Kasich nearly sweeps newspaper endorsements; FitzGerald's driver's license trouble dooms him

John Kasich’s slouch said it all. The governor showed up to the Plain Dealer endorsement interview without a tie, and he leaned back in his chair, one arm off to the side. He never talked to his Democratic opponent, Ed FitzGerald, even ignored his questions until reporters repeated them. The governor figured he had the endorsement in the bag.

He was right. The centrist Plain Dealer gave Kasich a surprisingly enthusiastic thumbs-up on Friday. In fact, the governor won the endorsements of nearly all of the major-city newspapers in Ohio.

Final score: Kasich 6, FitzGerald 0, none of the above 1.

It’s not easy to run the table with Ohio’s newspapers, since their editorial pages range from conservative to progressive. Kasich came close. The Columbus Dispatch, Canton Repository and Plain Dealer praised his four years as governor.

“John Kasich’s first term as governor has been one of the most consequential, successful and remarkable in Ohio’s history,” wrote the conservative Dispatch, which credited him for cutting the state’s budget and filling the rainy-day fund after the recession, and called him a “social moderate and reformer.”

The Akron Beacon Journal, Youngstown Vindicator and Toledo Blade editorial pages had a tougher decision. How could they reconcile their frequent criticisms of Kasich with the dilemma posed by FitzGerald’s campaign?

“Inept,” the Blade described FitzGerald’s run, politely. “Pathetic performance,” the Beacon Journal said.

Here’s the official scorers' ruling on FitzGerald’s errors -- how many newspapers cited them as a reason not to endorse him:

No drivers license for 10 years: 7 of 7 

First running mate’s tax troubles: 2 of 7

Found in car with Irish trade delegate: 2 of 7 

“If you can't trust a politician to take care of the small but necessary things – for TEN years – how can you trust him with the futures of nearly 11.6 million citizens and 53,000 state employees?” asked The Cincinnati Enquirer. The Dispatch, which said much the same, didn’t even deign to print FitzGerald’s name.

The Beacon Journal and The Vindicator went for Kasich on balance, hinting they might’ve endorsed a stronger challenger. The Blade compiled a long list of criticisms of Kasich, then endorsed no one. “These failings argue for a change in the governor’s office,” it wrote. “But Mr. FitzGerald does not make a persuasive case that he is that change.”

FitzGerald, The Beacon Journal argued, has been successful as Cuyahoga County executive, but is unready to be governor. “The shame is that he did not seek a second term to build on what has been started and sharpen his skills.” A shame, the Beacon implies, because FitzGerald is unlikely to get another shot at a major office.

FitzGerald and the Irish woman: Who cares?

Soon after Cleveland.com published its story about Ed FitzGerald’s encounter with the Westlake police, the social media snark flew back from Washington, D.C.

“‘She’s part of a delegation from Ireland’ could become 2014’s ‘hiking the Appalachian Trail,’” tweeted one DC reporter.

FitzGerald held a press conference, denied doing anything unseemly, and blamed the story on Republican dirty tricks. His friend says the same.

So the Plain Dealer article leaves readers puzzling — do we believe FitzGerald’s story? He’s giving a friend a ride, in the very early morning, she can’t remember where her hotel is, so they pull over to make calls.…

Who cares?

We all know a bit about sex and human weakness. So let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that FitzGerald and the lady doth protest too much.

So what?

FitzGerald didn’t break a law. He wasn’t cited for anything. The cop wrote, “FitzGerald and friend just talking.” How is an inconclusive police report news?

I’m trying to imagine how Ted Diadiun, the Plain Dealer’s apologist reader representative, will defend the story tomorrow.

Perhaps he’ll say newspapers aren’t “gatekeepers” anymore, that the Republican Governors Association and others were asking for the police report, that it was probably going to come out anyway. Again, so what? Opposition researchers often collect every piece of dirt they can. Their political bosses use some of it and choose not to use some of it. Just collecting it isn’t news.

{Update, 8/9: Here's Diadiun's defense of the story: "It is fair to question the judgment of a candidate for the state's highest office who allows himself to be put in such a compromising position." Sounds like he's saying the press should not just expose infidelity, but even the appearance of infidelity.}

Maybe some Democrats will close their checkbooks and ask why FitzGerald ran for governor with this police report out there. Maybe some moralistic swing voters will say a potential governor shouldn’t be in a parking lot with a woman at 4:30 a.m., whatever the reason. “Judgment questions,” the Plain Dealer calls it.

I don’t buy it. The paper’s story strikes me as a rather empty exercise in sexual investigative reporting.

Whether or not FitzGerald’s friend from Ireland is just a friend has nothing to do with capital punishment, taxes, schools, job growth, local government funding, or anything else the governor does. It’s just gossip. Who cares?

Brown sweeps Ohio newspaper endorsements; papers call Mandel unprepared, and worse

Well, this doesn't happen too often.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown has won the endorsement of every major daily newspaper in Ohio, shutting out Josh Mandel 7-0. Even the conservative editorial pages couldn't justify endorsing the senator's young challenger.

"Sherrod Brown has a record of working for Ohio jobs, workers, businesses and consumers," argues the Cincinnati Enquirer, which endorsed Mitt Romney for president. The Akron Beacon Journal, endorsing Brown for the first time, praises his "attention to what matters for Ohioans, from manufacturing and jobs to health care and farming."

Every editorial page -- from progressive (the Toledo Blade) to conservative (the Columbus Dispatch) to centrist pages that didn't endorse Brown in 2006 (The Plain Dealer) -- praised the senator's work in his first term.

But most striking is what the seven papers say about Mandel. Let's line them up to see the trend.

Akron Beacon Journal: "He isn’t ready for the job. It is apparent in his shallow positions, mostly the usual talking points of the far right. ... an ill-prepared candidate overmatched by his opponent."

