reformers know they need to address concerns about minority representation in a new government.

Reform is dead

Oops, sorry. Less than two months ago, I predicted the movement to reform Cuyahoga County government would dominate Cleveland's headlines in 2009.

Actually, just before Christmas, the state legislature killed the idea. It took the Commission on Cuyahoga County Government Reform's proposal for a leaner, less costly government and threw it onto the shelf, where all such plans turn brittle yellow, then molder away. Someone's already pulled the plug on the commission's website (the lonely, barely Google-able ccgovreform.org), but here's another link to its proposal.

The legislature created the reform commission in June, so I naively figured it would let county residents vote on its plan. Guess not.

The state House backed the plan, but Republicans in the state Senate voted for a different proposal to replace the Cuyahoga County commissioners with an executive and nine-member council. Rather than write a compromise, the legislators let the idea die with the lame-duck session. Rep. Armond Budish, the new Speaker now that the Democrats control the House, said that in 2009, any reform ideas will have to apply to all 88 counties. That likely means reform will never happen -- it multiplies the number of vested interests motivated to stop it.

Killing reform was easy. Its champions aren't in positions of power. Once people started disagreeing about how far to go with it -- Louis Stokes vs. the rest of the commission, House Republicans vs. Senate Republicans -- doing nothing became the easiest option. Elected officials who benefit from the status quo only had to keep quiet for the idea to go away.

County treasurer Jim Rokakis, who supports reform, estimates the county government wastes $40 million to $60 million a year. The recorder's office, ripe for a $1 million budget cut, is just one example. But if Cuyahoga County taxpayers want change, the state legislature is not going to help. Voters will have to create a charter, like Summit County did years ago. It's not easy: it takes a petition drive and more than 45,000 signatures.

Stokes kills county executive-council plan

Big news today: the commission studying Cuayhoga County reform will not endorse a new government structure with a county executive and council, because one member, former U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes, is against the idea.

The Plain Dealer reports that Stokes is against it because he thinks Cuyahoga County voters would never elect a black county executive.

This fulfills the fear that our columnist Michael D. Roberts expressed last year: that racial mistrust in our county would hurt efforts at reforming our government. I can understand what Stokes is thinking: would black officials advance as far in an executive-council system as, say, Peter Lawson Jones has by serving on the county commission?

But Stokes' focus on racial politics may have foreclosed a good option for Cuyahoga County. A county executive and a council elected from districts would provide more checks and balances. Right now the county commission is the executive and legislature, with no check on its power. An executive could also hold everyone in county government accountable, making it harder to set up patronage fiefdoms. And a county council with districts would likely include some Republicans, bringing two-party government back.

Stokes' most ridiculous suggestion makes it clear that he is thinking about race so much, he's not thinking about efficiency. He wants to keep the elected county recorder's office, just because Lillian Greene, who is black, now holds the office! The recorder is the first position that every reformer wants to combine with others and make appointed. Fortunately, the rest of the reform commission, which deferred to Stokes on the executive-council issue, ignored him on this one.

The reform commission will send a recommendation to the state legislature Nov. 7. Looks like we know what we'll get: a reform that keeps the three-person county commission and makes some elected offices (recorder, auditor, coroner, etc.) appointed.