CLEVELAND, Ohio- Four term retiring Black mayor Frank Jackson, 75, will leave office in coming days as Cleveland's longest serving mayor as the city welcomes a new Black mayor and five new members of city council to bring in the new year of 2022. They will join the 12 council members either elected or reelected in November and all 17 council members will be sworn in by 11th Congressional District Congresswoman Shontel Brown, who won the Democratic primary for the congressional seat against former Ohio senator Nina Turner, and then the November general election against Republican Lavern Gore.
Newcomer Justin Bibb, a former Barack Obama intern and progressive who ran on the political platform of decreasing crime and reforming the city's troubled police department, won the Cleveland nonpartisan runoff election for mayor in November over veteran Cleveland City Council President Kevin Kelley to become the city's fourth Black mayor and its youngest behind former mayor Dennis Kucinich. And the mayor elect has already named deputy police chief Wayne Drummond as his interim police chief and six members of his cabinet, including Ryan Puente, his campaign manager and a former executive director of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.
Puente will replace longtime Jackson ally Valerie McCall as chief of government affairs.
Elections for mayor and city council are held simultaneously in the same year, which keeps most of the city legislators on the city council from giving up a relatively safe council seat for a possible, and often unlikely, mayoral win.
City council is comprised of eight Blacks, eight Whites, and one Hispanic member, Ward 14 Councilwoman Jasmin Santana. Two of the 17 city council members lost their seats relative to the November election with Ward 5 Councilman Delores Gray, a Black east side councilwoman, losing to Richard Starr and Ward 12 Councilman Anthony Brancatelli, a White west side councilman of 16 years, getting outed by Rebecca Maurer, a practicing attorney. And state Rep Stephanie Howse won over former councilman T.J. Dow in Ward 7 to replace outgoing councilman Bashear Jones, who chose to run for mayor rather than for reelection to city council and lost in last month's mayoral primary.
Delores Gray's twin, Deborah Gray, won over Eric Walker in Ward 4, which was represented for decades by former councilman Ken Johnson, who is serving a six year prison sentence for public corruption and tax evasion. Johnson's successor, the controversial and outspoken Marion Anita Gardner, who was appointed to replace Johnson after he was indicted on criminal charges and suspended from office earlier this year by the Ohio Supreme Court, did not seek election to the Ward 4 council seat. And In Ward 13, community organizer and housing advocate Kris Harsh defeated Kate Warren to replace Kelley on city council
In short, Deborah Gray, Stephanie Howse, Richard Starr, Rebecca Maurer and Krish Harsh are the five new members of city council, per the November election, and Kevin Kelley, Marion Anita Gardner, Delores Gray, Bashear Jones and Anthoby Bracantelli are the five council persons who will leave office next week.
Ward 6 Councilman Blaine Griffin, a Black east side councilman and former director of the city's community relations board under Jackson who ran for reelection unopposed, has already been vetted by his city council colleagues as the next president of city council to replace Kelley, who took a chance when he opted to run unsuccessfully for mayor this year rather than for reelection to city council.
In spite of never holding public office before, Bibb, 34, won with a whopping 63 percent of the vote compared to Kelley's 37 percent. Both of them are Democrats, In fact, current mayor Jackson and all 17 members of city council are Democrats as Cleveland is a Democratic stronghold, as is the county it sits in, Cuyahoga County, a 29 percent Black county, and the second largest of Ohio's 88 counties.
"The work is just beginning," the mayor-elect said during an election night watch party at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church, one of the city's most prominent Black churches. "Tonight we will celebrate, and tomorrow we are going to roll up our sleeves and do the hard work of moving our city forward, in a better direction."
Flanked mainly by Black people during his victory speech that night, including Black preachers who championed his bid for mayor, Bibb promised to revitalize Cleveland and said change is on its way.
When voters chose him last month to lead the city, Bibb became Cleveland's fourth Black mayor behind the election of Carl B Stokes in 1967, who was the city's first Black mayor, Michael R. White in 1989, and Mayor Jackson in 2005, Jackson a city council president when he ousted Jane Campbell that year to take the helm as mayor.
His victory over Kelley, 53 and a White councilman who has represented west side ward 13 for 16 years, was not all that surprising, though political pundits were torn on whom they believed would become the city's next mayor.
City Council president for the last eight years and a part-time attorney, Kelley placed second in the seven-way primary race held in September and Bibb, armed with an endorsement from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, and political heavyweights like U.S. Sen Sherrod Brown and former mayors Jane Campbell and White, placed first, winning with 27 percent of the vote to Kelley's 19 percent. And though Kelley had establishment support going into the general election, and the backing of Mayor Jackson and a handful of the 17 members of city council, including five of the eight Black east side council persons, including Councilman Griffin and Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell, he still lost. It was a political shake up by all accounts, and it was, no doubt, the old guard vs the newcomers
In a well written editorial published at its online affiliate of Cleveland.com and as a cover story in its Sunday's printed edition, the Plain Dealer's editorial board endorsed Bibb before the primary election, saying that though he is young at 34 and has no political experience, he has the vision to lead the largely Black major American city of some 385,000 people. That message apparently resonated with voters as well.
"In this pivotal moment for Cleveland.....we believe the candidate with the vision for the successful city we wish to be is Justin Bibb," the editorial reads in part.
A nonprofit executive and former banker, Bibb is a product of Cleveland's public schools who went on to earn a law degree from Case Western Reserve University. When he was younger he interned for Obama when Obama was a junior U.S. senator from Chicago, Illinois.
The son of a social worker and Cleveland cop, Bibb ran a grassroots campaign with the support of young progressives across racial lines who embraced his ideas and political stances. He knocked on doors and met with small community groups across the city long before the primary election got underway, and it paid off in the end when he won the crowded primary over six other candidates, all of them Democrats.
East side voters, Black voters specifically, voted overwhelmingly for Bibb, an indication that Blacks continue to want a Black mayor of a majority Black city.
A major American city, Cleveland is roughly 58 percent Black and most of its residents live in poverty. It is the most segregated city in the nation behind Boston and most Blacks reside on the city's east side and Whites on the west side, the two sides separated by the Cuyahoga River. Bibb is poised also to revamp the city's largely Black Cleveland Metropolitan School District, which the city mayor has controlled since 1998 per a state law that eliminated an elected school board and replaced it with appointees of the mayor.
Pictured are 18-year-old Tamara McLoyd, who has been charged with aggravated murder relative to the New Year's Eve carjacking and shooting death of 25-year-old Cleveland police officer Shane Bartek, also pictured
