By Mansfield Frazier
Thirty-seven is an important number to remember as things heat up in the race for Cuyahoga County prosecutor. That’s the number of votes Democratic Party Executive Committee members from Parma gave to candidate Jim McDonnell. He got all of them; there were no more to get.
While members from other communities spread their votes among various candidates, those members from Parma obviously did exactly as they were told. This was ugly, old-style machine politics at its worst; the kind county reform was supposed to change… but just as obviously didn’t touch.
Why, you might ask, did all of the members from Parma vote in lock-step for McDonnell, when he doesn’t even live in that city? That’s an easy one… those voting were all Bill Mason’s people. Now, the question that naturally comes to mind is, what — if anything — did McDonnell promise Mason in return for all of those votes?
Rumor has it (and at this point it’s just a rumor, mind you) McDonnell assured Mason that all of the current staff at the Prosecutor’s Office would be kept on if he (McDonnell) wins. Isn’t there a legal term for that kind of deal?
Mason paid the University of Cincinnati to issue a whitewash report on his office which said (in spite of systemic flaws and wrongdoing found by a PD investigation last year) everything is just fine and dandy over at the Justice Center, which means no changes are needed. However, few people in the know are buying that load of bull.
The Prosecutor’s Office was the one part of county government reform didn’t touch… and if the Westside mob that has run roughshod over county politics for years has its way it won’t be touched… at least not if McDonnell is elected. It will be as if Mason never left — which of course will serve the interests of some folks around the county just fine, won’t it?
Remembering Constance (Connie) Kellon
I last spoke with Connie Kellon in late November, and during our conversation she did casually mention she was ill… but she made no big deal of it and I didn’t know the end was so near. Her voice was as strong and forceful as ever.
I recently learned she died a week later, on Dec. 3, from pancreatic cancer. But, more importantly, she lived for 82 full, active (and activist) years. She left behind her husband Donald, a psychiatrist, two children and six grandchildren.
Mrs. Kellon first called me well over a decade ago when I was the editor of a small weekly newspaper. I can’t remember now if that first conversation was because of something I’d written that she agreed with, or something she took issue with. Nevertheless, over the years she’d call every three or four months — or I’d call her — and we’d have these long, deep discussions on issues of import to the community and world. Her challenging words of wisdom greatly sharpened my thinking and helped to shape my opinions.
Every now and again during our conversations I’d take an obtuse position on an issue — something diametrically opposed to what I knew her views to be — knowing full-well it would set her off like a Roman candle; it would take a minute or two before I could get a word in edgewise to inform her I was only kidding. To which she’d reply, “Oh, I thought so… I knew you weren’t that dumb.” And then she’d gently laugh.
To say Mrs. Kellon was opinionated would be a vast understatement… but she never was unreasonable. On the rare occasions when we did actually disagree I could sometimes sway her over to my way of thinking, but, in most instances that wasn’t necessary, since we generally agreed far more than we disagreed.
She was my biggest fan; she’d saved and cataloged all of my writings over the years (my wife took her hard-copies of my work she didn’t possess about six months ago) and didn’t mind pinning me down if something I’d just written didn’t jibe with what I’d written on the subject years before. I always marveled at her razor-sharp memory. The study of her Cleveland Heights home was lined floor-to-ceiling with thousands of neatly shelved books… all of which she no doubt read.
Always fierce in her opinions, she once bragged that she’d been fired from virtually every job she ever had, and always for the same reasons: speaking her mind… while challenging authority and conventional wisdom. A long-time volunteer at the offices of the local NAACP, her life defined what it means to be truly committed to a cause.
She wasn’t one to sit on the sidelines: she carried the sword of her keen mind and the shield of her brave heart onto the civil rights battlefield day-in-and-day-out for “her people” up to the last days of her life.
I’m a better journalist because of the prodding, questioning — and, yes, laudatory compliments — of Constance Kellon… and indeed I’m a better human being because of her high expectations of me; I pray I can always live up to them. I shall miss her greatly.
Hung by the tongue (or, disrespecting the dead)
Words matter. That’s why they should be chosen with great care, especially when one is speaking live on radio where they’re being recorded for all posterity. And also especially when the speaker believes they’ve been blessed with the “silver tongue” of a superior orator, but are often given to moments of making hyperbolic comments.
