Cleveland’s leaders will face the voters again. City Council seats, the mayor’s office and several spots on the judicial bench are up for a vote in this year’s municipal elections.
The city’s campaigns are usually shoe-leather affairs. Candidates make their cases at doorsteps, block parties, street fairs and parades. Weekly Chatter plans to follow the action. This summer and fall, we’ll share stories and news tidbits from the local campaign trail.
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First look at Cleveland’s candidates
This week was the deadline for Cleveland candidates to file if they want their names on the ballot. The list of mayoral, council and judicial hopefuls could change if candidates fail to meet the petition signature threshold or drop out. Some more write-in candidates may also appear.
But as things stand now, here are some initial observations about the lay of the political land.
Housing Court showdown: Judge W. Moná Scott faces a challenge from attorney Cheryl Wiltshire as she seeks a second six-year term on Cleveland Housing Court.
The court oversees evictions and housing code cases — placing the judge right in the middle of Cleveland’s tussle with out-of-town landlords.
Scott won her seat on the bench by defeating incumbent Judge Ron O’Leary, who had been appointed after the death of longtime Judge Raymond Pianka.
Wiltshire brings her own Housing Court experience to the race. She clerked for Pianka and served as a magistrate with the court in 2022.
Crowded East Side races: Council Members Stephanie Howse-Jones and Deborah Gray face several challengers in their two wards.
Howse-Jones is running in the new Ward 8, which covers the St. Clair-Superior neighborhood, most of Hough and parts of Glenville and downtown. Among the challengers is former Community Police Commission member Teri Wang, who still attends meetings and disrupted one in April.
The other Ward 8 hopefuls are Leon Meredith, Charlotte Perkins and write-in candidate Tony Perry.
The new Ward 3, where Gray is running, connects Slavic Village with part of Shaker Square. Gray is up against LaShorn K. Caldwell, Sharon M. Spruill and Erich V. Stubbs.
Redistricting mix-up: Council hopeful Michael Africa has also been campaigning for the Ward 8 council seat. But when he filled out his paperwork at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, he accidentally listed Ward 7 on one line of the form, he said. That’s the current ward number, which is changing next year with the new council map.
That error was enough to get him listed by the board as a candidate in the new Ward 7 on the West Side. His petition signatures won’t count if they belong to voters in the new Ward 8.
“I just put one little typo on there,” Africa said.
He plans to plead his case to board members at a meeting later this month, he said.
West Side free-for-alls: With neither Jenny Spencer nor Kerry McCormack seeking new City Council terms, two new wards on the West Side feature no incumbents at all.
The new Ward 7 includes Ohio City, Tremont, Detroit-Shoreway and the downtown lakefront. Mohammad Faraj, Austin Davis and Mike Rogalski all filed to run for the seat.
Further west, Nikki Hudson will face Andrew Fontanarosa in the new Ward 11, which stretches from Edgewater Park to Old Brooklyn.
The untouchables? Council President Blaine Griffin’s decision not to run against Mayor Justin Bibb has proven to be a politically shrewd one.
No one filed to challenge Griffin in Ward 6, giving him an open path to another four years at City Hall. Griffin also faced only a write-in opponent in 2021.
Incumbent members Kevin Bishop, Jasmin Santana, Brian Kazy and Charles Slife can all enjoy their summers, too. None of them has drawn a challenger this year, although there is still time for write-in campaigns to pop up.
Kazy has been doubly blessed. He didn’t have an opponent four years ago, either.
