New mayor promising hope for Cleveland

CLEVELAND (AP) — Frank Jackson was sworn as Cleveland's 56th mayor on Monday, promising to bring new hope to city where nearly a quarter of residents live in poverty and whose population continues to decline.

Jackson said his dream was to make Cleveland a city "where we are one people, that we are one community, living and working together, joined that there will be respect and equality and justice."

The inauguration was held before a packed audience at East Tech High School in the impoverished neighborhood that Jackson represented in City Council for 16 years.

A free inaugural party will be held Saturday at the Cleveland State University arena.

Jackson, 59, an Army veteran of Vietnam, worked his way through college and law school and ran for City Council when his beloved mentor died and Jackson disagreed with the new councilman. He became council president in 2001.

In his inaugural remarks, Jackson said he revitalized the ward he represented on council by unifying people to overcome a "rising tide of hopelessness and despair."

The city has been marked by poverty and a declining population.

Cleveland was ranked 12th on the Census Bureau's latest American Community Survey last year with 23 percent of its citizens living in poverty, nearly twice the national average.

Cleveland ranked first the year before.

Census figures also show the city's population fell to 458,000 in July 2004, down 3.9 percent from April 2000.

The soft-spoken Jackson won election by beating a fellow Democrat, incumbent Mayor Jane Campbell, the city's first woman mayor. Her re-election chances were hurt by tough financial times that led to teacher, police and firefighter layoffs.

Campbell served in the state Legislature and had an urban-suburban constituency as county commissioner before her election as mayor in 2001. She plans to teach during the spring semester at Harvard University as part of a fellowship at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

¶ Monday, January 02, 2006 //

Coincidentally enough, the very Plain Dealer would have you believe that some departments at City Hall are now professionally managed. To bad we can’t say the same about the Plain Dealer. This is the same plain paper that endorsed Jane Campbell.

When you consider that City programs are largely administered and funded through tax payer’s generosity, grants and contracts, the circumstances created by so called unsupervised professional managers provides an unprecedented opportunity for fraud, waste, and abuse.

Poor leadership, findings of fraud, waste and abuse at the Water Department and the Airport tell me that our citizens are being lied to.

The Administrators hired by the former Mayor have been failures.

¶ Sunday, January 01, 2006 //

Congratulations Mayor Jackson!

As we gear up for a new era, the winds of change in Cleveland are about to blow. Blow like they do during a blustery Cleveland winter morning. If you close your eyes and open them one year from now, our City as you know it now will have a very different look.

It's all about to change and change in a big way. Enjoy!

¶ Sunday, January 01, 2006 //

¶ Tuesday, November 08, 2005 //

Four labor groups endorse Jackson

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Four labor groups, with a large percentage of Cleveland members, endorsed Council President Frank Jackson for mayor Tuesday.

The groups include the United Food & Commercial Workers, which has about 3,000 members in the city and UNITE HERE, the hospitality and linen workers union, which has about 1,000 members in Cleveland.

Also endorsing Jackson are the Cleveland Association of Rescue Employees, with more than 300 members and the Vanguards of Cleveland, a black and Latino firefighters group, with about 180 members.

In other campaign news, the first mayoral debate between Jackson and Mayor Jane Campbell will be at 6:45 tonight. The event will be in the atrium of the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University, East 17th Street and Euclid Avenue. The event is free but reservations are required.

Call 216-781-8375 or e-mail info@lwvcef.org. WKYC Channel 3 will televise the debate live.

¶ Wednesday, October 26, 2005 //

BREAKING NEWS

If the election for Mayor of Cleveland were held today, it would be a landslide victory for Frank Jackson.

That is what our exclusive Channel 3/Survey USA poll is predicting.In a poll of 587 likely voters, 54-percent would vote for Jackson, while 34-percent for Jane Campbell. Eleven percent of Cleveland voters are undecided.The mayor is ahead on the west side with 47-percent of the vote.

Frank Jackson is preferred by 43-percent of west-siders.On the east side, Jackson out-polls the mayor more than two-to-one. Sixty-two percent of east-siders favor the council president. Twenty-seven percent would vote for Mayor Campbell.Our poll was taken Saturday through Monday with 587 likely voters. It has a margin of error plus or minus 4.1 percent.To see the entire survey, click on the related link.And Wednesday night will be the first of three mayoral debates. It's sponsored by the League of Women Voters. You can watch it live on wkyc.com beginning at 6:45 p.m.

