Roldo: A Couple Things Off The Chest

Gerry McFaul. You have to give Mark Puente credit for bringing down the former Cuyahoga County Sheriff by following up on tips.

McFaul angered some of the wrong people on his staff and they began to talk.

Often this happens but the follow-up by the news media isn’t as powerful as Puente’s has been. I don’t discount the fact that the Plain Dealer editor Susan Goldberg allowed the expose campaign to continue. Editors often kill or dilute important public information. (I will say that the PD needs this kind of story these days to attract newspaper readers. It might just be that the financial troubles of local newspaper might give them a previously absent backbone.)

It’s very important that reporters be allowed to pursue where there is smoke and find if there’s fire there, too. Puente did that doggedly.

However, what’s disturbing – and Puente rightly revealed this in today’s story about McFaul getting softer treatment because of his health (You have to wonder if he wasn’t doing a bit of play-acting) – is that McFaul has been a crude character for a long time and reporters and editors knew this.

“The Plain Dealer,” Puente reported, “endorsed McFaul eight times during elections and even called him a legendary lawman in an editorial,” Climaco said. John Climaco – long-time politically connected lawyer – served as McFaul’s counsel.

Eight times at four years a time!

How can you trust a newspaper that endorses such a man and candidate as McFaul eight times? You have to wonder whether the paper should be endorsing at all.

Even a casual look at the PD clip file would show McFaul has been a long-time vulgar and offensive politician who abused power in his office. And he did it boldly and publicly, even on national television.

There were a number of sexual charges against McFaul going way back. His reaction to the strip search of NAACP secretary Pauline Tarver in 1983 should have proved him unfit for office. And there were direct sexual harassment charges against McFaul during his long term.

There was always smoke around this politician.

At City Council, he played a strong-man role for leadership as majority leader. That has to be 40 or so years ago.

So as a political figure he was well-known to the press.

His statement, as written in the PD, said, “And that paper (presumable the PD). This town. It ruined my health, and my wife’s health and my kids and family.” It suggests that he still doesn’t take blame.

Gerry, you did it to yourself and your family.

It wasn’t the fault of the newspaper that had given him years without adequate coverage. Nor was it the town that gave him trouble. He did it to himself.

A few words of praise

A few words of praise for Sen. George Voinovich.

His refusal to endorse his brother Victor Voinovich for the top elected office in the County – the newly created position of County Executive – must have taken some courage. Certainly, the decision has a human component that makes such a verdict difficult. After all, he is his brother.

Victor Voinovich, a Republican, still has the Voinovich name.

The Senator could have gotten away with a tacit approval of his brother’s candidacy and likely avoided the tag of being un-brotherly.

Even if the two don’t get along, Voinovich opened himself to criticism of not showing brotherly love.

Instead, Sen. Voinovich told the truth – his brother isn’t qualified for the job. That’s what he was saying when he denied his backing by, according to reports, because Victor had no political experience.

I promised myself

I promised myself I wouldn’t write about this. Ah, I’m breaking my promise to myself.

I have to laugh at Brent Larkin’s column about George Steinbrenner. Showing the generous side of George. Please.

And doing it partially by using Jim Stanton, another crude politician from the McFaul era at City Hall.

Brent has Stanton going to Steinbrenner after leaving Congress in the late 1970s as if Jim Stanton didn’t know what his role was going to be. And George lending him a hand by making him Steinbrenner’s counsel in Washington.

Big Jim Stanton as a supplicant and George as the magnanimous. Not two wheeler dealers. Ah, Brent. That’s rich.

Please, as soon as Stanton wasn’t a sitting Congressman you know what he was going to be as a former Congressman – a connection to Congress for powerful interests. He’s a lobbyist. What else?

He also became executive VP of Delaware North, formerly Sports Service. It had a shady past and had the concessions at the old Cleveland Stadium and at Jacobs Field. Stanton presently is involved in the gambling business. He is a director on the MTR Gaming Group board of directors. It fits Jim Stanton.