More on the mayor's race

Picking up on my post about the mayoral race, Henry Gomez at cleveland.com drops a few more names of possible Frank Jackson challengers, including former city tech czar Michael DeAloia and councilmen Mike Polensek and Zack Reed (I will bet that Polensek and Reed won't run, but we'll see). Gomez also pointed out something I should have mentioned: Joe Cimperman is a political ally of Jackson's -- another reason Cimperman won't run.

In that previous post, I wrote that Chris Ronayne had thought about running for mayor this year. Actually, Ronayne was too coy to name the year he wanted to run. I just tweaked the post to reflect that.

Frank Jackson and the bully pulpit theory

One reason some people wish someone would run against Mayor Frank Jackson is that they think big-city mayors have powers far beyond the official definitions of the job. They want an inspirational leader. It’s an idea we explored in our coverage of the 2005 mayor’s race, when we went in search of “The Perfect Mayor.”

Trouble is, Cleveland is shrinking, so City Hall has no extra money to spend, so the mayor’s clout and power are shrinking. Being mayor of Cleveland just ain’t what it used to be.

That frustrates some people. They say: The mayor should use his bully pulpit to rally the city and region around a plan for a comeback!

I hear this all the time, and I heard it when Jane Campbell was mayor too. The bully pulpit idea is one of the two biggest clichés about how a big-city mayor should lead. (The other, usually used against bully-pulpit mayors, is the charge that a mayor is favoring downtown and neglecting neighborhoods. This automatically comes up whenever a big project is built downtown.)

The bully pulpit theory of leadership is popular among businesspeople, who want the mayor to be a dealmaker, handing out tax breaks and schmoozing people like them to bring jobs in the city and build big stuff downtown. It’s popular among journalists, because dramatic speeches, calls to action, and huge and expensive projects are all good stories for us. Suburbanites usually like bully-pulpit mayors (unless the mayor is a total bully), because their opinions come from TV or the paper.

But city residents judge the mayor by whether their garbage gets picked up or the cops show up when they call. I think that’s why the bully pulpit theory isn’t popular with most Cleveland voters.

If it was, they wouldn’t have elected Jackson. They knew he wasn’t a bully-pulpit mayor when they elected him. They chose the quiet guy because they saw him as reliable and trustworthy.

I think bully pulpits are overrated, but there are moments when a mayor, like a president or other leaders, needs to speak up and calm everyone’s over-shocked nerves. Take the scary incident in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood in 2007 that caught the whole town’s attention: a man’s house was riddled with bullets as revenge after he shot an armed robber in self-defense. Jackson’s stubborn refusal to speak up about that made him look weak and out of touch.

But if you think Jackson should be more of a cheerleader, stage-directing a little more Believe in Cleveland drama, well, he does that, in his own way. Take a look at this op-ed piece the mayor sent to the Plain Dealer last month. Read it twice. First, just read it as Jackson’s variation on the common complaint that “Cleveland has a self-esteem problem.” Then read it again, asking, who does he believe is the critical voice inside Cleveland’s collective mind, telling Cleveland it’ll never amount to anything?

Here’s the clue: the quotes. Jackson wrote the piece in response to the Sunday, November 23 edition of the Plain Dealer, which had the caption “Pittsburgh’s power over Cleveland” atop the front page and the headline “Cleveland is falling apart: Who will pick up the pieces?” on the Forum section front.

A bully pulpit mayor would've called a press conference and yelled and screamed that the Plain Dealer was bringing the city down. Then the press would've written self-referentially about the mayor's feud with the press. Instead, the angry but polite mayor (or an aide) sat down at the keyboard and wrote something. How civilized!

Medical Mart: Behind the closed doors

Excellent story about this week's Medical Mart decision in the Plain Dealer today -- a must-read.

The front-page story asks why the commissioners decided, within hours of hearing the developer's recommendation, to pick the downtown mall as the location for the convention center and Medical Mart.

The story's highlights:

-Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones and county negotiator Fred Nance wanted to negotiate price before announcing a decision. Tim Hagan and Jimmy Dimora decided to make the decision right away -- another big disagreement between them and Jones.

-Hagan and Nance are very sensitive to the critics who assume local politics is beholden to Sam Miller and Forest City (which owns the other possible site).

-Hagan's biggest motivation was a sense of urgency -- an urgency the Plain Dealer and a lot of other people in town complained has been missing during the year and a half of studying and deliberating about the project. This story will likely infuriate Hagan, Dimora and Nance. They feel whipsawed -- criticized for moving too slow, then for moving too fast.

-But that's not the real issue here. Here's the real issue, high up in the story:
"The county has decided to spend nearly a half-billion public dollars without holding a meeting in public to discuss the basis for its decision. ... Why would a county government in the middle of a sweeping federal corruption investigation choose not to conduct its business in the most open way possible?"

-That's why Dimora's take isn't satisifying. Here's his quote: "We figured, 'Why continue to prolong the decision'" when MMPI had already done the analysis[?] "The public and the media should trust the due diligence" and cost analysis, he said.

-The commissioners do decide too many things in private executive sessions. But with this story, the Plain Dealer has done a great job of getting them to explain what went on behind those closed doors.

-The Plain Dealer and other citizens who want this decision explained clearly will probably not get what they want. Hagan and Dimora are usually not inclined to do this. When Jones held public forums on the Medical Mart site selection this summer, they didn't attend. If they act like they acted with the Ameritrust Tower issue, they're more likely to rant at the Plain Dealer at Thursday's commissioners meeting. (Wish I could be there to blog about it, but alas, I'm leaving for vacation that day.)

The quiet mayor

I’ve had this same conversation a few times in the last couple of months. Hey, when is Frank Jackson up for re-election? someone asks. November, I tell them. Oh, good! they say, with a sigh full of frustration. Then they ask, Who’s going to run against him?

