CLEVELAND, Ohio — After nearly five years, the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party will in the next few weeks select a new person to head the party as chair, an immensely important position to the political landscape in Northeast Ohio and critical to organizing and turning out votes for Democrats in statewide elections.
Chairwoman Shontel Brown announced in January she would step down from the post to focus on her new position in Congress. The transition comes at a critical time during the 2022 election cycle and is also symbolic of the transition Cuyahoga County is undergoing with a new generation of politicians that could reshape the future.
A changing of the guard has emerged across the board, including Brown’s elevation to Congress, Justin Bibb’s rapid ascent from newcomer to Cleveland mayor and Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish’s exit from office, with Democrat Chris Ronayne in a solid position to take the seat in the November election.
Now the party chairmanship, arguably the most powerful political position in Northeast Ohio outside of government, is up for grabs with four candidates looking to take the position: state Rep. Kent Smith, former Shaker Heights City Councilman Rob Zimmerman, independent political consultant and former Bedford School Board member Andy Mizsak and David Brock, an education and outreach coordinator for a nonprofit housing organization.
State Rep. Juanita Brent’s name also surfaced as a possibility, though most were confused about whether she is actively pursuing the chair spot. Brent did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
An election has not officially been set, though early-to mid-June is the target date when the party’s executive committee could convene to pick Brown’s replacement.
To those not involved with the party, the county party chair race may seem byzantine and relatively unimportant. The party chair is a political position with no governmental authority. Only around 800 executive committee members will determine who gets the bid.
But Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin said the party chair is as important to the general public as it is to any party central committee member in a county that is overwhelmingly Democratic.
“This is probably the one organization that can neutralize economic and structural power in the city of Cleveland,” he said. “This has been the one organization where the working man and the average person and people who live on the margins can seek truth to power. I hope people see it as that opportunity and become more involved in the party.”
Opinions about Brown’s tenure as chair varied, though most Democrats who spoke to cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer were complimentary of her time at the helm, noting that she faced some significant structural disadvantages upon her election in 2017.
State Sen. Sandra Williams, a Cleveland Democrat and former vice-chair of the party who ran against Brown in that election, said Brown managed to overcome some of those hindrances, including a national trend of waning support for Democrats from organized labor.
“I think she did a great job based on what she was dealt,” Williams said. “The Democratic Party has seen a decrease in the number of supporters not only from labor unions but the business community. She dealt with the hand she was dealt and made the best of it.”
Brown did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Cuyahoga County Councilwoman Shontel Brown, right, pictured after her victory over Newburg Heights Mayor Trevor K. Elkins, left, on Aug. 26, 2017 to become the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party chairwoman. (Seth A. Richardson, cleveland.com)
Ups and downs
The Cuyahoga County Democratic Party has been in a rut since being upended by the county corruption scandal in 2008, ending with then-chair Jimmy Dimora being sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence. Dimora’s conviction created a kind of power vacuum in the once machine-oriented organization. Competing factions have yet to unify like they were 20 years ago when the county was a powerhouse in statewide politics.
Depending on the perspective, Brown’s tenure has yielded mixed results, including in arguably the two most important metrics when measuring a chair’s success, fundraising and turnout.
In terms of fundraising, Brown managed to raise more from 2017 through 2020 than any other four-year cycle dating back to 2005-2008. That includes topping more than $1 million into the party’s political account in 2020, marking the only time that happened in the past 20 years.
But a steep drop-off coincided with her decision to run for Congress against former state Sen. Nina Turner. In 2021, amid hotly contested races for Congress and Cleveland mayor, the county party raised less than $300,000 into its political fund, the first time that happened since 2013.
Turnout and support for top-end elections were also all over the place, but Democrats were on a steep decline when Brown took over. To a degree, the decrease in turnout was abated. The 2018 midterm primary had a higher Democratic turnout than in 2014, and Democratic support for the gubernatorial ticket doubled in the general election.
Turnout fell off again in the 2020 primary, mired by the pandemic, with then-candidate Joe Biden essentially wrapping up the nomination by the time the delayed March 17 primary took place. In the general election, Biden logged nearly 18,000 more votes than Hillary Clinton in 2016, though he still lost the state by 8 percentage points.
Stunted growth
However, those turnout figures were muddied by the highly divisive congressional race. A wedge emerged within the Democratic Party, including many people critical of Brown’s decision to remain party chair while seeking higher office. Despite being both a candidate and head of the party, turnout was meager, and the party was a non-factor.
The county Democratic Party primary turnout gains were wholly erased in the 2022 primary election, despite a contested gubernatorial primary and Brown once again on the ballot, with only around 94,000 ballots cast. That is roughly 22,000 fewer votes than in 2014, the lowest in the last decade and a historically horrible year for the Democratic slate statewide.
The party has made some gains in more traditionally Republican areas of Cuyahoga County. Rep. Monique Smith was the only Ohio House of Representatives candidate to flip a Republican district in 2020, defeating incumbent Republican Rep. Dave Greenspan in a district that spans from Rocky River west to the county border. It represented the only Democratic statehouse pickup of the 2020 elections.
