If you want to get Michael Polensek out of Cleveland City Council, you’ll have to beat him at the ballot box.
He has held his seat since 1978. When the latest redistricting drew him into the same Collinwood ward as his colleague Anthony Hairston, City Hall was left wondering whether he would retire for good.
Then Polensek said he would run again. The news dismayed Hairston and Council President Blaine Griffin, who said he had led them to believe he would step aside. Polensek maintained that he only said he was considering retirement.
He said he has unfinished business in the neighborhood and that residents urged him to “finish what you started.” The race was on.
“You got to understand, I’m a Scorpio, man,” Polensek, who turns 76 in November, said in an interview. “It’s about quitting. I can’t quit.”
Now the decision between Polensek and Hairston is up to voters in the new Ward 10, which links North and South Collinwood on Cleveland’s far Northeast Side.
Hairston, 39, cast the race as a choice between the past and the future.
“As the world changes around us, we have to change,” he said at a debate with Polensek this week. “Because if we stay stuck with the same leadership, the same style, from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s…we’re going to continue to be flat-line.”
Later in the debate, Polensek rebutted that line of attack. He has experience and a track record, and it’s no accident that he’s been reelected and reelected, he said. Then he went a step further.
“If my colleague wants to challenge me to a foot race, I’d gladly do that, OK?” Polensek said, drawing laughter from the audience. “So if you think I’m too old, I’ll put him to the test.”
Polensek: ‘I’ve done everything I can’ to keep Collinwood stable
Polensek pitches himself as an on-the-ground council member who returns constituent calls and emails. He can turn out caustic one-liners and broadsides against inadequate city services. He often bewails signs of decline on his East Side.
Asked in an interview if the East Side was worse off today than in the past, he answered: “Hell yeah.” The factories of his younger days have closed. Population has fallen, leading to a reduction in City Council seats — and, in the coming months, school closures.
“You’re dealing more and more with older folks and poor families,” he said. “That’s what you’re dealing with on the East Side.”
What’s Polensek running on? He has a three-page typed list labeled, “ACCOMPLISHMENTS.” He supported streetscape projects, road resurfacing and senior home repairs. He backed preservation work on the Euclid Beach Arch and the effort to turn the Euclid Beach Mobile Home park property over to the Metroparks.
“The things that I had control of, I’d like to think that I’ve done everything I can to stabilize my neighborhood in light of the cards that I’ve been dealt,” he said.
Hairston says with him, Ward 10 is ‘at the table’
Hairston isn’t known for his polemics. At a recent League of Women Voters forum with both candidates, he made what sounded to be a subtle criticism of his opponent’s focus on the negative.
“It’s important that we talk about the good things that are happening in our neighborhood, because that’s what’s going to get folks here in our community,” he said. “That’s what’s going to make the folks from the West Side move to the East Side.”
Hairston has spent his discretionary money cleaning up illegal dumping, supplementing the city’s grass cutting crews and supporting violence intervention he said. With two other colleagues, he slated $10 million in federal stimulus dollars for new homes in his ward, the Central neighborhood and Clark-Fulton.
He chairs council’s Development, Planning and Sustainability Committee, which oversees real estate projects across Cleveland. That role has given him a place in citywide conversations about development, he said.
“When Ward 10 elects me as councilman, they’re not only electing a councilman who cares about the day-to-day and the quality of life issues of our own community, but we’re at the table,” Hairston told Signal Cleveland.
Paths to Cleveland City Council
Despite their differences, there are similarities in their backgrounds. Like Hairston, Polensek also chairs a major committee, council’s Safety Committee.
Both graduated from Collinwood High School. Both also landed their first public offices at age 27. Polensek, the leader of the Nottingham Civic Club, unseated a first-term Republican to win a council seat in what was then Ward 26 in 1977.
The grandson of a steelworker, Hairston received an early taste of Cleveland politics as a teen working on the unsuccessful 2001 mayoral campaign of Raymond Pierce. He won a Cuyahoga County Democratic Party appointment to a vacant County Council position in 2015. Voters elected him to Cleveland City Council in 2017.
He is close with three other thirtysomething Cleveland politicians, Council Member Richard Starr, state Rep. Terrence Upchurch and County Council Member Michael Houser. On social media, they’ve called themselves the “Four Horsemen.”
Polensek charged that Hairston has his eye on another office: Clerk of Cleveland Municipal Court, a job long held by Earle B. Turner. In an interview, Hairston laughed off the suggestion.
“That’s a new one,” Hairston said. “No. There was speculation before that I was going to run and folks wanted me to run, but I didn’t run and I actually supported Earle.”
Who’s the underdog?
Here’s one more similarity between Hairston and Polensek: Both say that their opponent has the advantage in the race.
Polensek pointed out that the Council Leadership Fund — the council president’s political action committee — is backing Hairston. The Ohio Realtors Political Action Fund paid for a pro-Hairston mailer, too.
But Hairston noted that much of the new Ward 10 covers territory that Polensek has represented before. Hairston’s old ward stretches from South Collinwood, which is in the new ward, all the way east to St. Clair-Superior, which is not.
“I know my colleague likes to say he’s an underdog, but that is very much not the case,” Hairston said.
There was no primary in this race, so there’s been no early test to see which way voters are leaning. Come Nov. 4, if the Ward 10 electorate chooses to retire Polensek, he’ll go.
“If that’s their decision,” Polensek said, “on Jan. 6, there won’t be an insurrection, OK?”