¶ Tuesday, October 25, 2005 //

Don’t Reward Failure

Cleveland, under Jane Campbell and her inept staff have returned the City to a time that we want to forget. They have taken the City down the slippery slope toward the end of a once great American City. This administration has fallen into complacency, apathy, and political expediency. She has led this City towards the path of diminishment, failure, and demise, and has tarnished our once great City.

Most of the problems facing our City are the fault of Jane Campbell. Having said that, the solutions to these problems are nowhere to be found in this Administration. The questions require thought and leadership, and as we now know, does not exist. The problems require innovative thinking and creative solutions. Most of all, they require a deep and brilliant understanding of Cleveland. What we have for leadership at City Hall today is a Mayor consumed with rhetoric and saving her political future. We have a social Mayor, one who loves living large at the expense of our poor.

¶ Monday, October 24, 2005 //

Frank Jackson’s Code: Don't lie. Deliver on promises


We can not afford to allow another four years of failed leadership under Jane Campbell.

She has failed us time after time, is a habitual liar, has lost the support of major power brokers, is not supported by major elected politicians that once supported her, and is the first mayor in 26 years to loose in the primary.

We can not allow this race to be divided by the east and westside. We are all in the same boat, and this boat is sinking fast. We must come together to fill in the hole that is causing us to sink.

The current mayor and her administration have failed in there efforts to lead our city. We all must go with the best candidate out of the primary and that person is Frank Jackson.

Please read the PD article in Sundays paper (attached below). If anyone is looking to learn more about Mr. Jackson, this wondeful article will win you over. We have to change the direction our city is headed in under the current mayor.

Mayor Campbell is a disease and with some diseases you can treat them with medication, others you have to have surgery to "remove" the disease that is killing you. This mayor is a disease to the city of Cleveland and the region. She is killing us all with her failed leadership. No one wants to work with this woman because she is a liar, and cannot be trusted, and is the worst mayor ever elected in the history of Cleveland. She must be voted out of office on November 8, 2005.

I ask all Clevelanders who did not vote for Frank Jackson on October 4th, 2005 to give him the opportunity to lead our city by casting your vote for him on November 8, 2005.

Vote for Frank Jackson on November 8th and expect great things.

Jackson's lifelong code drives run for City Hall

Sunday, October 23, 2005
Olivera Perkins and Mark Naymik
Plain Dealer Reporters

Frank Jackson remains an enigma for Cleveland despite 15 years in public life.

That sets him apart from the woman he aims to unseat in the Cleveland mayor's race Nov. 8. Everyone knows Jane Campbell. She seems to have been everywhere these last four years.
But to know Jackson is not all that hard. It comes down to understanding what he describes as his personal code - principles implanted by his parents and shaped by his years on Cleveland's streets.

He says the code is simple: Don't lie. Deliver on promises.

The code explains what makes Jackson so famously stubborn and deliberate. It gives him his often single- minded passion for helping Cleveland's poor. It's what Jackson, 59, says propelled him into public serv ice, where his hallmark with colleagues has been his integrity.

He says that people who violate the code infuriate him, often prompting him to make life-changing decisions. Such perceived violations triggered him to enroll in college and run for City Council, and angered him enough to give up his $80,000-a-year position as council president to challenge Campbell.

That code also explains his obsti nance and why people say he has interfered with Cleveland's progress. In 1991, for example, he blocked a road that would have brought much- needed economic development to his neighborhood.

He also opposed the Gateway project and Cleveland Browns Stadium. His only interest in a new downtown convention center was leveraging money for neighborhoods.

Jackson admits he gets angry when someone slights his honor.

One of the first times he reacted this way, he says, was toward a new teacher at Max Hayes High School 40 years ago. As Jackson recounts it, the teacher wanted to establish his reputation as a disciplinarian. He falsely accused Jackson of fighting and dragged him into the principal’s office. When the teacher mistreated him a second time, Jackson belted him.

In his 20s, Jackson believed an employer refused to promote him because he is black. So he quit.

