On Cleveland’s West Side, two Democratic candidates say they are running against Cuyahoga County’s typical way of doing business in taking on incumbent County Council Member Martin J. Sweeney.
Sweeney’s opponents in the May 5 Democratic primary are Anise Mayo and Stephanie K. Thomas.
District 3 includes such neighborhoods as Detroit-Shoreway, Edgewater, Clark-Fulton, West Boulevard and part of Old Brooklyn. Linndale and the city of Brooklyn are also in the district.
There is no Republican on the ballot, making the May primary decisive in this race.
Signal Cleveland spoke with the candidates about some of the top issues facing county government, from housing to the new jail.
Anise Mayo
Mayo is a registered nurse who has made healthcare a key part of her campaign message. The county should work more closely with community health centers and support mobile health units to catch people who fall through coverage gaps, she said.
“I had a woman tell me that she may lose her Medicaid and that she doesn’t know what she’s going to do,” Mayo said. “County government is going to have to fill that void.”
She criticized plans to build a new county jail in Garfield Heights because it means the county will have to shuttle defendants back and forth to the Justice Center in downtown Cleveland. She said the jail has become a de facto “urgent care hospital system.” The county ought to focus on reducing the jail population, lowering the costs of running the facility, she said.
“People just can’t understand right now spending a billion dollars on a jail, and we have all these other issues in county government that still need to be fixed,” Mayo said.
Voters are concerned about property taxes, too, she said. In her view, the property tax system is largely a state issue, but the county could try to mitigate the hit to homeowners. For instance, she suggested having the county offer payment extensions.
Mayo said the county could work more with developers to build low- and medium-income housing for those struggling to afford a place to live.
She has endorsements from the Cleveland Stonewall Democrats and Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus.
Martin J. Sweeney
Sweeney, the incumbent in the race, is running with the backing of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party. A fixture in Cleveland politics, he is a former City Council president and state lawmaker.
He was quick to bring up the county’s financial challenges. The county cut its budget last year and is looking at a deficit this year.
“Right now our county is in a kind of a mess with the fiscal situation that we have,” he said. “It’s just an opportunity to try to get the ship right and in order to protect the taxpayers’ interest and be as high-performance as possible.”
Once county leaders work out the details of financing the nearly $900 million jail, they’ll have to make “serious decisions” about the rest of county government, he said. In other words, make cuts.
Council needs a better relationship with County Executive Chris Ronayne, he said. Ronayne has also clashed with the sheriff over overtime spending. The county executive appoints the sheriff but can’t fire him without support from 8 out of 11 council members. Sweeney said council should call the question of firing the sheriff in order to hear from both sides. He didn’t say whether he was leaning one way or the other.
Sweeney, who has been endorsed by Mayor Justin Bibb and the Plain Dealer, highlighted his connections throughout government. He can call the governor and state lawmakers, he said. (One state lawmaker is his daughter, state Rep. Bride Rose Sweeney.)
“I have the ability to communicate with a lot of people,” he said. “And people, for the most part, have a faith in me that I am trying to figure it out with them.”
Stephanie K. Thomas
Thomas is an architect and general contractor from Northeast Ohio. She lived in New York City for 18 years before moving back to Cleveland.
She was homeless for a time in New York after a prospective landlord doubled the rent in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, she said. Here in Northeast Ohio, she is president of the nonprofit Shelter the People Cleveland and serves on the advisory board of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Office of Homeless Services.
Housing and rent control are part of her platform. Ohio prohibits local rent control laws, but Thomas proposes offering incentives to in-town landlords to keep rents down.
Asked about the new county jail, she said that money could better be spent on homes. Cleveland is in a housing crisis, she said.
“You have vacant land everywhere,” she said, referring to derelict properties that local government has torn down. “For $1 billion, we could build over 3,000 new homes, period.”
Senior services are another campaign plank. They’re not evenly distributed across the district, Thomas said. She wants to start a pilot program to help seniors stay active and meet each other, with the goal of expanding the service throughout the district.
Thomas is Lebanese and speaks Arabic and a bit of Spanish, she said — abilities she said would help her represent this diverse West Side district.
She’s banking on the idea that voters want something new.
“They’re looking for a change,” she said. “They’re sick of the old way of doing things.”