Youngstown Vindicator: "Imaginary outsiders will say whatever they think the voters want to hear. If there were a dictionary entry for such political mendacity, it could carry the picture of Josh Mandel."

Plain Dealer: "Electing ... Josh Mandel would reward one of the nastiest campaigns ever waged in this state. It would reward a candidate who hasn't moved beyond partisan slogans and careful sound bites. It would reward ambition untethered to substance."

Toledo Blade: "Mr. Mandel has largely ignored basic duties of the treasurer. ... His stances on major issues rarely go beyond simple partisan slogans — Obamacare, bad; regulation, bad; tax cuts, good. ... Mr. Mandel has waged an unusually nasty campaign. Independent fact-checkers have cited him repeatedly for making false statements."

Canton Repository: "Mandel has plenty of sound bites — how many ways can a TV ad say 'Washington is broken'? — but offers little of substance. His calling Brown a liar in another recent debate was another low in a campaign chock full of lows — a campaign marked, ironically, by Mandel’s collecting numerous 'pants on fire' ratings from the PolitiFact fact-checkers."

Cincinnati Enquirer: "Mandel would continue to practice the politics of divisiveness. His campaign has focused on tearing down his opponent, calling him everything from a 'un-American' to 'a liar.' Mandel’s slash-and-burn campaign has been heavily funded by out-of-state interests. ... He showed little depth on the issues beyond his rehearsed talking points. Mandel, frankly, is not ready to represent Ohio in the United States Senate."

The Dayton Daily News doesn't endorse candidates anymore. That left Brown's shutout bid in the hands of the staunchly conservative Dispatch.

Finally, this morning, the Dispatch published a terse, backhanded endorsement of Brown. It complained that he's too liberal and supports Obama Administration policies, but called him "an accessible and tireless advocate for Ohio."

The Dispatch praised Mandel for "youthful energy" but said "his limited experience... can’t compare to the nearly four decades of public service that Brown brings to the job."

What good are newspaper endorsements anymore?

At least this: In a fiercely partisan time, they still warn voters when $20 million worth of catchy slogans and dirty campaigning make a shallow candidate look serious.

Plain Dealer, mistrusting Romney, endorses Obama

Mitt Romney had a chance with them, but he blew it.

The Plain Dealer's editorial board endorses President Obama in today's paper, ripping Romney for foreign-policy "bluster," a "lack of policy details," and "frequent changes" in positions. "Which Romney would [voters] elect?" the paper asks.

The board was "sorely tempted to endorse Gov. Romney this fall," the piece says -- but the editorial, clearly written by committee, resists the temptation. The pro-Obama argument dominates 12 paragraphs, compared to 6 for Romney.

What happened?  The Republican convention, the debates, and Libya. Also, Obama's careful talk about Iran, delivered to the PD in person.

You could see the paper's editorial writers pretty much give up on Romney in September. After his convention speech, they complained he was too vague about his tax and budget plans and how he'd replace Obama's health care law.  When Romney blasted Obama right after the Libya and Egypt embassy attacks, the page declared he'd botched the facts and "flunked" a test of his character and ability to be commander-in-chief.

Romney's sudden move to the center in the first debate may have caught Obama off guard and impressed swing voters, but it didn't impress the editors. They cited "the reborn moderate of recent weeks" as yet another example of Romney's shape-shifting.

Before September, I didn't expect this.  I thought the Plain Dealer, which swung right to endorse John Kasich and Issue 2, might keep angling right and go for Romney.

But only a few paragraphs of today's editorial seem to bear the stamp of publisher Terry Egger, a Republican who pushed a liberal editorial page to the center in his previous job in St. Louis.  The pro-Obama grafs read like the work of editorial page editor Elizabeth Sullivan, a foreign-policy expert who wrote scathing critiques of the Iraq war. She knows that, even though domestic issues decide most elections, presidents have the most power over foreign policy, war and peace.

The president shrewdly courted the PD's endorsement. He granted the editorial board an interview before his September speech in Kent, spending an hour with them in the Kent State basketball coach's office.

Likely well-briefed on Sullivan's interests and opinions, Obama gave her a clear answer about his position on Iran: Basically, he'll attack Iran just before it actually builds a nuclear weapon, but not earlier.  Sullivan made that conversation into one of the best pieces I've read about Iran's nuclear program, a column that ought to be required reading on a national level.

Obama's measured responses to Iran and the latest Mideast turmoil reaped rewards with the PD. "Romney's tendency to bluster on foreign policy provides more cause for doubt," the editorial reads. "The United States cannot afford to be drawn into new wars without clear national interests at stake.... Obama has showed that he favors engagement over bluster."

Newspaper endorsements don't matter as much as they used to; there are fewer newspaper readers and undecided voters today. But this endorsement mattered to Obama, and he got it.

Cleveland.com commenters halt county jail contract

Cleveland.com's comment sections are usually a malicious playland of thinly veiled racism, hall-of-mirrors impersonations, innuendo and sputtering rage, dominated by anonymous trolls expressing the community's dark, unchained id.

But this week, citizen watchdogs waded into the online mud and accomplished something. Able Googlers jumped onto a cleveland.com page, spontaneously crowd-sourced, and flagged a contractor's questionable record. They got a Plain Dealer reporter to ask some tough questions and got the Cuyahoga County government to hold up a contract award.

It started this Sunday, when the paper published an article about the growing cost of replacing the county jail's 37-year-old kitchen. A builders association president's complaints blamed the price increase, from $5 million to $6 million, on the county's decision to require union labor.

But readers noticed something else. The firm poised to win the contract, Brigadier Construction Services, was partially owned by Frederick D. Perkins. His family has a long history of getting government contracts in Cleveland and elsewhere -- and their companies' structures and business relationships have often come under scrutiny.

The commenters linked to a 2008 Plain Dealer investigation of several companies owned by members of the Perkins and Cifani families, which asked whether the companies were structured in a way that allowed them to take advantage of government set-aside programs for minority-owned contractors.

