With DePiero leaving, who'll be Parma's next mayor?

Now that Bill Mason and Dean DePiero have decided not to run again, who'll be the next king of Parma politics? We'll find out soon. Three experienced Democrats are running to succeed DePiero as mayor of Cleveland's largest suburb: Chuck Germana, Tim DeGeeter, and Mickey Mottl. They'll face off in a May 3 primary.

It'll be an interesting election. DeGeeter, a state representative, is a Mason-DePiero ally. Mottl, former state rep and son of a former congressman, was once a rival of DePiero's. Germana, the former Parma city council president, is somewhere in between.

Germana is probably the best-known outside Parma, thanks to his seat on the new county council and his failed bid for its leadership. He's a solid, reliable guy, the type of mayor Parma was used to having before 2003, when it elected DePiero, then a 35-year-old rising star. If Germana wins the primary and the November election, he'd leave the county council after only a year. When he talked to the Sun News last week, he sounded like he hadn't expected DePiero to bail.

Lots of people didn't. But there are two good reasons DePiero is getting out of politics instead of heading to Congress or Columbus, as Bill Mason once told me he might.

One was foreshadowed in early 2004, when I visited DePiero in Parma City Hall for my profile of him, "The Flamingo Kid." On the way into his office, he introduced me to his administrative assistant and former campaign manager: Vince Russo. Nice guy, very young. I think I asked him if he was any relation to the other political Russos, and learned he was Frank Russo's son. I shook his hand and figured that with that then-golden name, he'd be elected judge within 10 years.

Instead, Vince's brief stint at Parma City Hall linked DePiero to the county corruption scandal five years later. It turns out Frank Russo bribed J. Kevin Kelley to stay out of the 2003 mayor's race. "In exchange for PO2 convincing Kelley to withdraw from the mayoral race, Kelley's opponent gave a thing of value to a relative of PO2," the Kelley charges read. Everyone knew the feds were hinting about DePiero, but he denied any wrongdoing.

The second reason DePiero's leaving is his family. I know, they all say that. But take a look at the Plain Dealer story about his announcement. Below the requisite scandal summary, we learn that DePiero lost his dad and a niece and nephew last year, and that his mother, Roberta (whom I interviewed about Parma in 2009), recently suffered a stroke. Reason enough not to make a bad year worse by spending it traipsing around town, running for re-election, having to answer Frank Russo questions everywhere you go.

So, with DePiero leaving the corner of Ridge and Ridgewood at year's end, and Mason retiring after 2012, who'll command the Parma wing of the Democratic Party -- the remains of Mason's machine, the southwest-county faction that stretches at least from Parma and Old Brooklyn to Berea Municipal Court? My quick guess is DeGeeter -- Mason's support will still help a lot in Parma itself -- but I wouldn't count Germana out either.

To read "The Flamingo Kid," my 2004 profile of DePiero, click here.

Council chooses Connally as president, tackles board of revisions mess

A really tiny girl belted out the national anthem with a huge, blistering voice. An honor guard marched the U.S. and Ohio flags to their posts. Rev. Marvin McMickle prayed the new council would “resist cliques, schisms, and partisan divides.” And one by one, the 11 new Cuyahoga County council members took their oaths of office with something close to 11 different Bibles, swearers-in, and pronunciations of “Cuyahoga.”

Then they got to work, choosing C. Ellen Connally as president and setting up interviews to fill the troubled boards of revisions.

A month ago, Connally’s bid for the council presidency looked like it was in trouble. The Plain Dealer, supporters of rival Chuck Germana, and a good number of regular citizens were denouncing her for lining up support in a private meeting. But the coalition behind Connally held firm tonight. All seven Democrats other than Germana voted for her.

Despite McMickle’s prayer, the vote for vice-president split exactly along party lines. Sunny Simon got all eight Democrats’ votes, while the Republicans voted as a bloc for Jack Schron. It’s a reminder that, though the Plain Dealer cast the leadership contest as a matter of secrecy versus openness, it was really more about Democrats versus Republicans.

“In this past month and a half,” Connally said, “we’ve come to work together and respect each other's views. ... I recognize the missteps along the way, but I hope in this new year and this new government, we can put all that behind us and move forward.”