Four years ago, he thought Council President Michael Polensek had failed to deliver on promises. Jackson collected the votes to take Polensek’s job. And two years ago, he said, he came to believe that Campbell had repeatedly lied to him.

So he decided to take her job, too “There is one thing I learned from street life,” he says. “That there was a code. It is the code I live by now. Today it’s how I deal with the mayor and council.”
A world view in black and white

Jackson says he knows what it means to straddle Cleveland’s racial divide.
His father, George, a factory worker, was black. His mother, Rose, a homemaker, was white. The couple met in the 1940s in Uniontown, Pa., but soon moved to East 83rd Street in Cleveland’s predominantly black Kinsman neighborhood. Jackson presumes they hoped for more acceptance in Cleveland.

“Back then interracial marriage wasn’t a thing that people did,” he said.

Jackson said his light skin gave him a unique point of view growing up.

“What are you?” is a question people continue to ask him. He perceives that people treat him differently based on whether they believe him to be black or white.

Growing up in the black Central neighborhood, where his family moved when Jackson was young, Jackson felt like an outsider with people who saw him as white.

When he was in a white neighborhood, he blended in when he was not with his black friends. But when he was with them in a white neighborhood, he felt police harassed the youths, and passers-by glared at them. Jackson has always considered himself black.

After high school, he was drafted into the Army. He said family and friends warned him that an inner-city black man would end up on the front line. They told him to “play crazy” and offered other ways to dodge serving. But Jackson said he wouldn’t lie.

Ironically, being black may have kept him safe. When Jackson arrived in Vietnam, a black sergeant assigned him to a warehouse job. Jackson believes the sergeant gave him that assignment to protect him.

He returned home to a factory job and took a computer course. Soon he wanted to transfer from the factory floor to the computer department. The company said no. Jackson blamed racism because all the computer workers were white. So he quit.

The spell of joblessness that followed was an eye-opener. He spent much of his time running the streets and he says he noticed an irony about street life. The subculture followed his code more closely than the business world.

“It wasn’t the law that kept us in check,” he said. “The law was the law. It was the culture and that identity and that spirit of that community that people just didn’t do certain things. . . . You knew what the code and the unwritten rules were and you abided by them. If you did that, you had no problem.”

He finally took another factory job when his mother scolded him. He soon found himself taking offense at the white college students who worked there during the summers. “This was in the early ’70s, so they had this liberal thing going on,” he said. They talked about race and poverty. He didn’t think they knew what they were talking about, but he figured the only way to get credibility with the educated was to get educated. He enrolled at Cuyahoga Community College. A decade later, he had a master’s degree in urban studies and a law degree from Cleveland State University. He then passed the bar.

As a young man, Jackson said he was heavily influenced by the politics of one of his closest friends, Lonnie Burten, a crusading Central neighborhood councilman who fought for public housing tenants.

When Burten died of a heart attack in 1984 at age 40, Jackson was crushed. Even today, he can’t discuss Burten’s death without getting choked up. Jackson originally backed Burten’s successor, Preston Terry III, but he came to believe that Terry failed to live up to Burten’s vision. In 1989, he launched a campaign to take Terry’s seat. Jackson’s campaign promise was simple: To protect the neighborhood from “neglect by design,” as he frequently described the intentions of political, business and civic leaders.

And, in what would become his mantra for more than a decade, he pledged to fight anything that didn’t directly benefit his ward, even at the expense of the city overall.

“I’m willing to hold up anything that doesn’t help Ward 5,” he warned during his campaign. “I won’t be bashful.” Jackson beat Terry by nearly 1,500 votes.

His resistance to downtown projects — including the Gateway sports complex, Playhouse Square’s Wyndham Cleveland Hotel and Cleveland Browns Stadium — was like an allergic reaction. If a project wouldn’t produce jobs for the city’s poor or boost services, Jackson refused to support it.

Jackson said his opposition was not just about residents in his ward. He said the poor throughout the city benefited. He was even at odds with a local community group promoting development in his ward. The group asked Jackson in 1991 to support a study on building a four-lane boulevard through the ward, creating a link between the East and West sides by connecting Shaker Boulevard with Interstate 490.