They also pointed to a Dayton Daily News article that showed Brigadier had been banned from a federal contracting program for companies owned by disabled veterans. The feds found that Shawnté Thompson, a disabled vet and part-owner, did not really control the company. Instead, it seemed largely controlled by McTech, a local company owned by Mark Perkins, Frederick D. Perkins' brother.

A reader e-mailed me, too, remembering the Perkins family from my July 2005 story "Inside the Nate Gray Case." Frederick D. appears to be the son of Fred and Gail Perkins of Choice Construction, a now-defunct local contractor whose offices were raided by the FBI in 2000.  Choice Construction figured prominently in my story, which examined the ties between Gray and several local minority-owned companies that rose to prominence due to generous contract awards from Cleveland City Hall during the Mike White administration.

At one point, the feds charged Choice with acting as a front company for white-owned companies, though the charge was dropped. Fred Perkins pled guilty to campaign-finance law violations, Gail Perkins to filing a false tax return. The FBI scrutinized Choice, McTech, and Perk Co. (a third company once owned by a Perkins) as part of the Gray investigation, though no charges of wrongdoing resulted.

The posts on cleveland.com led Plain Dealer reporter Laura Johnston to the Dayton article, which led her to court documents about Brigadier's federal ban.  Yesterday Johnston asked county executive Ed FitzGerald about the questions surrounding Brigadier, and he responded by pulling the contract from last night's council agenda.  FitzGerald said he would invite Brigadier's owners to meet with him and defend themselves.

In a well-deserved Twitter hat-tip, Johnston thanked cleveland.com commenters for pointing her to the Dayton article. Tipsters are as old as reporting, and reporters are nothing without sources. But online, we can connect and research faster than ever.

In Cleveland right now, we need that immediacy.  Watching the questions about Brigadier spread  reminded me of our columnist Michael D. Roberts' argument that the Nate Gray and Jimmy Dimora corruption scandals indicted the public and the press for a lack of vigilance. This week, we saw how it ought to work.

Update, 10/13: Brigadier got the contract.  I don't expect we've heard the last of this, though.  It raises the question of whether the county's proposed ban on contractors who've violated various rules should include companies who've gotten in trouble with other governments.

Revised thinking on boards of revision

The county council is bracing itself for its first major disagreement with Ed FitzGerald -- and trying to prevent an all-out war with the Plain Dealer. It’s poised to reappoint two people who joined the boards of revision late last year – after the exposés that called the integrity of local property valuations into question.

The county executive and the daily paper insist that no one on the boards of revision should be reappointed. They want a “clean sweep,” they say. But the council will choose most of the new board members -- and it sees a clear distinction between the longtime board members who served during the scandal years and people named to the board to cope with the scandals’ fallout.

“Someone who came on board after all the problems, and someone who stepped up to help the county out as those taxpayers’ cases were backing up … I think they’re in a different category,” says Jack Schron (pictured), a Republican councilman. He and council president C. Ellen Connally are meeting with the Plain Dealer editorial board today to try to get the paper to give the recent appointees a chance.

Two of council’s eight leading candidates for the boards of revision are post-scandal appointees who joined the boards in August 2010 or later, Schron tells me. (He wouldn’t name them because they haven’t passed pre-employment checks yet, but he said they weren’t Frank Russo appointees.)

“Some of these people, they were asked to take on a yeoman’s task of coming forward and helping our the county in a backlog situation and help work through it,” Schron says. “It’s hard for me to find fault with people who stepped up and made a civic commitment.”

Schron says council is unlikely to reappoint any longtime board of revision incumbents.

“Whether or not they did anything improper, they were in that era where the public is looking for a fresh start,” he says. “Unfortunately, some of them might get caught up in that. … It doesn’t mean they couldn’t be a candidate, but it’s going to be a lot harder to get past all the concerns people have.” That’s not just his opinion: “I do believe that’s the general consensus [on council].”

Four of the 28 candidates council recently interviewed are longtime incumbent board members. That means they arguably share responsibility for the shoddy or questionable work the Plain Dealer exposed: half-days of work, bad record-keeping, board members lowering the tax values of each others’ properties. One has dropped out since.

Seven other candidates joined the boards between August and November 2010, after the exposés. They’re the candidates that the council and the executive disagree over. County chief of staff Matt Carroll confirms that FitzGerald wants even the post-scandal hires cleared off the boards.

“Even those people were not selected in an open way,” Carroll told me Friday. “It was a closed process. People were not given the opportunity to apply. Some people were selected, possibly [people] of quality, but the fact that it was not an open process, that is a reason they could not be reappointed. That is a continuing taint to the process. That’s the difference. [There’s] a different level of quality and culpability, but that [they were] not part of an open process continues to concern.”

This seems pretty weak to me. Someone who joined the boards in the fall isn’t the least bit “culpable” for bad practices exposed earlier. And anyone who gets reappointed will have answered an open posting this time and made it through a four-step screening process.

That’s unlikely to satisfy the Plain Dealer. Like an overzealous watchdog that tries to bite everyone who startles it, it’s made the county council its favorite new chew toy. (It bit the council six times in five days last week: Monday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Thursday, Friday.)

That’s why Schron and Connally are trying to get the editorial board to reconsider its opposition to the recent appointees. “Sorry, draining the swamp halfway cannot be an option,” an editorial snarled unpersuasively last week.

If the PD starts howling again about the board of revision, casting council as the old guard, politics as usual, etc. etc., it can probably do a lot of further damage to the council’s reputation. Or it could change its mind and draw a basic distinction: Between those who share responsibility for the board of revision’s past failures and those who don’t.

Update, 1/21: Today's editorial signals a welcome truce, or at least some détente -- ruining my plans to create a drinking game out of the PD's county council coverage. (If the paper uses the phrase "secret meeting," slam your drink!)

