Rebecca Maurer, Blaine Griffin, Richard Starr
Council President Blain Griffin, flanked by Rebecca Maurer and Richard Starr, speaks at a news conference in 2023. Credit: Nick Castele / Signal Cleveland

First-term Cleveland City Council incumbents Rebecca Maurer and Richard Starr will face off this year in the race to represent the redrawn Ward 5. 

The showdown is one consequence of Cleveland City Council’s latest round of redistricting. The new ward map, passed by council under Council President Blaine Griffin, eliminated Maurer’s Ward 12 and places her address in a ward with Starr. 

The city charter ties council’s size to the city population, forcing council to cut the number of seats from 17 to 15 after the latest census.

Maurer said in an interview that she considered running elsewhere. This week, she said that she would stay put in the new Ward 5, even if political watchers might think that her progressive brand would help her in other parts of the city. 

“As much as the politicos in town think that, ‘Oh, that’s a progressive ward, or that’s a progressive ward,’ people ultimately want to be represented by someone who lives in their ward,” she said. “People are just focused on the same bread-and-butter issues that I’m running on in the first place.” 

She is competing in largely new political territory. Her current ward reaches across the Cuyahoga River to embrace Slavic Village, where she lives, and part of Old Brooklyn. The new ward connects her neighborhood to an enlarged version of Starr’s current ward. 

Maurer said she is running on her record of pushing the city to enforce its law against unsafe lead paint in rental properties. An attorney, she previously worked at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland and at the Student Borrower Protection Center. 

Starr was raised in the King Kennedy public housing development in the Central neighborhood. He worked at the local Boys & Girls Clubs of Cleveland and is still close with the young people there. At Monday night’s council meeting, he presented a resolution honoring the recipient of the club’s “Youth of the Year” award.  

Starr told Signal Cleveland last December that he intended to run for a second term in Ward 5 and was ready for the challenge. 

“I want all the smoke,” he said. “I’m here to serve the people in the City of Cleveland no matter what the boundaries say it is or how the district lines are drawn. I’m here to do a job. I ain’t run to be a one-term council person. I ran to make sure to get results to whatever area that I represent in the City of Cleveland.” 

Two council newcomers who have ruffled feathers

Starr and Maurer, both in their mid-30s, followed similar political trajectories. In the 2021 elections, they ousted incumbent council members. Maurer unseated longtime Slavic Village representative Tony Brancatelli, and Starr defeated Delores Gray, who had been appointed to fill a vacancy. 

Last year, Maurer clashed with Griffin over the redistricting process. When an earlier map drew her into a West Side ward, she criticized the move on the floor of council and drew a rebuke from the council president. 

Starr has butted heads with Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration. He took the mayor to task for hiring a safety advisor who had faced a civil rights lawsuit as a Washington, D.C., police officer. The parties later settled the suit. The advisor, Phillip McHugh, resigned from the Bibb administration last year.

Maurer and Starr are not the only candidates in the Ward 5 race. Also among the competitors for the seat is Beverly Owens-Jackson, a member of the Service Employees International Union Local 1199 who works at Cuyahoga Community College. 

All candidates will run in a September primary. The top two vote-getters will advance to the November election.  

The redrawn Ward 5 covers much of the same ground as the current ward, with some changes. The Central neighborhood — Starr’s political home base — remains the ward’s heart. But the future Ward 5 reaches farther into downtown, covering ground south of Superior and Euclid Avenues. 

Redistricting has shifted the ward’s demographics. Ward 5 was 75% Black and just less than 20% white, according to a 2021 data analysis by the Center for Community Solutions. The new Ward 5 is 24% white and 64% Black, City Council data shows

The race may present the mayor with a political decision. Bibb’s apartment at Playhouse Square is in the new Ward 5. Unless Bibb moves, the Starr-Maurer matchup will appear on his ballot in September. 

Government Reporter
I follow how decisions made at Cleveland City Hall and Cuyahoga County headquarters ripple into the neighborhoods. I keep an eye on the power brokers and political organizers who shape our government. I am a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and have covered politics and government in Northeast Ohio since 2012.