Politics headlines: McFaul, Fudge, Harris and Coats

Behind that King James front page, today's Plain Dealer has lots of good politics stories:

Gerald McFaul faces down Mark Puente for the first time since the reporter's many exposés knocked McFaul out of the sheriff's office. "I have nothing to say," McFaul said to Puente. "You got it all wrong." McFaul also had nothing to say yesterday in testimony in a lawsuit filed by two deputies. He repeatedly took the Fifth.

U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge got together with Mayor Frank Jackson, Dennis Kucinich, and about 20 local elected officials to say that would-be county reformers need to create their reform plans in public instead of closed-door meetings. The subtext of her speech: the reformers all talk about the need to reach out to black political leaders to make reform happen -- but they haven't actually done that.

Mark Naymik rips Fudge for not working harder for Clayton Harris in the sheriff's race. Naymik noticed what I noticed about the Democrats' Saturday vote to name a new sheriff: it went mostly along racial lines. Naymik, taking the power of racial solidarity in Cleveland politics for granted, focuses on the low turnout at the Democratic party's vote and asks why Fudge and other black politicians didn't have a better get-out-the-vote effort for Harris. "The county's black leaders proved to be the real losers," Naymik wrote. (Update: Cleveland.com took a while to post Naymik's column, but it's up now.)

Phillip Morris gives Roosevelt Coats the boot in his column today. He seconds the motion of Powell Caesar, editorial writer for Don King's Call and Post, that the ex-city councilman not be allowed to switch seats with Eugene Miller and go to the state legislature. "Councilman Coats needs to go quietly into the good night," read the Call & Post headline. (The editorial isn't online. Too bad!) "Clean, ineffectual incompetence can only take you so far," says Morris. This can't be what Coats had in mind when he asked in his farewell statement, "How do you measure the work of 21 years?" Henry Gomez, who covers Coats' departure on his City Hall blog, is also not overwhelmed.

And of course, the PD covers Tim Hagan and Frank Jackson's announcement of the convention center deal. Hagan told the press conference that Positively Cleveland, the convention and visitor's bureau, will survive and remain "positively important." However, he didn't guarantee its budget would remain intact. There's been some talk that some of its taxpayer funding would be used as a second stream of revenue for the Medical Mart.

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.)