The group’s leaders believed the project would spur retail and business development in a depressed area. Jackson feared the government would use the study to poach residents’ property. So he blocked it.

He then helped build new homes along the proposed route, dooming the project.
His protective spirit can border on special treatment.

Jackson for years has asked city inspectors not to fine homeowners in his ward for code violations. Jackson said the city and banks failed for decades to make money available for repairs, so it’s unfair to punish people who can’t afford home maintenance. Residents in Jackson’s ward have received the fewest number of housing fines since 2001: 24. The Collinwood ward that Polensek represents got the most: 330. Jackson acknowledged that he lobbies the city not to fine residents he represents.

“I will fall on the side of the people and do what’s right for them even though I know my butt is exposed to those who want to criticize me,” Jackson said in a recent interview with The Plain Dealer.

Critics accuse him of detachment

Jackson kept a low profile as a council member for 12 years, staying out of the day-to-day internal politics and never making headlines with public attacks on Mayor Michael R. White.
He was trying to stay true to his code through issues he championed — jobs for the poor, money for AIDS programs, and public housing development in his ward.

He rarely engaged his colleagues on such pressing citywide issues as the city’s airport, Water Department or lakefront development.

“He was not an active or aggressive guy within the body,”
said Polensek, who has been on council during Jackson’s entire tenure. “Frank was always behind the scenes.”

His critics, including former and current colleagues, view his quiet demeanor as detachment or parochialism.

Tony Coyne, a city Planning Commission member for 14 years, said Jackson has not been involved on big-picture projects. Coyne said he can’t remember seeing Jackson at any of the numerous community meetings on the city’s lakefront plan.

“He’s not somebody who’s said a word, and these are quality-oflife issues,” Coyne said.

When Coyne appeared before a council committee in 2003 to discuss a new convention center, “Frank didn’t ask a single question” about the building, Coyne said. Jackson’s only interest was in money the project might generate for neighborhoods, Coyne said.

Jackson took the lead promoting the convention center, but on the condition that its financing include $250 million for neighborhood development in the city and suburbs. When the extra money became unlikely, Jackson stopped talking about the convention center.

Jackson dismisses his critics as politically motivated or out of sync with his vision.
“The problem people have with me is that they think I’m two-dimensional. But I may think fouror five-dimensional,” he said.

Public housing effort brings Arbor Park

The best example of Jackson delivering on his promises to Ward 5 is the transformation of housing. He brought nearly $500 million in new public and private housing and stores to the ward. The developments were paid for largely by federal dollars. Jackson’s work with housing officials and elected officials was crucial. He’s most proud of Arbor Park Village, an $111 million housing project. It replaced Longwood apartments, a vivid example of blight, decay and failed dreams of urban renewal.

Jackson fought to rid the ward of places like Longwood but — in true form to his council campaign pledge — not their residents. He believed that the private market would not absorb a flood of low-income families, nor would suburban families accept them as neighbors. So he worked with federal officials to redevelop public housing in Central. Norman Krumholz, a city planning director in the 1970s and professor of urban studies at Cleveland State University, said Jackson was right.

Krumholz, who in the mid-’80s was a board member of the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, advocated spreading public housing around the county.

“That’s no more likely to happen now than then,” Krumholz said. “So looking at the reality of things, Jackson was right on the money — much more than I was in terms of respecting public housing and trying to make it better.”

Westbrook became an ally, Polensek a foe People who adhere to Jackson’s code win a loyal friend. One of Jackson’s closest political allies is West Side Councilman Jay Westbrook. The two formed a partnership in 1989, when Jackson agreed to back Westbrook for council president in exchange for help against Terry. The deal also let Jackson fill the two seats on the public housing board that the council president controlled. “I’m loyal to Westbrook — he never crossed me,” Jackson said. But Westbrook and Jackson lost power in 1999, when Councilman Michael Polensek staged a coup and unseated Westbrook as president.

Jackson, out of the circle of power for the first time since he was elected to council, quietly worked on a banking law that protects city residents from predatory lenders. He also continued to work closely with colleagues on a law requiring contractors to hire Cleveland residents on large-scale city construction projects. Jackson never got over Polensek’s coup. It was born, Jackson said, “in treachery and deceit.”

