Cleveland Browns’ ownership has hired a lobbyist with a name familiar to those who follow Cuyahoga County politics: Lee Weingart.

A Republican former county commissioner, Weingart is the founder and chair of government relations shop LNE Group. He ran for county executive against Democrat Chris Ronayne in 2022. Ronayne won and went on to oppose the Browns’ new stadium in Brook Park. 

Weingart is on the other side of that equation. According to lobbying registrations filed with the U.S. House and Senate on Wednesday, LNE Group is representing Primacy Development, a limited liability company affiliated with Haslam Sports Group. Team ownership used Primacy to buy the former Ford property that’s set to become the new Huntington Bank Field. 

Weingart declined to talk about his clients. The disclosures say only that LNE Group will be lobbying on “issues related to taxation.” 

Speaking of Ronayne and stadiums

Last week the county executive showed off photos of a new football field on the waterfront of a legacy industrial city. It wasn’t on Lake Erie, but on the River Mersey. 

Ronayne visited the United Kingdom as part of a trip focused on local environmental and green energy initiatives. (The George Gund Foundation is picking up the $3,775 tab for his travel, according to a Cuyahoga County Board of Control agenda.)

While there, he posted shots of Liverpool’s Hill Dickinson Stadium, home of the Premier League soccer (football) club Everton. 

“A complete sustainable strategy has emerged in an alt energy district of this music & manufacturing town,” Ronayne wrote on X.

As if the contrast he was drawing weren’t clear enough, he also tagged the Browns.