Realizing that many blacks and some progressives might feel they don’t have a candidate they like in the race for Cuyahoga County prosecutor, it still behooves them to get out and vote. The franchise was too hard won — in some parts of the country people laid down their lives to earn the right — to neglect. We always need to vote, if for no other reason than to protect the right to vote.
Believe this: Some conservatives are, at this very moment, attempting to figure out ways to limit the ability of anyone who is not like them to exercise their right and privilege to cast ballots. Looking down the political road, the handwriting on the wall is clear — absent some way of taking the vote away from black, brown and poor people, their cause is doomed. All anyone has to do is take a look at census figures.
Granted, the race between Tim McGinty and Michael O’Malley leaves some folks cold, but sitting out the race is the wrong response.
Certainly the stiff-necked, stubborn Irish prick McGinty has earned the everlasting enmity of many black and progressive voters due to the bumbling manner in which he handled the Tamir Rice case. However, in a subsequent case involving the death of Tanisha Anderson, McGinty, citing a conflict of interest, has wisely decided to step back and bring in the state’s attorney general’s office, which, in turn, is asking the Lorain County prosecutor to look at the case. Maybe he has learned his lesson.
This certainly is a step in the right direction, but given the fact that our broken criminal justice system will virtually always favor cops (no matter how much evidence points to wrongdoing on their part), what’s going to happen in the Anderson case is a foregone conclusion: No one will be held accountable for her death, period.
Until cases of suspected police misconduct that result in the death of a citizen are handled at the federal level, it matters little which county or state agency weighs in on the matter. All of them are elected officials who are not going to get voted out of office by ruling against a so-called “officer of the law.” It just doesn’t happen in America.
But, back to McGinty: As stiff-necked and stubborn as he can be — he indeed has managed to piss off virtually everyone in the county — he is basically honest, and, based on his own sense of integrity sticks firmly to his convictions, right or wrong. And most of the time he is right. The measures he has undertaken to reform the criminal justice system are long overdue.
On the other hand, his opponent Michael O’Malley is an opportunist — or at least the person pulling his strings is. One gets the sense, whenever you hear him speak, that O’Malley is a most reluctant candidate — and that’s because he is. He’s in the race because his old boss at the prosecutor’s office wants him in the race, and the reason Bill Mason twisted his arm to get into the contest is because he knows that the county prosecutor is the most powerful person in any county in the United States. And Mason wants his power back.
While O’Malley has attempted to reassure voters that he would not go back to the old “machine politics” days of his old boss, he is being a bit disingenuous. There are many ways to exercise power once you have it, and rest assured that an O’Malley/Mason machine would have little problem coming up with ways to try to take control of the county once they have the whip in their hands.
Rumor has it they already have the candidate they plan to back picked out to run for mayor of Cleveland when the timing is right, in spite of the fact neither of them live in the city. If this surprises you, that speaks more to your naivety regarding politics than the reality of how the game is played.
So, while I might hold my nose — my congresswoman’s endorsement of O’Malley aside — I’m going to vote for McGinty. If you want to vote for O’Malley I’m not mad at you, I just want you to hold your nose too, and vote. We owe that to those who risked their lives so that all Americans could do so.
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://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.
[Photo by Theresa Thompson/Creative Commons]