Driven by anger over what he saw as an increasingly dysfunctional council, Jackson began lining up support to topple Polensek in the summer of 2001. When he took the reins as council president, he dumped senior members of council appointed to leadership positions by Polensek.
“I don’t believe I owe any of these people anything,” Jackson said in a recent interview. Initially, Jackson allowed Polensek to continue to lead the powerful Finance Committee. The move was part of a deal he made with Polensek – to let him keep the high-profile position only until Polensek found a better- paying job outside of council. But Jackson says he dumped Polensek after learning he turned down a good county job. Polensek strongly disputes Jackson’s version of events.

“He crossed me within two months,” Jackson said.

Position as president meant change in focus

As council president, Jackson no longer could focus on Ward 5. One of his toughest challenges was the controversial Steelyard C o m m o n s s h o p p i n g c e n t e r , which isn’t in his ward. It includes the city’s first Wal-Mart. The company often is criticized for hiring nonunion workers. Suddenly, Jackson had competing interests counting on him. Some council members wanted to make sure neighborhood stores and grocers were protected. Others just wanted a Wal- Mart. The unions wanted Jackson’s support. But tax dollars, jobs and a $120 million investment were at stake, along with the perception that Jackson is anti-development.

Jackson supported the shopping center, but that point was lost even though he quashed anti-Wal-Mart legislation. Ultimately, the project went through because the developer slipped into City Hall and obtained building permits. Some council members neglected to follow up on legislation that would have doomed the project. Today, Jackson said his goal was just to broker a deal with which all sides could live. “Everybody was mad because I didn’t please anybody,” he said. “You know what? The outcome is what I wanted. Those council people didn’t fight. The legislation was gone. Steelyard Commons did happen.”

Jackson said loyalty is important to his code, and that might explain the favor he shows to friend and council spokeswoman Maxine Greer. She collects about $70,000 a year from the city but does not adhere to the residency rule.

The council president hires council employees, such as secretaries and consultants. When Polensek was president, he hired Rodney Jenkins as the council spokesman, a full-time position that required Jenkins to live in the city.

Jackson hired Greer, a former ranking Plain Dealer editor who he says was the best qualified for the job. But rather than give her a full-time job, he hired her as a consultant. Consultants don’t have to live in the city. Jackson made the arrangement despite his avid support of the residency law.

For his first two years as council president, Jackson thought Campbell adhered to his code.
Ultimately, though, Jackson decided that Campbell was dishonest. He says today that she lied to him about a lot of issues, but the one that infuriates him is the law that requires contractors on big projects to hire residents. Early in his career he made a promise that residents would get work on projects the city pays for.

Campbell publicly supported the law, but when the federal government threatened to withdraw money for projects if the law was enforced, Campbell opted not to enforce it. Jackson said Campbell did not tell him of her decision.

He saw her behavior as a betrayal. Of him. Of the city. Jackson said he could not abide a mayor he perceived as dishonorable. So he decided to risk all and try to take her job. He could have been council president for years, his colleagues say. He could have kept collecting his $80,000 a year and wielding power.

But for Jackson, who grew up on the streets of Cleveland and returns home every night to one of the poorest neighborhoods in one of the nation’s poorest cities, the mayor must be singleminded in trying to raise the standard of living.

“This ain’t no theory to me,” he said. “This is real.”

¶ Sunday, October 23, 2005 //

Elect Frank Jackson

Major Endorsements

Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones
County Treasurer Jim Rokakis
County Prosecutor Bill Mason
County Auditor Frank Russo
County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones
County Recorder Pat O'malley
Judge Robert Triozzi
Councilman Jay Westbrook
Councilman Joe Cimperman
Councilwoman Dona Brady
Councilwoman Sabra Scott
Councilwoman Fannie Lewis
Councilman Roosevelt Coats
Councilman Martin Sweeney
Councilwoman Pat Britt
Councilman Kevin Conwell

¶ Sunday, October 23, 2005 //

County treasurer backs Jackson

WKYC

CLEVELAND -- Another endorsement for Frank Jackson's bid to be Cleveland mayor.

County Treasurer Jim Rokakis is backing Jackson and blasting Mayor Jane Campbell.