As more than one politician has discovered, such a “gift” — this clever way with words — can sometimes lead to a bad case of “foot-in-mouth” disease.
That’s apparently what recently happened to State Senator (and Congressional candidate) Nina Turner when she appeared on NPR’s Sound of Ideas with Mike McIntyre and the PD’s Henry Gomez. She got on one of her rolls and unwittingly stepped into dog poop up to her ankle.
In response to a question regarding what leadership qualities she could bring to the voters of the 11th Congressional District, Turner (instead of responding with what she would do differently) responded with what she thought others who came before her haven’t done: “No one has shown — in my mind — enough leadership that understands the problems that have been developing in our core city and also in our inner ring communities for decades.” Decades? Really? Can Turner seriously mean what she said in this direct, verbatim quote?
Did Turner purposefully include Lou Stokes and Stephanie Tubbs Jones in the wide net she so publicly cast? Does “no one” include all of the other leaders of our community too? Reverends McMickle, Caviness and Tracey Lind; Rabbi Wolfe; Mayor Jackson; County Council President Connally; Judges Ron Adriane and Larry Jones… and others too numerous to mention? “No one” covers a lot of territory… and disparages a lot of fine people in one inane, idiotic comment.
But in fact, Turner just might mean to include everyone in her screed… since many of them, along with George Forbes and Arnold Pinkney, are members of what she derisively refers to as the “Club” — the “insiders” who don’t support her.
The first rule of demagoguery is to identify some group as the evil “enemy” you’re fighting against… while fighting for the ordinary, everyday people who are not members of the exclusive “Club” of course. This sets up the “us” against “them” paradigm so necessary for politicians of suspect substance to succeed the world over.
When such politicians have no legitimate issues to raise, no constructive criticisms to offer, no innovative solutions to put forth… they fall back on trickery — tricks they feel the electorate is too dense to figure out. In the absence of real facts, they simply appeal to nebulous emotions — emotions they can excite with cheap histrionics.
But Turner cannot be faulted for not being able to come up with solutions to urban ills of the kind that exist in the 11th Congressional District… indeed, the problems are too systemic, too ubiquitous, and have proven too intractable for easy, pat answers. The amazing thing is… critics of current leadership evidently haven’t been able to figure this out, or simply choose to ignore the obvious.
When cataloging the social ills of the 11th Congressional District (and they certainly are manifest and manifold), critics usually fail to mention that the exact same problems exist in urban Districts in every other part of the country… and they exist not because of a lack of leadership at any local level. They exist because the far-right has had its way for too long in determining the direction in which the country is going.
Turner, of all people, should comprehend this… and I really think she does. Being a Democratic state senator in Ohio, where minorities have very little power or influence, she has to know without the votes damn little of the progressive agenda will be implemented. And that’s exactly what Turner had been able to accomplish in Columbus: Damn little. But it’s not because she doesn’t get up every day trying, she really does give it her best effort.
If going to Washington as a congresswoman and holding press conferences to call the Republican leadership a sack full of sons-a-bitches would solve anything, Turner would be on to something; but publicly execrating the Right won’t fix the problems facing the rest of the nation.
Now, if, on the other hand, Turner has some magic solutions known only to herself and her small band of followers, if she can cure the nation’s ills as she would have voters in the 11th Congressional District believe, then why the hell is she wasting her time running for Congress… she should instead be running for President of the United States.
Anyone who’s ever played bid whist is familiar with the term “over-sporting your hand”… thinking the cards you hold are stronger than they actually are. Turner is going to find out the hard way that spouting overheated rhetoric, in which she totally disrespects the hard work done by other members of the community — and the memory of the late, great Stephanie Tubbs Jones — is not the smartest political move she can make.
We arrive at this point in our collective history, we gotten to where we are as a cohesive community, by standing on the shoulders of the giants that went before and paved the way for us with their great sacrifice, dedication, and yes, leadership; and Nina Turner, of all people, should never forget this fact. Or did she ever learn it?
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://www.neighborhoodsolutionsinc.com.
One Response to “MANSFIELD: Update on the Prosecutor’s Race”
Art McKoy
You forgot “Brother Art” in your “leaders of our community” rant, young apprentice.