A longtime Republican member of Cuyahoga County Council may be on the verge of losing his suburban seat to a Democratic challenger. But the unofficial results are so close that the outcome will hinge on the small number of ballots counted after Election Day.
Jack Schron, the CEO of Collinwood manufacturer Jergens, is down 17 votes to Robert Schleper Jr., his Democratic opponent. More than 60,000 votes were cast in the district, meaning the two candidates are separated by less than 0.03%. [Update: An official tally released by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections have Schleper winning by 245 votes. The slim margin will trigger a recount on Dec. 2.]
If Schleper’s lead holds, he would become County Council’s first openly gay member. He notes on his campaign website that he and his husband have been together 16 years and have a 5-year-old daughter. He has worked as a teacher and school administrator.
Schleper told Signal Cleveland that he has been a “first” in the other offices he has held on Chagrin Falls Village Council and the Chagrin Falls school board.
“The bottom line for me is that Cuyahoga County should be a place for everyone to thrive regardless of your orientation or your gender or your race or any other piece,” he said. “This should be a place where all of us can come together and say, ‘How do we move the county forward?’”
Schron has served on County Council since its inception in 2010. He ran as the Republican Party’s candidate for county executive in 2014, losing to Democrat Armond Budish.
Council’s District 6 hugs the southeast corner of Cuyahoga County and includes such suburbs as Mayfield Heights, Solon and Brecksville. The area has been trending Democratic. In 2018, Democratic candidate Phil Robinson flipped a formerly Republican Ohio House district that covered overlapping – but not identical – territory.
“There’s a number of communities that have become very Democratic, so I knew that that was going to be a very hard race,” Schron said in a phone interview Wednesday morning.
It’s not yet known how many votes were cast that haven’t been counted yet. Many of the uncounted votes are likely provisional ballots, which are given to voters when there is a question about their eligibility – for instance, if a voter’s current address doesn’t match the one on file with the board of elections. The board also still has to count mail-in ballots that were postmarked by the deadline but arrived after Election Day, as well as a small number of other ballots.
The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections will add eligible votes to the official count when it certifies the election Nov. 20. The board would conduct a recount of the vote if the margin between the two candidates remains less than 0.5%.
Often, provisional ballots benefit Democrats. But in Robinson’s reelection in 2020, the votes counted after Election Day favored his Republican opponent, Shay Hawkins. Robinson still won that race.
Even so, Schleper said that he feels “really confident” about his lead in the race. He credited an extensive door-knocking campaign for putting him in an advantageous position.
If Schron loses, the 11-member County Council will be down to one Republican, Michael Gallagher. GOP Council Member Nan Baker lost her seat in the western suburbs to Democrat Patrick Kelly in 2022.