The council also started to tackle the fallout from the old government’s scandals. It voted to interview candidates for the troubled boards of revisions starting tomorrow morning. “The board of revisions is one of the most severe problems facing Cuyahoga County,” said Dale Miller. They’re moving fast, Miller explained, because county executive Ed FitzGerald has said he’ll fire any board of revision members who don’t resign, so that the new government can choose its own appointees. The council will choose two members of each revision board, FitzGerald one.

FitzGerald has said he won’t appoint anyone who served on the boards in the past and has asked the council not to either. But council has agreed to interview past board members who’ve reapplied and passed a test and a screening by the county human resources department.

The council also approved the rules it’ll follow. It’ll allow for public comment at the beginning and end of every meeting. It’ll set up ten committees to work on legislation, including one on economic development and one on ethics and oversight. Non-voting members of the public can be added to subcommittees. The idea, Miller said, was to provide for lots of transparency and public input.

When I asked Miller about the rules at a recess, he said he’d e-mail them to me. He sent them about an hour after the meeting ended. (You can read them here.) They include a public procedure for choosing the next council president and vice-president. Yeah, I’d say the council is trying to move beyond the “secret meeting” flap.

To read my profile of Ellen Connally from the November issue of Cleveland Magazine, click here.

Ellen Connally’s horrible week

Well, this isn’t what C. Ellen Connally expected. Belligerent Tea Partiers from “District Zero” getting in her face. A rival who cuts a deal with her, then publicly apologizes. Angry front-page headlines for four six days straight.

Yes, Connally, my November profile subject, had the Worst Week in Cleveland.

On Friday, Connally thought she’d nailed down the six votes she needed to become Cuyahoga County council president. Turns out it won't be so easy. News of the private meeting where she forged a pact with fellow councilman-elect Dale Miller reached the Plain Dealer, and the town went wild.

The council-to-be’s get-together yesterday at Cleveland State degenerated into a chaotic embarrassment, the likes of which I haven’t seen at a public meeting since Jimmy Dimora shut up and East Cleveland got rid of Eric Brewer. Now, an extremely scientific online poll of people who read the Plain Dealer’s angry editorial finds (as of tonight) that 84.75% think the “secret meeting” was “outrageous” and “must not stand,” while 9.36% think it’s merely “regrettable.”

Watching the pitchforks gather, I’m tempted to mount an extremely unfashionable defense of the old-fashioned art of politics. I'm as big a fan of transparency as the next reporter, but I also know how leadership contests in councils and legislatures really work. Of course candidates line up their support before the actual vote. Of course a three-way fight ends with two hopefuls cutting a deal to ice out the third. Connally's machinations look pretty mild by most political standards. And compared to the gladiatorial combat I’ve seen break out over the Cleveland city council presidency, the county councilors who met at Julian Rogers’ house look like nuns in a convent.

Still, I’m counting four errors Connally and her allies made that are impossible to defend as good politics, let alone good government.

#1: After Stuart Garson’s plan to hold a Democratic caucus was ferociously slapped down, she didn't take the hint that "secret meetings" are not in vogue in the post-Dimora era. She showed a tin ear for the public's desire for transparency -- and a simple lack of shrewdness by not striking her deal in a dozen phone calls instead.

#2: Connally called Chuck Germana to say there was a party, but he wasn’t invited -- thus assuring the friendly get-together would end up exposed on page A1. (Note how Dave Greenspan was “shocked” in the Saturday story, but Germana wasn’t.)

#3: Rogers invited five council members, but let a sixth in when he showed up. Now everyone can say they violated the spirit of Ohio’s sunshine law. Once the council takes office, it’ll be illegal for six or more of the 11 to meet in private.

#4: Connally tried to talk her way out of the mess and made it worse. Her possibly fatal quote, “Leadership is not the public’s business,” strikes me as a former judge’s failed attempt to be law-school clever. Trying to argue that the sunshine law doesn’t apply to leadership debates, Connally stumbled into a gaffe that may have done terrible harm to her reputation.

That’d be a shame. Connally doesn’t fit the arrogant caricature flying around Cleveland.com’s scabrous comment sections. She’s still one of the new council’s top talents. Like I said in my profile, “Change Agent,” she’s got a judge’s calm demeanor, rectitude and intellect, combined with a blunt honesty and sharp wit. Her op-ed takedown of George Forbes last year over a fawn-beating in Euclid is a classic of recent Cleveland political humor. It’s ironic how quickly someone can go from being the rotten-tomato-thrower to the splattered.

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.