Rokakis charges her failure to change conservative investment policies cost Cleveland Schools $15 to 18 million in interest.

Rokakis claims he told Campbell about this three years ago and despite several news stories it took years for the schools to hire an investment adviser.

"I asked her to call the CFO or CEO and she refused to do either,” Rokakis says.

“Jane Campbell's failure to deal with this problem is inexplicable, inexcusable and unforgivable. It speaks of indifference and incompetence at the highest level."

Campbell’s campaign strategist Gerry Austin answers that Rokakis lives in Rocky River and calls this "nothing but politics."

Rokakis endorsed Campbell four years ago.

¶ Sunday, October 23, 2005 //

County treasurer backs Jackson

WKYC
Tuesday, October 18, 2005 1:05:36 PM

CLEVELAND -- Another endorsement for Frank Jackson's bid to be Cleveland mayor.
County Treasurer Jim Rokakis is backing Jackson and blasting Mayor Jane Campbell.
Rokakis charges her failure to change conservative investment policies cost Cleveland Schools $15 to 18 million in interest.

Rokakis claims he told Campbell about this three years ago and despite several news stories it took years for the schools to hire an investment adviser.

"I asked her to call the CFO or CEO and she refused to do either,” Rokakis says.

“Jane Campbell's failure to deal with this problem is inexplicable, inexcusable and unforgivable. It speaks of indifference and incompetence at the highest level."

Campbell’s campaign strategist Gerry Austin answers that Rokakis lives in Rocky River and calls this "nothing but politics."

Rokakis endorsed Campbell four years ago.

¶ Sunday, October 23, 2005 //

Dapper Draper

"They smile in your face, all the time they wanna take your place," Backstabbers-- every City has them, and by the looks of things we’ve found ours.

¶ Friday, October 14, 2005 //

WHERE IS MAYOR WHAT?

This has been the lynchpin of Campbell’s management of our City.
Mayor What’s election as Mayor was an error.


Schools admit attendance error

Not just 620 students were out,
Cleveland district says, but 519,000 Friday, October 14, 2005
Janet Okoben

Plain Dealer Reporter

A Cleveland schools official acknowledged Thursday that the exceedingly high attendance rates it reported to the state the last few years were clearly erroneous, perhaps off by as many as half-a-million student absences for last year.

"It appears we made mistakes, and we're committed to fixing them," said Lisa Marie Ruda, the district's chief of staff.

State data on Cleveland's attendance rate for the last school year shows the district reported only 620 excused absences for 63,500 students. When combined with 333,357 unexcused absences, it gave the district a sky-high attendance rate of 96.7 percent.

District staffers who have looked at numbers again in the last week, Ruda said, now say the figure for excused absences is probably more like 519,000, which would lower last year's attendance rate to about 93 percent. Ruda cautioned, however, that the numbers are still being checked.

If the district's attendance rate had been below 93 percent, it would have failed to hit one of the standards the state uses to measure a district's effectiveness. Attendance rate was one of two standards, out of 23, that the district met last year.

The district earned a point on the annual school report card in each of the past four years because it met the attendance goal.

Ruda said it appears that someone changed the district's computer system in 2002 so that students with excused absences would be counted as present.

A special category of "excused with homework" was also created during that time with the mistaken understanding that as long as students completed schoolwork while they missed school, they would be counted as present, Ruda said.

The district's attendance rate shot from 89 percent in 2001 to 93.8 percent in 2002.
Secretaries and others who monitor attendance at individual schools are not to blame, Ruda said.

The phony numbers appear to have been calculated when data were being prepared for transmission to the state, long after attendance numbers were sent in by schools.

Ruda said the district's legal department is still interviewing current and former employees to find out who authorized and made the changes.

And when they do, she vowed, "systems will be put in place to keep this from happening again."
Unlike the recent scandal that resulted in the repayment of $729,000 in state money after the district reported the wrong number of student bus riders, the attendance rate is not connected with any kind of money.

The district's goal is to determine the true attendance rate for the years in question, Ruda said Thursday.

The Ohio Department of Education has been notified about the investigation, but the state probably won't change the district's previous numbers because the data-collection period for last year has closed, said J.C. Benton, a spokesman for the Education Department.

