Blaine Griffin held on to the Cleveland City Council presidency after this week’s elections.
Newly elected and re-elected council members met Friday for a caucus meeting to affirm Griffin as their pick to lead the body next year. Council will formally elect him president at its first meeting in January.
As usual with council leadership votes, caucus members enacted what’s called the “unit rule.” That’s a procedural measure meant to lock members in to vote unanimously in January for the winner of November’s caucus vote. Nikki Hudson, newly elected in Ward 11, was the only member to vote against the unit rule.
Because the race in Ward 12 is still up in the air, candidates Tanmay Shah and Danny Kelly were both invited to the caucus. Shah abstained from voting on the grounds that the election wasn’t decided yet.
After he won, Griffin gave a brief pep talk and warned members about the headwinds facing Cleveland from the state and federal governments. Council wouldn’t have hundreds of millions of dollars in new stimulus funds to spend as it did last term, for instance. He also offered a word about those who like to beat up on City Council.
“You will find very quick that as many people chat about what we do and what we’re not doing,” he said, “many people would not fill the shoes that we have and go out there and walk in these neighborhoods.”
