The Cuyahoga County Justice Center
Many Daily Kos members use this website as a forum to advocate for the 50-state strategy, particularly in turning red states/districts into blue or purple ones. That is a laudable goal, and one that I support wholeheartedly, especially as a former resident of a county that last voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 1976.
But, those calls for new engagement in difficult districts fails to address another critical problem facing our party: our local parties in urban areas are strong and control almost all of government, yet they often fail to advocate for or accomplish progressive policy goals. I can think of no place that is more reflective of this problem than the place where I have spent most of my adult life, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which includes Cleveland and its suburbs.
Cuyahoga County is a solidly Democratic area. Democrats have a 2 to 1 registration advantage. It last voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 1972. The party controls the County Executive position as well as an overwhelming majority of the County Council. The County Prosecutor is a Democrat and almost all of the popularly-elected judges in the county are, too. We control 8 of the 11 state House of Representative seats and 3 of the 4 State Senate seats. Really, the only elections that we lose in Cuyahoga County occur in wealthy suburbs or are the result of special circumstances (such as a former member of the Cleveland Browns winning a judicial election as a Republican) or gerrymandering (those Republican-held legislative seats).
Based on that, you would think that our county is a terrific progressive utopia with bold leaders fighting for innovative policies that can cut against a state government that is starkly conservative. Yet, you would be wrong. Two of our “Democratic" state representatives voted for the Kasich budget that reduced collective bargaining rights for public employees, underfunded schools and cities, and increased the tax burden of lower-income folks so that those at the top got a massive tax cut. One of those "Democratic" representatives voted two days ago to defund Planned Parenthood and to keep Syrian refugees out of Ohio. While Dayton has a Democratic mayor who recently pushed for legislation to give paid parental leave to city employees, our “Democratic” County Executive pushed for a budget that cut funding to our local community hospital system and that significantly reduced funding for drug addiction treatment.
These problems with our county “Democrats” are bad enough. But, then yesterday, I saw this headline on the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s website, "Cuyahoga County judges pull out of justice system reform group.” Here’s some information from the article:
Justice reform in Cuyahoga County received a blow Wednesday when the Common Pleas judges voted to resign from a group dedicated to making the system more efficient and fair.
[snip]
“The Bench believes the JSR has become a vehicle for a minority of some of the JSR members to push their own reform agenda at the expense or regard for, or input from, other justice system stakeholders," the [judges'] new release states.
The judges, almost all Democrats, specifically cite the actions of Tim McGinty, the Democratic County Prosecutor and known to many around here for the wrong reasons, and Armond Budish, the Democratic County Executive, as pushing them to this moment.
As a person who has worked both behind the bench as a judicial attorney and in front of the bench as a prosecutor, I know that too many people involved in the criminal justice system have egos the size of a mountain. And, that can be said for many of the persons involved in this drama. But, ultimately all I can see in this situation is that a group of Democrats, who have campaigned previously as progressives, is unable to reform a terrible, bloated, and slow criminal justice system here in Cuyahoga County. When we have control over the reform process, we should be able to come up with cogent reforms that address progressive concerns for justice and fairness, especially on an issue that has so galvanized our party throughout the country and this county, in particular. But, we have a lot of bad Democrats here in our essentially one-party county and that is just as destructive to the accomplishment of our goals as the fact that Republicans control the legislature in Columbus.
When we think about reinvigorating our party, yes, we need to be mindful of opportunities in Kentucky, West Virginia, Alabama, Kansas, and others. But, we need to think of places like Cuyahoga County, too, where human beings are still suffering from injustice despite the fact that “progressives" and "Democrats" control the levers of power. Remember, the goal isn't just "more Democrats"; we need better ones, too, especially here in Cuyahoga County. And, I want to bring to everyone’s attention that McGinty still lacks a primary opponent, as do the state representatives I refer to above, Bill Patmon and Martin Sweeney.
