The Cleveland City Council race between incumbents Richard Starr and Rebecca Maurer has taken a contentious turn in the final weeks before Election Day.
Earlier in October, Maurer filed a complaint with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office alleging that Starr may have collected voters’ absentee ballots to turn them in to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections during the primary, a move prohibited under state law.
In a brief interview with Signal Cleveland on Monday, Starr said he was focused on the campaign and called the complaint “nonsense.”
“Not true — man, I’m not dealing with that drama,” he said.
At last week’s council meeting, Starr delivered a speech that appeared to be directed at Maurer, although he did not name her. He did not mention Maurer’s complaint.
“We’re going to stop all this kidding around, because you’re not qualified to speak on nothing from the neighborhood I grew up in, the neighborhood I’ve been able to represent as [an] elected official,” he said.
The conflict between the two council members capped an attention-getting, if lopsided, race that resulted from council’s latest round of redistricting. Maurer’s neighborhood in Slavic Village was drawn into a reshaped Ward 5, which covers Central and Kinsman along with parts of downtown.
Starr won the September primary with 70% of the vote to Maurer’s 25%.
Signal Cleveland obtained a copy of Maurer’s complaint from the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. She sent the message to the county board’s director and to the Election Integrity Unit, an investigative agency within the Secretary of State’s office.
“At this stage, our hope is that the Board of Elections and Secretary of State thoroughly follow up on all materials and ensure that all campaign laws are being followed,” Maurer wrote in a text message to Signal Cleveland. “The residents of Ward 5 deserve nothing less.”
A spokesperson for Secretary of State Frank LaRose said the office had received the complaint and was reviewing it. The county board of elections is deferring to the state, a spokesperson for the board said.
Maurer asks state to look into ballot collection
Under Ohio law, only certain people may return a voter’s completed absentee ballot to a board of elections: postal carriers and close relatives such as parents, grandparents, siblings, children, aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces.
Maurer sent her complaint Oct. 10 under the subject line, “Referral for Alleged Ballot Harvesting.” On the day of the September primary, a voter told Maurer that Starr had been by to gather ballots, Maurer wrote. Then, in October, Maurer heard similar accounts from residents at a senior apartment building, she wrote.
“Because of the prior incidents, I recorded the conversations on my phone,” she wrote in her complaint. “Very quickly, 3 seperate [sic] residents told me that Councilman Starr had been in the building collecting ballots in the primary.”
Maurer wrote that she had attached the recordings to her email. She declined to share the audio with Signal Cleveland. A public records request for those recordings has not yet been fulfilled by the board of elections.
She and her attorney sent Starr a cease-and-desist letter. They received a response saying that Starr’s campaign complied with election laws, she wrote.
Starr won 75% of the absentee ballots in the Sept. 8 primary. He won 69% of the Election Day vote. Turnout tended to be higher in the precincts that Starr won and lower in those that Maurer won.
When Starr first ran for office in 2017, the board of elections investigated a batch of applications requesting absentee ballots to be mailed to a Boys & Girls Clubs location. The case was referred to the Cuyahoga County prosecutor. No charges resulted.
A contentious, redistricted race
The redrawing of council’s ward map set Starr and Maurer on a collision course.
At a council meeting last year, before a final map had been released, Maurer protested that Council President Blaine Griffin had drawn her into a largely West Side and downtown ward unlike her current one.
To that, Griffin replied, “Your wish is my command.” The final map placed Maurer’s home and Starr’s in the same ward. Griffin is backing Starr in the contest via his political action committee, the Council Leadership Fund.
Maurer made an issue of that support in a fundraising email this summer.
“The Old Boys’ Club is working hard to protect itself,” she wrote.
Starr rebutted that label at last week’s council meeting, saying the “old boys” had a record of accomplishment. Without naming her, he suggested that Maurer protested the draft ward map for political reasons.
“The good old boys crew is the one that stands on business. Meanwhile, other people stand on being privileged,” he said.
Starr continued, “We know some people [have] been in here lying, sharing information, not being a team player for this body to get the work done.”
The two candidates have also disagreed over the notion of deploying the National Guard to Cleveland to tamp down crime. Maurer opposes it. Starr said he would keep an open mind to the question, given the scale of gun violence he has seen over the years in his neighborhood.
The Ward 5 race is among the city’s most expensive council contests this year. Maurer has spent $94,000 since the start of the year, unaudited reports from the board of elections show. Starr has spent almost $84,000.
As he seeks a second term, Starr has been stressing his roots in the Central neighborhood. He graduated from East Technical High School and earned degrees from Baldwin Wallace College. He worked for more than a decade at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio.
“I’ve been on the front line long before any election, long before I ever ran for office,” Starr told Signal Cleveland in an interview this summer.
At a forum for candidates endorsed by the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus earlier this month, Maurer acknowledged the electoral challenge she faces in the ward.
“I have had a tough, uphill battle running against another incumbent,” she said, “but I’m excited to be running in Ward 5.”
