From the Metro Desk of Cleveland Urban News.Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com, Ohio's No 1 and No 2 online Black news venues) Reach Cleveland Urban News.Com by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and by phone at 216-659-0473
CLEVELAND,Ohio- In the midst of community fallout about his slowness in disciplining police responsible for gunning down unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell with 137 bullets following a high speed car chase from downtown Cleveland on Nov. 29 that ended in neighboring East Cleveland, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson (pictured) has drawn a formidable challenger for this year's mayoral race in Democratic millionaire businessman Ken Lanci (pictured). And race is inevitably at play too where the two term biracial Jackson, also a Democrat and former Cleveland City Council president who grew up with his two siblings in the poverty stricken Ward 5 where he still lives and still enjoys staunch support from The Old Black Political Guard, is technically Black, and Lanci is White.
The 63-year-old Lanci, who owns and runs Consolidated Graphics Group Inc., will announce at a press conference on Monday that he will take on Jackson, first for a non-partisan primary election on September 10, and thereafter in the general election if voters select him among the top two candidates. He lost a partisan primary race for Cuyahoga County executive in 2010, then as a Independent, a race that Democrat Ed FitzGerald went on to win after beating Terri Hamilton Brown in the Democratic primary.
A candidate for The Old Black Political Guard supported also by Jackson, Hamilton Brown got a late start in the county executive race and, like Lanci, she has never held public office.
But Lanci has his own money to wage a mayoral election fight against the still popular Jackson, 67, whose political war chest is no joke either.
The largely Black City of Cleveland, which has some 400,000 people and is roughly 58 percent Black, is divided along racial lines by the Cuyahoga River with Whites primarily residing on the west side of it, and Blacks dominating the east side. It is the second most segregated major American city in the nation next to Boston and was ripe for a now defunct desegregation court order in the late 1970s after the late Federal District Court Judge Frank Battisti found the Cleveland School District and the state guilty of running a dual school system in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, and to the unconstitutional detriment of Black children and their families. That court order, called the remedial orders, and which included crosstown busing, was completely lifted by the federal court's granting of unitary status in 1998 and a state law that gives the city mayor control of Cleveland schools simultaneously took effect.
The 18- member Cleveland City council, which had 19 members until west side councilman Jay Westbrook retired in March, is now half and half by race and has no Hispanic council person as it once had, though the west side council persons are all White and a majority of the councilpersons on the east side are Black.
How racial demographics will impact the election, if at all, remains to be seen.
Jackson is also supported by Black clergy and the business and educational communities, and even some community activists. And he is a brilliant political strategist, and is good at getting city council to vote his way on public policy matters. He is also an ally of Council President Martin Sweeney.
But some west side councilmen say he is aloof and a redistricting map voted in by city council late last month that drops council seats from 19 to 17 next year and after this year's city council elections has some Black council members who believe Jackson influenced it upset.
Ward 8 Councilman Jeff Johnson and Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell were among the four council members that voted against the redistricting map. Johnson will take on Ward 10 Councilman Eugene Miller this year after the new map saw his and Conwell's wards merged into a new Ward 9 to get rid of one a council seat relative to the two seat city council reduction for next year, a population reduction mandate required by a city charter amendment previously adopted by voters. The other ousted seat went with Westbrook's March retirement that got rid of his Ward 16.
Others that have taken out petitions to run in Ward 10 are Community Activist Donna Walker Brown and Ward 10 Democratic Ward Leader Anthony Hairston.
The last time a White led Cleveland was former Mayor Jane Campbell. She lost a heated reelection bid in 2005 to Jackson, after falling out with The Old Black Political Guard and the powerful Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, the rank and file of Cleveland police.
The 13 all non-Black police officers that killed Williams and Russell are still on the job and have not been criminally charged through a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury indictment, though a comprehensive report from Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine released earlier this year found systemic problems or racism in the Cleveland Police Department, and that the officers at issue had violated a host of city policies and police procedures.
A captain, lieutenant and 10 police supervisors will be disciplined anywhere from a 10 day suspension to possible termination for violating city policies and police procedures relative to the deadly shooting, Jackson and Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath announced at a press conference on Tuesday, one that followed a City Hall rally on Monday by some 150 community activists and family members of Cleveland police deadly shooting victims.
The car chase that culminated in the shooting drew 65 police cars and over 100 police officers, some management types included. But the infamous 13 police officers that did the Williams-Russell shooting, 12 White and one Hispanic, took a more aggressive approach and shot a hail of 137 bullets at the couple, mafia style.
Led by union president Jeffrey Follmer, who is White, The Cleveland Police Patromen's Association has branded the chase the "perfect chase," and has basically said that Russell and Williams deserved what they got because they fled police.