Why didn't the Plain Dealer catch county corruption?

Doris O’Donnell, one of Cleveland’s best reporters of the mid-20th century, asked the question first. Why didn’t the Plain Dealer expose Cuyahoga County’s corruption before the FBI?

“The reporters had to be pretty goddamn lazy if they didn't know that Jimmy Dimora and Frank Russo have been living on the hog for 10 years,” the retired reporter raged to Scene in 2008, after federal agents raided the county building. “How can they get away with those houses and that real estate company without anyone knowing?”

The ten houses Russo bought and sold, some for upwards of $400,000. The 619 gift-givers and 389 free meals Dimora meticulously reported to the state over 11 years. Why no stories about them before the FBI noticed?

Now, Ted Diadiun’s spent 4,729 words trying to answer the question. His review of the paper’s county government coverage in last Sunday’s paper wasn’t as harsh as O’Donnell’s. The PD wasn’t lazy before 2008, the reader representative wrote, but it was guilty of “sins of journalistic omission -- the failure to follow up leads, to cultivate sources and mobilize resources, to report aggressively on matters of keen public interest rather than accepting business as usual.”

Diadiun’s final verdict was fair and tough. But his story starts slow, leaving the best stuff toward the end. Fascinating details hang in the air, their implications never nailed down. Here’s my guide to the highlights – or, really, the lowlights.


The paper’s old hands let Gerald McFaul off easy. Dick Feagler, former columnist for the PD and the Cleveland Press, offered one of the story’s most honest and disappointing quotes:

I knew Gerry McFaul back in the old days. I knew he was probably playing fast and loose . . . but I think my mind was that that's the way the system was. I don't remember anyone fainting with shock when they found out that the sheriff was taking kickbacks.

Brent Larkin, the paper’s political sage and editorial page editor, also missed a possible chance to catch McFaul. Diadiun writes:

Larkin had a friendly relationship with the former sheriff. … One of [Mark] Puente's sources said that he saw Larkin jocularly talking to McFaul at public gatherings and concluded that he'd better keep whatever information he had about McFaul to himself. Larkin was just doing his job as a columnist by getting out and about, but that's not the way it appeared, at least to this potential tipster.

Diadiun cuts Larkin too much of a break here. He notes that Larkin wrote a column accounting for his failure to see McFaul’s true character, but he doesn’t quote this key line from Larkin’s piece:

There were periodic rumblings about the aggressive fund-raising tactics surrounding McFaul's annual clambake. But the overwhelming consensus in town held that McFaul was a pretty good sheriff.

Turns out those clambakes were a big story. Investigators say McFaul made deputies spend 500 hours a year selling tickets to them on county time. Also, McFaul pocketed $50,000 in cash over 10 years from souvenirs he sold at them. Oops!

The paper published warnings about Dimora and Russo’s character – then took its eye off them. Diadiun starts by summing up decades of the paper’s Dimora, Russo, and McFaul coverage. The PD ran tough pieces that foreshadowed today’s corruption scandal: 1992 reports on the political mini-machine Dimora assembled in Bedford Heights, coverage of Russo’s guilty plea to misdemeanor dereliction of duty in 1998.

But that sharp coverage begs the bigger question. When Dimora and Russo survived those scandals and became the local Democratic Party’s most powerful leaders, why didn’t alarm bells go off in the newsroom? Why wasn’t the paper watching to see if they’d cut corners on a bigger scale?

Doug Clifton hunted corruption at the city, not the county. For years, the paper had only one reporter covering Cuyahoga County government, Diadiun reminds us. That inevitably reflects on Clifton, editor from 1999 to 2007.

Clifton hangs the reporters who held that beat out to dry. “We had people covering the county, and if they’d been doing their job, they should have been looking into it,” he told Diadiun. Yes, but guidance and resources come from the top.

Chris Quinn, now metro editor, defends Clifton by saying he woke up the paper and took on more serious journalism. True, but he’s reminiscing about the good old days when Clifton set Quinn and Mark Vosburgh loose to aggressively cover Mike White’s third term as mayor. Meanwhile, the county attracted less challenging coverage.

(Of course, Clifton’s hardly alone. Local media attention shifted from City Hall to the county building about three years ago, when the commissioners tried to launch a building boom with taxpayer money. I’ve written about this shift before, and I include myself: I moved here in 2000 and started reporting more about the county and Dimora in 2007. I first heard about Dimora’s gift lists in 2005, and looking back, I wish I’d sent away for them and asked, is this normal? Who are these people?)

What changed? Susan Goldberg – and Jim Rokakis. The Cuyahoga County treasurer outed himself to Diadiun as the corruption scandal’s super-source:

The politification of the county was complete, and in plain sight. All you had to do was match up the hiring rolls with the lists of precinct committeemen. This has been going on for years. As I told Susan Goldberg in my first lunch with her after she got here, this county was Sodom and Gomorrah.

Goldberg took Rokakis’ advice, Diadiun implies, and launched patronage exposés of Frank Russo’s and Pat O’Malley’s offices.

Rokakis also said the FBI interviewed him about county government in 2000, 2004, and 2005 – further evidence that, unlike the Plain Dealer, the FBI never took their eye off Russo after his 1998 conviction.

Rokakis has won a lot of praise for his honesty and conscientiousness in a corrupted county. Now we can add one more thing. When Rokakis knew, or suspected, that Russo was corrupt, he didn’t go along to get along. He blew the whistle to both the feds and the press. For reporters, that’s further proof of the importance of good sources.

Puente, politicians' scourge, leaves Plain Dealer

This Sunday, Mark Puente's byline appeared in the Plain Dealer for the last time. Prosecutor Bill Mason, who found Puente on his front porch more times than he liked this year, is probably shaking off the fear of his own ringing doorbell. Ex-sheriff Gerald McFaul, still under house arrest for crimes Puente uncovered, may feel cursed anew to know his nemesis is free to enjoy southern sunshine.