"We look forward to receiving their data from this year," Benton said.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
jokoben@plaind.com, 216-999-4535

¶ Friday, October 14, 2005 //

Don’t Reward Failure

FIRE JANE!

As Jane Campbell’s political woes widen, she has become a dead duck leader. With many of her top losers looking for work, her leadership is described as disturbing and a display of inept leadership.

It is disturbing that Jane Campbell would continue to be in denial about the level of disgust for her and her staff. A Mayor whose leadership is so despised even among her own staff, and who is regularly referred to as a failure. This Mayor is the symbol of failure and we need to send her packing.

Jane Campbell deserves to be fired by the hardworking Citizens of Cleveland.
As Mayor, it is Jane Campbell’s duty to tell us the truth, something she is incapable of doing. Unfortunately, by publicly demonstrating that she is the “Ribbon Cutting Mayor” she displayed her inept leadership to the Citizens.

On November 8, send this liar packing.

¶ Wednesday, October 12, 2005 //

Campbell's woes are mostly of her own making
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Brent LarkinPlain Dealer Columnist

A few weeks ago, Mayor Jane Campbell telephoned County Commissioner Tim Hagan, desperately seeking his endorsement.

Not that Hagan's support would have mattered a whole lot, but Campbell didn't get it. She didn't get it because, for Campbell, loyalty is a one-way street.

She expects others to support her — even when she does little or nothing to support them.

Hagan told her as much during their conversation, but prior to that phone call Campbell's selfish political style had already alienated all but a small handful of her colleagues in public life.

Contrast that alienation with four years ago, when Campbell was enthusiastically endorsed by County Prosecutor Bill Mason, Treasurer Jim Rokakis, Auditor Frank Russo, Recorder Pat O'Malley and Engineer Robert Klaiber.

This year, not one of those elected officials has endorsed her. In fact, most of them don't even like her. All this speaks volumes about this mayor's it's-all-about-me-all-the-time style. Yesterday, voters made Campbell pay for that style, relegating her to a humiliating second-place finish in the mayoral primary election.

We've known for more than a year that Campbell was vulnerable. Anecdotal evidence about voters not liking her, coupled with bad poll numbers, motivated seven people to run against her in yesterday's primary election.

It's worth noting that Campbell's television commercials didn't include a single shot of the mayor speaking to the camera. Her advisers have obviously figured out that she doesn't wear well with voters.

Nevertheless, given the large size of the mayoral field, Campbell should have easily finished first in yesterday's balloting. Instead, she got clobbered by Council President Frank Jackson, who will enter the five-week mayoral runoff campaign as an odds-on favorite against an unpopular and battered incumbent.

"Jane needs a Hail Mary," former Rep. Dennis Eckart said last night. "Her role model for the next 35 days must be George Bush. She must convince voters her record is safer than her opponent's direction."

It's true that Campbell's only hope may be to heighten voter fears about Jackson. But it's much tougher to wage an effective negative campaign when the candidate doing the attacking is unpopular.

Then there's the tricky matter of the police and fire unions. Campbell needs whatever help they might bring to her campaign. But the safety unions, especially the police, traditionally make a lot of political noise and deliver only a few voters. Yesterday was no exception to that rule. Just ask Jim Draper.

What's more, if Campbell reneges on her past positions to appease the safety forces, it could prove catastrophic for her on the East Side, where tensions are building over recent police shootings.

"Obviously, voters out there aren't very happy with the job she's done," County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora said last night. "She has to persuade voters to take a long hard look at Jackson, but she's got no big guns with her except Dennis Kucinich. She's in trouble because she does her own thing. She ignores those who want to help her by offering, advice and suggestions."

Campbell inherited a bad economy and a dysfunctional City Hall. The economy may be getting a bit better. And she's fixed many of the horrendous problems left by her predecessor.
By all rights, Jane Campbell should have been a prohibitive favorite for reelection. Instead, she's a mayor in deep political trouble.

When asked why she's in trouble, Campbell points fingers of blame in lots of places.
Yesterday, voters placed the blame where it belongs.

Larkin is director of The Plain Dealer's editorial pages.
Contact him at: blarkin@plaind.com, 216-999-4252

¶ Monday, October 10, 2005 //