No one, I say.

So they ask about Chris Ronayne (if they’ve been paying some attention to local politics) or Joe Cimperman (if they haven’t).

Nope, sorry. I’ve asked a few of my political sources: Who’s thinking of running against Jackson this year? The word is: no one of any stature.

This prospect -- the mayor coasting to re-election in November -- will drive some people crazy. What’s he done? they complain. But in his own quiet way, Jackson's been pushing regionalism, making deals with suburbs that include promises not to lure city businesses away. He’s flown to Costa Rica, Germany and France to try to attract foreign investment. He’s kept the city’s books in decent shape, while nearby cities such as Detroit are slashing budgets.

So far, Jackson has avoided one of the biggest cliches about mayoral leadership: he is the rare big-city mayor who is not accused of favoring downtown and neglecting neighborhoods. Jackson's years as a ward leader help him with this. I’m hearing that he is quite popular in most city neighborhoods, and that he even went door-to-door this summer to ask random citizens how the city can improve its services. I bet the news that the mayor showed up down the street gets around the block fast.

I’m sure that's why Chris Ronayne, president of University Circle, isn’t planning to challenge Jackson. A year ago, my colleague Andy Netzel profiled Ronayne, wrote about his interest in being mayor someday, and sized up his prospects if he ran against Jackson. But in December, Ronayne told the Plain Dealer's Mark Naymik that he does not plan to run for mayor in 2009.

A lot of Clevelanders remember the buzz eight years ago about Joe Cimperman running for mayor someday. Cimperman is definitely ambitious – just look at his run for Congress against Dennis Kucinich – but I’m hearing he’s more likely to try to move up to a county office next time one opens up.

Naymik's piece explained some of the other reasons that Jackson will be tough for anyone to beat. For instance, he came up with a graceful way to say that black candidates have an advantage because the city’s population is 54 percent black.

The column upset Norm Roulet at RealNEO – check out his funny poll: “Plain Dealer Has Declared Frank Jackson Re-Elected Mayor in 2009... is that what you want?” (Click here and scroll down.)

But I’m hearing what Naymik’s hearing. So another online survey ought to ask, “Who should run against Frank Jackson in 2009?” and, more important, “Who can beat him?”

If you’ve got a name, let me know.

(Photo by Mike Raby, from flickr)

County chooses downtown mall as Medical Mart, convention center site

This is a surprise! The county commissioners have decided to build the Medical Mart and convention center on the downtown mall, not at Tower City.

MMPI, the developer, says it's figured out a way to build the project on the site of the current convention center for $108 million less than on Forest City's property on the river.

This'll stun everyone who thinks Sam Miller of Forest City controls Cleveland politics. But it's happening for a simple reason: Sam Miller does not control MMPI, and MMPI had an incentive to save money.

This summer, I was worried that the project would go to Tower City simply because Forest City was (naturally) lobbying for its proposal, while the mall site, which was publicly owned, didn't have an advocate. So when the Greater Cleveland Partnership's site committee declared that building the project at Tower City would save $60 million, who was going to argue?

But the county commissioners put a really important clause in their agreement with MMPI: the developer is responsible for all cost overruns. They did that because they knew critics would try to attack the convention center as "another Gateway." Lots of people opposed to big public downtown projects still point to the flaws in the 1991 Gateway deal, which left the public paying for lots of unexpected debt and expenses.

So MMPI threw out the Partnership's recommendation and started over. (See my earlier post about a Plain Dealer story that explained this, but not clearly.) The Chicago-based developer came up with a cheaper way to build the convention center: by using the existing center's foundation.

Yesterday's talks were held in private, a lot of details about the project haven't come out yet, and the county's deal with MMPI is still not finalized. Still, the debate about where to put a convention center has gone on for more than ten years. So this is really big news.

New City Hall blog

Last month Roldo Bartimole pined for the long-gone days when reporters swarmed Cleveland City Hall, digging for news. He lamented that he heard the Plain Dealer was cutting back from two City Hall reporters to only one. Well, at least that one guy's working hard.

Henry Gomez, our daily's watchdog at 601 Lakeside, is now blogging daily from City Hall, passing on politics news with speed and webby verve. I've posted a link to his Inside City Hall blog on my blogroll of local politics sites (over there on the right).

Now anyone who's wondering, what the hell is Cleveland City Council doing lately? Anything? can find out daily. Sadly, Gomez's post today is about how few council members showed up for an major hearing about which big projects Mayor Frank Jackson will ask President Obama to fund. (Want to stimulate the Cleveland economy? Build us an Inner Belt Bridge that won't fall down!)

Nice use of the web by the Plain Dealer here. Sometimes it seems like cleveland.com thinks "blog" just means "page where we post the news we're printing tomorrow." This one's different. The editors are letting an ambitious reporter post newsy and observational stuff that won't make the paper and play with a voice that wouldn't fit the Metro section. It's a newspaper blog that reads like a blog.

Yes, it's sad more of what Gomez is doing can't make the print edition. His report last week about Matt Zone's failed council coup shouldn't have been hidden on page 3B. But newspapers and Cleveland are shrinking. The city has gone from 750,000 people in 1970 (when Roldo was a young reporter) to 444,000 or less today. Also, since Cleveland is poor, City Hall doesn't have much money to spend. So most political attention shifts to the county or Washington, and those of us who want more news about the Zone-Sweeney battle can go online.

Turns out, plenty of readers want a daily fix of City Hall news. In 11 hours, 26 people have commented on Gomez's post! I'm jealous!

More inaugural blogging

On Cleveland Magazine's main blog, intern Michael Bartlett has a report from the inauguration simulcast at the Palace Theater in Playhouse Square.  Check it out.