A union rep, a Bibb advisor and several other newcomers are eyeing Cleveland City Council seats this election year. Here’s a very early rundown of the candidates who have formed campaign committees to raise money for council runs.
Beverly Owens-Jackson is challenging incumbent Richard Starr in Ward 5.
Owens-Jackson lives in the Central neighborhood and works in the registrar’s office at Cuyahoga Community College. She’s a leader in the Service Employees International Union Local 1199, where she has negotiated contracts for Tri-C support staff.
She told Signal Cleveland she’s running “to bring a voice to the working people and the people of the community” who are being priced out by rising housing costs.
Austin Davis, who works at City Hall as a senior policy advisor to the mayor, is positioning himself for a run in the new Ward 7. The ward encompasses much of the northern West Side, from Tremont to Detroit-Shoreway. There will be no incumbent in the race now that Kerry McCormack has closed the door on another term.
Davis came to City Hall by way of the Bibb transition team. A Harvard Law-educated attorney, he previously worked at Baker Hostetler.
Nikki Hudson is running for the open seat in the new Ward 11, which slices from Edgewater Park south to Old Brooklyn. Hudson has gone toe-to-toe with City Hall in two West Side neighborhood fights. One was over a school expansion that would have cut down trees at Cudell Park. The other was a plan to build a gas station near the park.
“I’m a big believer in strong neighborhoods,” she told Cleveland Scene, which first reported on her candidacy.
Alana Belle, a Glenville community organizer, is making a bid for the Ward 9 seat currently held by Kevin Conwell. As Axios Cleveland reported, Belle’s resume includes work for Preterm and the Ohio Women’s Alliance. “Even in all its glory, Glenville holds examples of how underresourced communities fight to survive,” she says on her campaign website.
Tanmay Shah is exploring a run in the new Ward 12, which runs from the Linndale border north to the Edgewater neighborhood. He previously worked as a housing attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, where he helped unionize the office. Shah wants the city to do more to counteract out-of-town landlords.
“Our system is failing poor people, and I want to try to address that,” he said in an interview.
Shah still practices law. He said he represents several of the pro-Palestinian activists who were cited with noise violations during a protest against Cuyahoga County’s investments in Israel bonds outside Executive Chris Ronayne’s house. (As it happens, Ronayne is a voter in the new Ward 12.)
Shah currently lives to the west in the new Ward 13 and said he’s still weighing whether to go through with a run in Ward 12.
Andrew Defratis is also running in Ward 12. The senior director of public affairs at the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center, he lives in the Edgewater neighborhood. He’s no stranger to politics; he worked on Sherrod Brown’s 2012 U.S. Senate campaign and is involved in the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party. He said he wants government to make positive change so that it isn’t seen as an “abstract bad guy.”
Defratis would face incumbent Danny Kelly. But he argued that, in a newly drawn ward, the race could be seen as an open one.
“I don’t see it necessarily as a new face versus an incumbent,” Defratis said. “It’s a new ward and new people seeking to represent it.”
Joe Vogelpohl, an Old Brooklyn landscaper, is the lone Republican in the mix. He has formed a campaign committee to fundraise for a run in the new Ward 4. The ward covers much of the Old Brooklyn neighborhood, currently represented by incumbent Kris Harsh.
Council and mayoral races are nonpartisan, meaning there aren’t separate Democratic and Republic primaries and party affiliations don’t appear on the ballot.
It’s early in the Cleveland political season. The filing deadline isn’t until June 11. There’s plenty of time for candidates to change their minds – and for new candidates to emerge.