Puente, the PD's best reporter of the past three years, left earlier this month to write about Florida real estate for the prestigious St. Petersburg Times. It's a shock to readers who appreciated his relentless exposés of Cleveland politicians, but no surprise to those close to him.

"Everybody knew my goal was to live close to the water, where it’s warm," says Puente, who went to college in North Carolina. "The editors, everybody, knew that." Now, he says, "I can walk out of the newsroom at lunchtime and be by the bay in less than five minutes. I can watch sailboats come in, watch pelicans dive for fish. It’s 80 degrees."

Puente's 2½-year winning streak in Cleveland began the day an enraged Jimmy Dimora threw him and fellow reporter Henry Gomez out of a meeting. It ran all the way to this Sunday's latest cash-and-favors exposé of Frank Russo's office, co-reported with Gabriel Baird and Gomez. In between, Puente's relentless investigative reporting brought down the once-impregnable McFaul and had co-workers at the paper talking Pulitzer.

Even the PD's toughest critics respect Puente's work. Consider this line, from Ted Diadiun's Sunday piece on why the paper didn't aggressively investigate county corruption and patronage before 2008: "Some people I talked with think that if a reporter like Puente had been on the beat, the paper would have broken the story earlier," Diadiun wrote.

So Puente's Nov. 4 departure, along with editor Susan Goldberg's the same week, leaves local watchdog-journalism lovers nervous about whether the Plain Dealer will keep it up.

Puente, graciously, says he'll be rooting for his former colleagues to go after the town's slipperier politicians. New editor Debra Adams Simmons calls watchdogging her top priority, he notes. As for the line in Diaduin's story, Puente told Diaduin that reporters can't investigate without sources, and he didn't have them in the sheriff's office until McFaul laid people off.

Cultivating sources was the secret to Puente's work in the Justice Center. The story of his goodbye to the police beat, told in two Facebook posts, could give aspiring young reporters an advanced lesson in how the best beat reporters do their work.

In one last-day post, Puente wrote that he deleted 463 phone numbers from his company cell phone. In another, he wrote: “Headed to the Justice Center to say goodbye to some good people: the hot dog vendors and a few cashiers. These folks know everything; they hear everything. I was proud they trusted me and had me on speed dial.”

"The people with the most meager, lowest paying jobs, they’re willing to talk," Puente says. "They want to talk. They just need to be approached and build that trust up. Talking to the janitors, the clerical people who come up and say hi -- once they found someone willing to listen to them, they came flocking to me."

To read my June 2009 story on how Puente's reporting took McFaul down, click here.

Plain Dealer endorses Dolan, criticizes FitzGerald

The Plain Dealer spills lots of ink endorsing Matt Dolan for county executive today. But the most interesting part of its editorial comes at the end, when it explains why it's not endorsing Ed FitzGerald.

The Dolan endorsement is no surprise. He's a center-right candidate, and the paper's editorial page is centrist and swinging right this year, dissatisfied with Democratic incumbents, rhetoric and bad habits. So the editors praise Dolan as "thoughtful and independent," citing his work on Cuyahoga County's behalf in the legislature and his willingness to break with fellow Republicans.

What I wanted to see was how the paper judged the recent controversies around FitzGerald, including Dolan's attempts to link him to the Democratic establishment. The PD's answer is about as tough as can be while still showing some balance. "FitzGerald's Achilles heel," it says, is "his ties to the swamp of politics-as-usual."

The editorial does scold Dolan for his "aggressively negative campaign," likely a reference to his TV ad about FitzGerald's appearance as PO14 in the Jimmy Dimora indictment. FitzGerald has rightly protested that the feds' "PO" code-names don't necessarily imply wrongdoing, but are meant to protect the uncharged, including innocent bystanders.

Yet the PD doesn't let FitzGerald off the hook on Winterhurst-gate, turning instead to a campaign donation I've reported about here. "Taking a call from now-indicted businessman William Neiheiser at the behest of ... Dimora may not have been wrong," the editorial says, "but accepting a campaign donation from Neiheiser while his firm was negotiating a contract with Lakewood was."

The paper also scolds FitzGerald for getting rid of contributions from Dimora and Frank Russo -- a move first reported in Cleveland Magazine and on this blog -- and not doing the same with contributions from Plumbers Local 55, a union that's endorsed FitzGerald and was named in the Dimora indictment. It repeats the common complaint about FitzGerald's ambition and his quick switch from Issue 6 critic to executive candidate.

FitzGerald still has a good chance to win the election. He's a talented candidate, and Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1 in Cuyahoga County. But the PD endorsement amplifies the argument that the county's best chance for reform is to elect an executive with no ties to the Democratic Party at all.

To read my coverage of the county executive race in Cleveland Magazine, including pieces on the leading candidates, click here.

What's taking so long?: The PD's corruption update

People are always asking me why federal prosecutors are taking so long to charge Jimmy Dimora and Frank Russo. I recently answered by comparing our corruption to Detroit's. The Plain Dealer's answer came Sunday in a well-reported story by Peter Krouse, a cool chart, and a clear front-page headline: "Building the case: Feds work carefully; Their strategy is to catch small fish first." From the story:

To make sure their charges stick, ... the evidence against the two men must be overwhelming. ... It's crucial in this kind of corruption probe to have a case that is "virtually suffocating," said Geoffrey Mearns, a former federal prosecutor ... "What the feds like to put together is a case with shock-and-awe evidence, almost like the military strategy going into Iraq," [former FBI agent John] McCaffrey said.

Last year, the PD ran a story that seemed impatient for big charges. Now that the town is more impatient, the paper, smartly contrarian, steps up and explains the probe's pace more patiently, with well-informed comparisons to the complexity of corruption probes in Chicago, Detroit, and New Jersey.

