On Election Night, progressive political newcomer Tanmay Shah finished just a handful of votes ahead of Cleveland City Council incumbent Danny Kelly. The West Side race pitted new Cleveland politics against the old.
A lawyer, Shah was part of an effort to organize a union for staff of the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. He ran on a platform of affordable housing and groceries with the support of such progressive organizations as the Working Families Party.
“What this campaign did really well was that it was able to draw from different kind of pockets of activists from all over the city, different coalitions that Tanmay had been a part of,” supporter Evan O’Reilly told Signal Cleveland on Election Night.
Kelly, a retired union laborer, had the backing of Mayor Justin Bibb, City Council President Blaine Griffin, the teachers’ union and fellow members of the building trades. Known to pound the pavement during school levy campaigns, he was appointed to council in 2023 and won a special election later that year.
“It’s important to have people like Danny,” Brent Misenko, the treasurer of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 38, said at Kelly’s watch party at the Harp. “He knows what we do, he knows what we’re going through and he votes for pro-union stuff.”
Shah won 1,463 votes to Kelly’s 1,456. Now they must wait for the final results, a process that will take weeks.
Here’s what’s left to count, according to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections:
Provisional ballots
There are 29 provisional ballots in Ward 12 that are yet to be counted.
These are ballots issued to voters when there’s a question about whether they are eligible to vote, or if they have already requested an absentee ballot but also showed up to vote in person.
In the four days after Election Day, board of elections staff work to verify the provision voters’ information. Then the board will meet Nov. 17 to decide which provisional ballots to accept. After that, the board will count the ballots.
Absentee ballots
Mail-in ballots must have been postmarked by the Monday before Election Day. But they may not all have arrived through the mail by the time the polls closed at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
The board will accept properly postmarked mail-in ballots if they arrive within four days of Election Day.
How many absentee ballots are still in transit? We don’t know. Voters requested 540 mail-in ballots and returned 484 by Election Night, a difference of 56 ballots.
Certification and recounts
The board will add valid provisional and outstanding ballots to the official vote count at its meeting Nov. 25. That’s when Clevelanders in Ward 12 will have a clearer idea of who will represent them on City Council.
But even then, there could be one more step: a recount. Candidates can request recounts, and elections with a margin smaller than 0.5% are recounted automatically.
If the two candidates tie, the race for Ward 12 could be decided by a coin toss, drawing straws or even pulling horseshoes out of a bag.
Signal Cleveland health reporter Celia Hack contributed to this story.
