Reached by telephone on Saturday afternoon, Smith told political editor Kathy Wray Coleman of clevelandurbannews.com and kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com that she is, in fact, making her second bid for county executive.

"Yes, I am running," said Smith "I feel that its time for qualified women to hold that office.

Smith told reporters that she entered the race after her friend, Maple Heights Mayor Annette Blackwell, also a Black Democrat, suspended her campaign for the county executive post. Sources say Blackwell was being groomed by current county executive Armond Budish to succeed, Budish a Beachwood Democrat and former speaker of the Ohio House who is not running for a third term, to possibly succeed him.

Smith served as a member of the Ohio Senate from 2007 to 2014. Previously, she was a member of the Ohio House of Representatives. She backed Budish' opponent when Budish first won as county executive via the 2014 general election, after he beat her and a few other candidates that year in the Democratic primary, Smith coming in third place, and after running a competitive race. She was later appointed by then governor John Kasich, a former presidential candidate who is now a CNN commentator, to the state parole board for five years, the two of them teaming up previously and when she was an Ohio senator to get unprecedented criminal justice reform legislation passed relative to expunging criminal records.

A Democratic stronghold that is 29 percent Black and Ohio's second largest of its 88 counties, Cuyahoga County, with Cleveland its largest city, has a population of roughly 1.2 million people. It is governed by a county executive, Budish, and an 11-member county council, a  county governance structure that took effect in 2011 after voters scrapped the three county commissioners and the elected offices of the county sheriff, auditor, treasurer, and clerk of courts, all of the countywide offices except the judges and county prosecutor, which is now Mike O'Malley.

Those countywide offices at issue are now appointed positions under the purview of the county executive, though county council has some leeway as to the selection of the county sheriff pursuant to a subsequent charter amendment that voters also approved.

Black leaders, led by the NAACP, then county  commissioner Peter Lawson Jones, and former congresswoman Marcia L Fudge, who is now U.S. secretary of housing and urban Development with the President Joe Biden administration, opposed the change in county governance. They argued that it would dilute Black leadership, though county voters approved the measure by a two-to-one margin.

There are four Blacks on the 11- member bipartisan county council under the relatively new county governance structure that took effect in 2011 after voters approved a charter amendment that got rid of the three commissioners and replaced them with a county executive and county council. And all of then are Democrats

Pernel Jones Jr., who is part owner of the family named funeral home on Cleveland's largely Black east side is Black and is the county council president. The other three are Councilpersons Meredith Turner, whom county Democratic party operatives appointed last year to serve out the remainder of former Congresswoman Brown's unexpired term after Brown was elected to Congress to succeed ally and HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge, Cheryl Stephens, a former mayor of Cleveland Heights and a current lieutenant governor candidate on Democrat Nan Whaley's gubernatorial ticket, and Yvonne Conwell, the wife of Cleveland Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell. (Editor's note: Cuyahoga County and its county lawmakers, and the 17 member Cleveland City Council, whose members pass city ordinances, are two distinct and separate governing bodies)