Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson Will Take On Patmon, Marking Second Time In History That Two Blacks Compete For Mayor In General Election
Posted Wednesday, September 9, 2009
By Kathy Wray Coleman
(National and Cleveland, Ohio Area News- Coleman is a freelance journalist who last year interviewed now U.S. President Barack Obama one-on-one for the Call & Post newspaper, Ohio's Black press, shortly before Ohio's March 4 Primary for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States of America)
Frank G. Jackson, the 56th mayor of the predominantly Black major metropolitan city of Cleveland, Oh., silenced his critics Tuesday evening, winning the nonpartisan primary election with 72 percent of the vote in a stunning blowout.
Embarrassing his four opponents, and surprising some of his critics, Jackson out distanced his closest challenger, former city councilman Bill Patmon, by a 5 to 1 margin. Two additional opponents of the mayor, both write-ins, went essentially unnoticed by voters, as did the four noticeable ones, apparently.
Cleveland voters easily handed the former Cleveland City Council President and former councilman of Cleveland's Ward 5 a mandate Tuesday night, lending credibility to Jackson's low key but no nonsense style of leadership, and buying into his campaign platform. With that platform the incumbent mayor touted Cleveland under his watch as stable and prospering citing what he calls a balanced city budget during a national economic crisis and steady if not fading city crime statistics.
As the two top vote getters Jackson, 62, and Patmon, 63, will square off for the Nov. 3 general election.
At his victory party Jackson told his supporters that Cleveland is stable and “headed in the right direction.” Patmon was more aggressive and hammered Jackson on the city schools, the city's loss of the rich and powerful Eaton Corporation to a nearby suburb, and his view that Cleveland is deteriorating to “a rust belt city.”
With 365 of the 365 precincts reporting Jackson finished with 24,128 votes to Patmon's 3,753.
Robert M. Kilo, the lone White candidate of the noticeable four, nearly beat Patmon, winning 3,328 of the votes. But since that unexpected upstaging did not unexpectedly occur, which would have pit an incumbent Black mayor from Cleveland's majority Black East Side against a bible toting White man from the largely White West Side of town, voters can expect an exceedingly dull Black on Black candidates' race, some say. If so, it would mirror Tuesday's primary with its diminishing excitement, though it had two Black women in it, both articulate, both ambitious, but both falling short in efforts to unseat Jackson. Social worker Kimberly Brown finished fourth with 1,462 votes, and Laverne Jones Gore, a consultant, rounded out the primary election for mayor with 1,001 votes.
The first and only time that Cleveland has had two Blacks from the primary competing in a general election for mayor was in 1989 when then Cleveland City Council President George Forbes lost a close race to his once protege, Michael R. White, then an Ohio State Senator from Cleveland.
That race, unlike this year's upcoming one, was nearly commensurate to the Obama -Clinton fight for last year's Democratic nomination for president. It was increasingly tumultuous since Forbes had mentored White, helping to catapult him to Cleveland City Council representing Ward 8 in 1977, and then to the state legislature in 1984.
White went on to serve two more terms, often battling with Forbes in Forbes'subsequent role of president of the Cleveland Chapter NAACP , and becoming the longest serving Cleveland mayor. He opted out of a potential fourth term, retiring to an alpaca farm in Newcomberstown, Oh. with his third wife, Joan. Voters elected Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell in 2001, a one term mayor ousted by Jackson in 2005.
“ The voters have spoken,” said Ann Romans, a retired Cleveland Public Schools teacher and community activist, though she admits that Patmon is still in the race, if not just by virtue of coming in second to the popular Jackson, who started the contest with confidence aside a half million dollar political war chest.
Voter turn out was low, said Jane Platten, Director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, with about 10 percent of Cleveland's registered voters making it to the polls.
By Kathy Wray Coleman
(National and Cleveland, Ohio Area News- Coleman is a freelance journalist who last year interviewed now U.S. President Barack Obama one-on-one for the Call & Post newspaper, Ohio's Black press, shortly before Ohio's March 4 Primary for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States of America)
Frank G. Jackson, the 56th mayor of the predominantly Black major metropolitan city of Cleveland, Oh., silenced his critics Tuesday evening, winning the nonpartisan primary election with 72 percent of the vote in a stunning blowout.
Embarrassing his four opponents, and surprising some of his critics, Jackson out distanced his closest challenger, former city councilman Bill Patmon, by a 5 to 1 margin. Two additional opponents of the mayor, both write-ins, went essentially unnoticed by voters, as did the four noticeable ones, apparently.
Cleveland voters easily handed the former Cleveland City Council President and former councilman of Cleveland's Ward 5 a mandate Tuesday night, lending credibility to Jackson's low key but no nonsense style of leadership, and buying into his campaign platform. With that platform the incumbent mayor touted Cleveland under his watch as stable and prospering citing what he calls a balanced city budget during a national economic crisis and steady if not fading city crime statistics.
As the two top vote getters Jackson, 62, and Patmon, 63, will square off for the Nov. 3 general election.
At his victory party Jackson told his supporters that Cleveland is stable and “headed in the right direction.” Patmon was more aggressive and hammered Jackson on the city schools, the city's loss of the rich and powerful Eaton Corporation to a nearby suburb, and his view that Cleveland is deteriorating to “a rust belt city.”
With 365 of the 365 precincts reporting Jackson finished with 24,128 votes to Patmon's 3,753.
Robert M. Kilo, the lone White candidate of the noticeable four, nearly beat Patmon, winning 3,328 of the votes. But since that unexpected upstaging did not unexpectedly occur, which would have pit an incumbent Black mayor from Cleveland's majority Black East Side against a bible toting White man from the largely White West Side of town, voters can expect an exceedingly dull Black on Black candidates' race, some say. If so, it would mirror Tuesday's primary with its diminishing excitement, though it had two Black women in it, both articulate, both ambitious, but both falling short in efforts to unseat Jackson. Social worker Kimberly Brown finished fourth with 1,462 votes, and Laverne Jones Gore, a consultant, rounded out the primary election for mayor with 1,001 votes.
The first and only time that Cleveland has had two Blacks from the primary competing in a general election for mayor was in 1989 when then Cleveland City Council President George Forbes lost a close race to his once protege, Michael R. White, then an Ohio State Senator from Cleveland.
That race, unlike this year's upcoming one, was nearly commensurate to the Obama -Clinton fight for last year's Democratic nomination for president. It was increasingly tumultuous since Forbes had mentored White, helping to catapult him to Cleveland City Council representing Ward 8 in 1977, and then to the state legislature in 1984.
White went on to serve two more terms, often battling with Forbes in Forbes'subsequent role of president of the Cleveland Chapter NAACP , and becoming the longest serving Cleveland mayor. He opted out of a potential fourth term, retiring to an alpaca farm in Newcomberstown, Oh. with his third wife, Joan. Voters elected Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell in 2001, a one term mayor ousted by Jackson in 2005.
“ The voters have spoken,” said Ann Romans, a retired Cleveland Public Schools teacher and community activist, though she admits that Patmon is still in the race, if not just by virtue of coming in second to the popular Jackson, who started the contest with confidence aside a half million dollar political war chest.
Voter turn out was low, said Jane Platten, Director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, with about 10 percent of Cleveland's registered voters making it to the polls.
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