Black Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson is still uncertain of whether he will seek an historic fourth term in 2017, prospective Black candidates for city mayor include Nina Turner, state Representative Bill Patmon, and councilpersons Jeff Johnson and Zack Reed....Jackson, Patmon, Turner, Reed and Johnson are all Democrats....Cleveland will host the Republican National Convention this year and the Ohio Democratic primary for president is on March 15...Mayor Jackson still enjoys support from Democratic Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge....By Cleveland Urban News.Com Editor-in-Chief Kathy Wray Coleman
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Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and the Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog. Tel: 216-659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Coleman is a 23-year political, legal and investigative journalist who trained for 17 years, and under five different editors, at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio |
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CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio-Following a highly failed recall effort led last year by Cleveland Black Contractors Group activist Norm Edwards and Cleveland criminal defense attorney Michael Nelson Sr., now the president of the Cleveland branch NAACP, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson may or may not be contemplating an unprecedented fourth term.
The three- term Black mayor of the majority Black major American city is reportedly undecided on whether he will run for reelection in 2017, an election of the mayor and the 17-member Cleveland City Council that will come after the Republican National Convention that the city will host this year.
And Ohio remains a pivotal state as the presidential election nears.
That new president, whether he or she is Republican or Democrat, will succeed Barack Obama, a Democrat and the first Black president of the United States of America.
Jackson will surely play a key role in the presidential election and certainly if Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump, who leads the crowded field of candidates seeking the Republican nomination for president, face off in November.
Clinton will square off in Ohio against Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders for the March 15 Democratic primary, which is around the corner.
In 2008 it was Obama that Clinton took on, winning the Ohio primary but ultimately losing the Democratic nomination for president to the then junior U.S. senator representing Illinois.
The mayor's spokesperson, Dan Williams, did not return phone calls from Cleveland Urban News.Com seeking comment on whether Jackson will make another reelection bid.
Other prospective Black candidates for mayor include former state senator Nina Turner, a Jackson ally, state Rep. Bill Patmon, and councilmen Zack Reed and Jeff Johnson.
Turner, Patmon, Reed and Johnson, and the mayor himself, are Democrats.
Both Patmon and Turner, currently the national surrogate for the Bernie Sanders for president campaign, are former city council persons, and Johnson is a former state senator.
Patmon lost a nonpartisan runoff race for mayor against Jackson in 2009.
Councilmen Reed and Johnson are not afraid to take on the mayor and were rebuffed in pushing a proposed ordinance to fund more police on the streets, an effort the mayor says will move forward on his terms.
Sources say that Jackson, 68, would likely win reelection if he runs, and that he is the best chance of keeping the city in the hands of a Black mayor.
Whether a change is coming in the form of a new city mayor remains to be seen, particularly since Jackson is still relatively popular, and still enjoys public support from city council, and White and Black leaders in general, including 11th Congressional District Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge, one of two Blacks in Congress from Ohio.
Also the director for the American Center for Economic Equality, Edwards, and Nelson, a Democrat who ran for mayor in 2005 and has not ruled out another run next year, began embarking upon the recall effort early last year.
That recall effort failed miserably, the group getting some 273 valid signatures of the necessary 12,000 needed to put the issue before voters.
The mayor, says Edwards, has failed to provide the largely Black Cleveland schools students an adequate education, has overlooked police abuse, including excessive force killings, and has allocated a disproportionate amount of resources to beautify downtown Cleveland while the inner city neighborhoods continue to deteriorate.
The mayor's foes also say that it is time for a change in leadership as Cleveland remains on the national map for controversial police killings including that of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, a Black kid shot and killed instantly by police in November 2014 while toting a toy gun at a public park and recreation center on the city's west side.
The mayor's supporters say he is a good all-around mayor, and has put Cleveland on the map in a favorable manner, and that a Black should lead the largely Black city, if at all possible.
Jackson controls Cleveland schools under state law, and will lead the effort this year to try to convince voters to renew a 15-mil tax levy approved in 2012.
The subject of the mayor's stance on seeking an historic fourth term comes on the heels of controversial Cleveland police killings of unarmed Blacks, including Rice, Tanisha Anderson, Malissa Williams, Timothy Russell, and Kenneth Smith.
A court-monitored consent decree settlement on police reforms negotiated between the city and the U.S. Department of Justice was agreed upon by the parties on June 12.
If Jackson seeks a fourth term and wins reelection in 2017, he would be the first Cleveland mayor to reach such a milestone.
Former mayor Michael R. White, Cleveland'S second Black mayor, served three terms and opted not to seek reelection in 2001. He was succeeded by one-term former Mayor Jane Campbell, who is White and whom Jackson, then president of city council, ousted.
Elected in 1967 when the city was majority White, the late Carl B. Stokes, is the first Black mayor of Cleveland, and of a major American city, and his late brother Louis Stokes, the first Black congressperson from Ohio.
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