The full-page chart is the single best summary of the investigation I've seen. It shows how almost all of the 19 defendants on the prosecutors' official list (pdf) are allegedly connected to the uncharged Dimora and Russo. Color-coding shows who's pleaded guilty, who's been charged, and who hasn't. I'm saving it to use as a guide to the case.

(Why does the story mention "more than two dozen" defendants, while the chart has 19? The PD sometimes counts the busted Cleveland building inspectors as county corruption defendants. The prosecutors don't. Only one crooked city inspector has a known connection to the county probe. A former Stonebridge construction manager may be a second link.)

Krouse also gets a tip that the big charges may come before long:

Mearns said ... he believes two years should be sufficient to complete an investigation of this size and scope. ... One source close to the investigation said prosecutors have met recently with attorneys for Russo and Dimora and indicated that if their clients don't cooperate, charges could be filed soon.

PD maps Mason's power

The Professor is still in hiding, so I'll say it: Class, Mark Puente's big Sunday report on prosecutor Bill Mason's office is required reading.

After weeks of research, the Plain Dealer has given us an evolved sequel to its 2008 "Politics and Payroll" series on Pat O'Malley and Frank Russo's offices. Patronage is no longer the buzzword: It's power.

No one who follows Cleveland politics will be shocked to hear that Bill Mason is a political prosecutor, or that he gets involved in small-suburb council and school board races, or that he wields clout in the Democrats' mid-term appointments to county offices. (See my Oct. 2008 Pat O'Malley profile, for instance, which describes how Mason and O'Malley rose to power together.)

But Puente maps out Mason's vast influence, documenting what was anecdotal. Four former Mason employees are now on Cleveland city council. Five are judges. Current Mason employees work for 21 Cuyahoga County towns. Ten are on city councils. An assistant prosecutor on Solon's city council voted to appoint his boss's boss to a vacant council seat in December. Tom Day, a Mason ally and business partner -- and the possible future county Democratic chairman -- co-owns Qwestcom Graphics, northern Ohio's biggest distributor of campaign literature, which gets lots of work from Mason, his employees, and towns where his network is strong.

Puente's report isn't just thoroughly researched, it's well-thought-out. I sense meticulous editing as well as strong reporting, for fairness and impregnability against counterattack. The "to-be-sure grafs" -- the passages where the writer offers counterweights to his thesis -- are carefully crafted. Mason gets a chance to cast his office's political connections in a positive light. ("I have a highly educated and hard-working staff... I strongly encourage them to be involved in their communities. When good people are involved in government, good things will happen within government.")

Gone is the front-page mug-shot exposé feel of the O'Malley and Russo reports, maybe because the paper found that the recorder's and auditor's offices more closely resembled pure patronage machines. Lots of people are qualified to record deeds, but prosecutors have to pass law school and the bar. "The records show that about 18 percent of Mason's current work force had political ties before they were hired," Puente writes -- compared to about 33 percent in Russo's office and 35 percent when O'Malley was recorder.

By publishing this, the PD gets a small monkey off its back. Joe Wagner, author of the 2008 patronage exposés, reportedly looked into writing a sequel on Mason, but the project was shelved. That became Exhibit A in anti-Mason forces' arguments that the PD had gone soft on the prosecutor (see this backhanded imitation, for instance). If that was ever true, it isn't now.

MetroHealth scandal almost revealed 5 years ago

Sometimes you can tell how good a story is by the debates it sparks on the publication's op-ed and letters pages.

Like today, when the Plain Dealer spars with William Gaskill, chairman of the board of MetroHealth, the county hospital, on page A5.

Here's the story Gaskill's angry about: "Hospital was warned of problems with exec" -- a must-read Sunday article by James McCarty about two contractors who tried to prove that MetroHealth vice-president John Carroll was steering contracts five years ago.

This month, federal prosecutors filed six federal charges against Carroll, including bribery conspiracy. He's accused of taking "travel, gift cards, home improvements and home furnishings valued at approximately $678,000" from co-defendant Nilesh Patel, a vice-president at East West Construction Company. Carroll allegedly took free trips to France, Italy, the Netherlands, Italy Japan and Singapore thanks to Patel. East-West got $51 million in contracts from MetroHealth.

In 2004, Lou Joseph and Jeff Zellers of Brewer-Garrett Corp. "complained to anyone who would listen that Carroll was stacking the deck when putting out bids," McCarty reports. They warned the hospital's then-president, then-chairwoman, and top lawyer about Carroll, complained to the county prosecutor, then sued. A judge declared their allegations showed an "appearance of impropriety" and ordered a contract rebid -- but Carroll fixed the rebidding too, the story says. The hospital did not act until an IRS audit uncovered irregularities last year. Then it fired Carroll.

Gaskill complains that "we had no credible evidence of wrongdoing by Carroll" in 2004. He notes that Zellers himself says in the article, "There were always rumors... but nothing we could substantiate." But the PD buys the ink, so it gets the last word. Its editorial on the same page asks why no one at MetroHealth seems to have bothered to watch Carroll more closely after the lawsuit. Good question.

More than libraries are at stake

I was wondering when the Plain Dealer would run a story that clearly dramatizes what's at stake in the state budget crisis: not just Ohio's libraries, but a huge part of our safety net for poor kids, the elderly, and the mentally ill. The story came yesterday: Brent Larkin's column, "Strickland doing an appalling job."

Don't call Larkin retired. His freelance column this week calls out the governor (pictured) -- and House Speaker Armond Budish -- with a clarity that's been missing from a lot of the state budget crisis coverage:
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If Strickland were a Republican, this state's many advocates for children would be burning him in effigy on the Statehouse lawn. ...

... In tough times, governors have to cut spending. But good governors don't:

Abolish funding for a program that provides preschool to 14,400 low-income children.

Eliminate state aid to food pantries, especially in a recession.

Whack deep into programs for the mentally challenged and the elderly.

