Mayor Justin Bibb visited Charleston, South Carolina, this week for the “Winning the Middle” conference for centrist-minded Democrats hosted by the think tank Third Way.
He spoke on a panel with San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins and U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts. Moderated by journalist Matthew Yglesias, the panel had a catchy theme: “Don’t F It Up: Restoring the Brand by Governing Well.”
As in, restoring the brand of the Democratic Party, which has taken its scuffs after the party’s twin defeats by Donald Trump in 2016 and 2024.
Bibb has been starting to build a national political profile as he travels, joining climate groups and serving for a year as president of the Democratic Mayors Association. At the Third Way conference, he positioned himself as a pragmatist.
“My residents don’t give a damn about my political affiliation,” he said. “They want the pothole fixed. They want the trash picked up. They want the snow removed.”
Bibb put in a good word for Democratic mayors like himself, who have to do their jobs in Republican-led states. He said they have to work across the aisle even as they struggle with “extreme MAGA” state leaders.
“There are commonsense, pragmatic mayors in Ohio, in Georgia, in Texas who I think really represent the future of the Democratic party,” he said.
The conversation turned to public safety. The mayor defended using gunshot detection and license plate readers, police technologies that have their critics among civil liberties advocates. (His administration just hit pause on a gunshot detection contract with Flock Safety.)
“Miss Johnson on Abel Avenue on the Southeast Side of Cleveland, she wants the bad guys to get locked up. She wants her block to be safe,” he said. “But she also wants her rights to be protected as a resident of our city and of our country.”
Democrats can do both of those things, he said. That argument will be put to the test as he tries to conclude Cleveland’s police consent decree.
All’s chair in love and war
Budget hearings, which wrapped up in February, are a pain in the keister. Cleveland City Council keeps long hours asking detailed questions. Good thing City Hall is flush with new chairs.
Council’s armchair accountants have grumbled about the $2,200 cost of Bibb’s office chair. (The chair cost a bit less than $1,800, according to a purchase order provided by the city. Scuff plates, shipping and installation bumped up the total amount owed to APG Office Furnishings.)
But let he who is without a new chair cast the first stone.
The city spent around $139,000 in 2023 on 70 new seats for council chambers. Council members, the mayor, his staff and news reporters settle into those chairs during council meetings.
Each chair cost a little more than $1,000, an invoice shows. But factoring in scuff plates, orange leather upholstery, freight and installation, the per-chair cost came out to about $1,980. How many chairs do you need to buy to get free shipping?
Cleveland bought another round of 25 white chairs for council’s committee room last year. The total cost was nearly $42,300, or almost $1,700 per chair, according to the city. These chairs are too nice to throw.
Council Member Michael Polensek knocked the Bibb administration for the price of the mayor’s chair. But because of the historic nature of council chambers, he understood that those chairs needed to match the “ancient” seats they were replacing, he said.
Still, he had questions for his own side of City Hall too. He said he didn’t know what was wrong with the old chairs in the committee room. His own office chair is broken, he said. But so what?
“I’m not begging for a new chair in my office,” he said.
Here’s one more set of seats for the ledger: Cleveland also bought new chairs for the Red Room, which the mayor uses for meetings and press conferences. The price came out to $1,523 per chair, a city spokesperson said.
It’s worth noting that Cleveland’s General Fund ran a $91 million surplus last year. The city is spending that leftover cash resurfacing streets and fixing up parks, recreation centers and fire stations.
It helps to have some cushion in the budget.