But vote share has bled in some historically Democratic strongholds, a trend that predates Brown’s tenure, most notably in Parma, which Trump won by more than 2,000 votes, a gain of around 700 votes from his 2016 total.
“I don’t know that Shontel is to blame for any kind of change in the electorate. I think that’s an unfair criticism,” said state Rep. Jeff Crossman, a Parma Democrat running for attorney general.
At the statewide level, the Cuyahoga County party often faces a slew of criticism for underperforming and dooming the chances of statewide Democrats.
David Pepper, former chair of the Ohio Democratic Party, said the statewide criticism of Cuyahoga County is overblown as Democrats have suffered losses everywhere around the state. For instance, even doubling Biden’s Cuyahoga County vote total in 2020 would have resulted in a nearly 60,000-vote loss statewide to Trump.
“Sometimes that was a bad rap,” Pepper said.
There were times when the Cuyahoga County party could seem somewhat isolated from the statewide network of parties, but that was simply because of its size and more complex Democratic Party dynamics than in other areas, Pepper said. But this also allowed the county party to take on tasks that the state party might perform elsewhere, with no need for overlap.
On turnout, Pepper said the issue was less about county party leadership and more about the purges of voter rolls, particularly in Democratic neighborhoods.
“Without looking back, but looking forward, the number one job of the next chair of that party has to be an all-week, all-year effort to register engaged voters,” Pepper said. “Particularly those we know in recent years who haven’t been voting. And I’m talking a paid effort.”
Congresswoman Shontel Brown’s watch party at the Ariel International Center, May 3, 2022. John Kuntz, cleveland.com
2021 and beyond
Brown’s decision to stay on as chair of the party as she ran for Congress was among the most polarizing aspects of her tenure. She received a flood of criticism for what many saw as a conflict of interest in the Democratic Party chair actively campaigning – and dividing – Democrats. Her acceptance of thousands of dollars in donations from Republicans also rubbed people the wrong way.
That division has healed to a degree, even after another expensive primary contest with Turner in the 2022 primary that once again saw dark money spend heavily in favor of Brown.
Griffin, a former vice-chair of the county party who campaigned against Brown in her 2021 congressional race and supported her in 2022, said Brown’s success as chair included more immeasurable components. For example, Brown was the first Black woman elected to head the county party.
“Here’s a woman who basically changed the face of what the Democratic Party could look like to actually reflect the biggest voter base in the Democratic Party in Black women,” Griffin said. “That was a huge boost to the party and boost to the morale of our base, which is Black women.”
Monique Smith, the state representative from Rocky River, said Brown had also proven her mettle by navigating the party through the coronavirus pandemic.
“In the last cycle, everyone needs to recognize we were operating in a pandemic,” she said. “We could not do the normal things we would have done in another election cycle. I know firsthand how much of a challenge that was when it came to everything from grassroots organizing to fundraising. In that context, I think she did as well as anybody could have done.”
Zimmerman, Mizsak and Kent Smith, three of Brown’s potential successors, were complimentary of Brown’s chairwomanship, describing her as attentive and engaging.
“She did a very good job of trying to turn out the vote in underserved communities and communities that felt disaffected,” Mizsak said. “I came to really, really respect her as chair because, at least in my experience, whether she agreed with you or not, she listened to you. We would have regular communication. I served with four chairs in Cuyahoga County, and, I’ve got to tell you, she’s been the most open to hearing things out.”
Zimmerman echoed that sentiment, saying Brown was willing to listen and mediate with competing factions within the party.
“Everyone got a fair hearing, which I thought was great,” he said. “I just happen to like Shontel. I think she’s a really nice person and always enjoyed being around her. That just made it easy to work with her in my capacity at the time, not only as an elected official but as a person on the executive committee and central committee of the party.”
Smith said Brown was especially effective at the public-facing duties of the chair position.
“She is as gifted of a political communicator this community has seen in a generation,” he said. “I think she was very adept at reaching voters where they were and was extraordinarily skilled in front of a microphone when she had to be.”
Brock said he thought Brown was a good chair in terms of what the chair position has historically been tasked with doing. He was more critical than the other candidates of her choice to not step down during her congressional run, which he said sowed some division.
“Democrats in Cuyahoga County had to become either Team Nina or Team Shontel,” he said. “It’s like Sanders-Clinton in 2016. It doesn’t do us a whole lot of good.”
Despite the kind words for Brown, there were multiple areas the majority of Democrats who spoke with cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer said the next chair needed to address. Turnout and fundraising were the most often cited, but other, more nebulous concepts such as party unity and identity needed to be a priority, they said.
“Our party is starting to become polarized,” said Griffin, the Cleveland city council president. “I think a lot of moderate and independent voters are starting to get turned off by the party. The most important thing they need to do is establish our identity.”