Permit the plundering of funding for their most important accomplishment -- in this case, higher education, the cornerstone of Ohio's economic future.

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The budget crisis is going into overtime, with Strickland and Republicans at an impasse over slot machines and other issues. If they can't agree on a budget by tomorrow night, they'll have to pass a temporary budget and keep negotiating. Here are the Columbus Dispatch's reports from yesterday and today.

My Medical Mart story, on the radio

Here is my story about the Medical Mart, which I talked about on WCPN's Reporters' Roundtable this morning. And here is the audio archive of the show.

I got to talk about most of the main points in my story, but not all. (We talked about the Mart being a promising but risky concept, because medical manufacturers are noncommittal about it so far. I didn't get into how the risk is mitigated by the fact that Cleveland will also get back into the competition for conventions of all kinds.)

The most fun was talking with Mark Puente of the Plain Dealer (who I profiled in the June issue because of his exposés of former sheriff Gerald McFaul). Dan Moulthrop and I asked him about his story on Earle Turner, the city clerk of courts, apparently not showing up to work much.

Some odd details that didn't make the story, but came out on the air: Turner was wearing a blanket during one interview with Puente. Another day, Turner sat in his car for 45 minutes, trying to avoid getting his picture taken. Eventually he gave up and the newspaper photographer got his shot. It's not that bad a photo!

Earle Turner latest target of PD exposé

Has the Plain Dealer run out of county officials to expose as patronage kings? Maybe -- because now they're investigating a city official: Earle Turner, the Cleveland municipal court clerk.

Both stories are by Mark Puente, the reporter whose exposés of former sheriff Gerald McFaul I wrote about in this month's Cleveland Magazine.

I'll let Puente's latest work speak for itself:
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Turner averaged about seven hours in the office per week last year, according to parking records at the Justice Center.
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Turner has hired 127 clerks since taking office in 1996, but none of them have taken a civil service test. ... Turner said state law allows him to use the "chief deputy" title on all hires. The label is not used to skirt civil service laws, he said. But he later added that if his employees took entrance tests, the city's civil service commission would oversee it and determine how many workers the office needs.

"I would lose my power," Turner said. "I wouldn't have no authority."

The reporter who took on the sheriff

I've got a new politics article in the June issue of Cleveland Magazine. It's about Mark Puente (pictured), the Plain Dealer reporter whose exposés this winter ended with Sheriff Gerald McFaul's resignation.

Here's a link to the article on clevelandmagazine.com.

(If you'd like to link to it, you can use this shortcut: tinyurl.com/PuenteMcFaulCM)

Brent Larkin, PD's political voice, retires

Brent Larkin, Plain Dealer editorial page editor for 18 years, retired this weekend. I think he'll go down in history as Cleveland's last big power-broker journalist, the last guy who single-handedly pens the town's conventional wisdom.

Larkin, who's covered Cleveland politics since 1971, has written about all our epic political figures: the Stokes Brothers, George Forbes, Mike White. His January 1980 Cleveland Magazine article about the end of Dennis Kucinich's term as mayor is the definitive explanation of the Boy Mayor's downfall. As editorial page editor, Larkin's been the town's political referee, analyst, and judge. He may not have had the power to make or end political careers and start or squelch movements, like Louis Seltzer (Cleveland Press editor from 1928 to 1966) or Tom Vail (at the 1960s-1980s Plain Dealer). But in the 1990s and 2000s, he was their heir, the guy whose support politicians cultivated over lunch at Johnny's on West 6th as Larkin interviewed them for insider knowledge.

I expect someone will write or blog that Larkin was too much the insider. (Update, Tue. a.m.: Roldo more or less says so, citing the guest list at Larkin's retirement party.)

But his editorial page could also use its power as a voice for good government and reform, exposing the cynical political games that only succeed when no one pays attention. Take a look at this 2006 editorial, one of many in the PD's campaign to get Joan Synenberg elected judge over Christine Russo.

With Larkin gone, political coverage (and clout) at the Plain Dealer will be spread around. The powerful won't know whom to invite to lunch. Terry Egger, the publisher, or Susan Goldberg, the paper's editor? (Both have seats on the editorial board.) Larkin's successor as editorial page editor, Elizabeth Sullivan, is a foreign-policy expert. So, much of the deep local political knowledge will come from Joe Frolik, now the chief editorial writer. But these days, Frolik's been writing more about national politics, while political reporter Mark Naymik's columns read more like Larkin's -- summaries and critiques of the insider buzz.

In his last regular column, Larkin notes that many of Cleveland's leaders of the early 1970s are still wielding power. He says it's time for young leaders to emerge. Without criticizing the huge spending coming soon on the Medical Mart and the Opportunity Corridor, Larkin says Greater Cleveland should spend similar amounts on aggressive early childhood programs, college scholarships, and building a new economy on our Lake Erie location (as water becomes scarce elsewhere).

Here's Mike McIntyre's exit interview with Larkin:

Hagan blasts PD for Kennedy question, "pimp" comment

Tim Hagan blasted the Plain Dealer again at today's county commission meeting. Scroll down (way down) to see the cleveland.com video.

Hagan says the paper has "questioned my integrity" and resorted to personal attacks. "The press is out of control, for the purpose of seeking readership while the paper is in decline," he charged.

Hagan's mad -- understandably -- that editorial writer Chris Evans, commenting on the Medical Mart project on WCPN last Thursday, called Hagan a "pimp leading the dance." Evans has apologized. (Roldo Bartimole, a Hagan critic for decades, cheers the "pimp" line here.)

Hagan's also upset that the PD dared to ask a really obvious and important question: how has Tim Hagan's close relationship with the Kennedy family affected the negotiations with Med Mart developer MMPI and its president, Chris Kennedy?

This is the article that set Hagan off. The PD says one reason it threatened a lawsuit to get the county to reveal its latest agreement with MMPI is that it's "concerned" about the Hagan-Chris Kennedy relationship.

At a meeting a year ago, when an earlier county-MMPI agreement was unveiled, even Jimmy Dimora mentioned Hagan's awkward ties.

“Commissioner Hagan especially, because of his relationship with the Kennedy family, was in a very difficult position,” Dimora said then. "And he stood up for our community and for making sure we got a good deal. Even though [with] friendship, sometimes you try to be lax and easier with your friends, more understanding, he stood the line, which helped make sure that MMPI knew that we were serious and that we wanted to do the right thing for the taxpayers."

That's Hagan's dilemma, his conflict of interest, right there. Of course the PD should ask about it.

I did too, last spring. "The assumption is that I would be compromised in those discussions," Hagan said then. "I don’t want to give that impression. I certainly know people in this town as well or better that we’ve negotiated with." (Today at the meeting, Hagan said Sam Miller and the Ratners of Forest City have given him $75,000 over the years, which didn't keep him from rejecting their Med Mart site.)

"I know Chris Kennedy," Hagan told me last year. "I went to his mother’s 80th birthday party. They’ve been friends of mine for almost 40 years. But the Kennedys no longer own Merchandise Mart, and he’s the president of the company. I don’t think that precludes my discussions with him.

"I think the public scrutiny and transparency of the deal put before the public is proof that I’ve tried to operate in the best interests of community first and foremost."

Which is why the PD wants to see the new agreement!

I think the Hagan-Kennedy relationship has potential risks and potential rewards. Of course it's harder to be a tough negotiator when a friend is across the table. But people who like the Medical Mart could flip the argument and claim: if it weren't for Hagan's valuable personal relationship, the deal would have never gotten done! Update, Sunday: Chris Kennedy says exactly that in a Plain Dealer story: "Who's got the juice in that town? ... We would not invest there if it weren't for Tim Hagan."

One more bit of news: Toward the end of the video, Hagan says he's not running for reelection in 2012.

Update, Friday a.m.: Here's the PD story about Hagan's complaints, with responses from editor Susan Goldberg.

PD to FBI: Quit stalling and bring him in!

The Plain Dealer is tired of waiting to see if the feds indict Jimmy Dimora. Its front-page article today, "204 days & counting: Is probe lagging?" asks why no charges have been filed yet.

It's a weak story. Its impatience reminds me a little of Louis Seltzer's infamous Cleveland Press headline about the Sam Sheppard case: "Quit Stalling And Bring Him In!"

OK, the PD, unlike Seltzer, gets someone from an activist group to say, "Charge him or move on." Still, the paper knows the feds aren't done investigating -- the Parma schools were hit with a subpoena just two weeks ago -- yet it suggests the feds could just charge Dimora with something (anything!) now and figure out the rest later: "If prosecutors do charge Dimora, they could file one or two charges soon and then follow up with additional charges, which is common."

The paper asks why the feds can't move as fast as they did in their rush to charge now-impeached Illinois governor and hair freak Rod Blagojevich. Yet the story quotes U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's explanation that he charged Blagojevich to stop him "in the middle of ... a political corruption crime spree" -- that is, to keep him from selling off a U.S. Senate seat. There's just no evidence that Dimora and Co. are about to pull off any swindle that big.

Yes, I know county officials and voters are stuck in a very awkward position. Even though the FBI is investigating Dimora, he's still making decisions on big issues such as the Medical Mart. Because Dimora hasn't been charged with a crime, only the Republican Party and The Professor have called for him to go.

But consider how long Cleveland's last big corruption case took to unfold. In December 2002, the FBI caught East Cleveland Mayor Emmanuel Onunwor on tape asking political fixer Nate Gray, "Did Santa Claus bring anything?" Agents confronted Onunwor outside Gray's Shaker Square office and found bribe money on him in March 2003. That was the start of the "overt phase" of the Nate Gray investigation (as the feds call it).

But the FBI didn't rush its case in order to get Onunwor out of office. They indicted him in April 2004, a year later. He remained mayor until his conviction that August. Gray was found guilty in August 2005 -- or 2 1/2 years after the investigation became overt.

The county probe is more complicated. It includes work done on Dimora and Frank Russo's houses, Russo's housemate, his son, his private real estate company, tax assessments, the Ameritrust Tower, the juvenile justice center, two judges, several contractors, worker's comp deals across the suburbs, the county's hospital and public housing, alleged ex-mobsters, casino chips, Dimora's refrigerator, a photograph of a now-deceased county employee/former strip-club manager/former radio DJ, and a note about a mysterious "$20,000 payment." Dimora's attorney estimates the feds are poring over 500,000 documents. Give them time!

Author: Hagan & Co. are "the true cynics"

Charles Michener, the former New Yorker writer who's writing a book about how Cleveland can turn itself around, ripped into county leaders in his City Club talk today.

A lack of transparency around Cleveland's biggest public projects is one of the town's most serious problems, Michener argued. With the county's $400 million Medical Mart project and the port authority's $500 million port relocation, he argued, "Open discussion was sacrificed for closed-door deal-making."

The county commissioners have failed to answer basic questions about how the Medical Mart will be connected to the rest of downtown and the lakefront, Michener said. He brought up Tim Hagan's angry accusation that the Plain Dealer was "cynical" for asking questions about their site decision. The commissioners' reaction, Michener said, "reveals them as the true cynics."

Michener mentioned two other political situations that he thinks hold Cleveland back: the "homophobic reaction" to the city's new domestic-partner registry and political leaders' silence about racial tensions. "[Cleveland's] leaders don't confront race," he complained. He pointed to the tsunami of racist e-mails that the PD got last year in reaction to the assault on lawyer Kevin McDermott in Shaker Heights, and asked why political leaders didn't speak out about it.

My colleague Laura Crawford also covers Michener's talk in this post on Cleveland Magazine's main blog.