Lakewood City Council Disregards Voters, Reappoints Marx

Voters deserve better.

I write this despite fairly low personal esteem for voters. Voters don't do themselves a lot of favors.

Voters still deserve better than having their sporadic votes for change overturned, by a petty and vengeful political class which won't tolerate even small challenges to its sense of entitlement.

The unintended consequences set in motion by Clevelanders' vote for change in its mayor's office, after 16 years, demonstrate naked contempt for voters.

When Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb nominated Dan O'Malley to replace snarling bully Dave Wondolowski, on the Port Authority Board, the entitled political class said no. Lame duck County Executive Armond Budish appointed Wondolowski right back onto the board, and the complicit County Council didn't even vote for or against, but instead just let the deadline for responding pass.

More recently, county government's much derided nullification of electoral consequences got a sequel, in Lakewood, which if less noticed may be even more outrageous.

The same Cleveland vote for modest change is at the back of both efforts to discourage voters from thinking they can actually have any. Because Mayor Bibb did get to appoint Lakewood City Council President Dan O'Malley to the Port Authority—with the dismal result of Budish simply bumping another board member to put Wondolowski right back on—O'Malley's resignation from Lakewood Council created a vacancy.

Unlike Armond Budish, Lakewood City Council didn't settle for overturning just a second-order consequence of voting for change. Lakewood Council, instead, chose to turn the clock back and nullify an actual council election result.

On June 6, Lakewood City Council decided to replace O'Malley with Cindy Marx, a former at-large council member whose one term received a solidly failing grade in 2017, when Marx finished fourth place out of six candidates. With one exception, all of Lakewood Council decided to pass over a long list of qualified alternatives who might at least claim neutral standing with voters, and instead reinforce Budish's reminder that members of the club cannot be fired.

This is naked contempt for voters, and there's no dressing it up. The majority of Lakewood Council can claim that because voters in Ward 4 "only" rated Marx's council term third place in 2017—still far behind the year's only two credible candidates for change—this represents a Ward 4 popular endorsement of Marx even though only first place finishers win ward races.

The excuse is simply a lie, no more meaningful than Budish's claim that the Port Authority Board needs Wondolowski to represent organized labor, even though Northeast Ohio has plentiful labor leaders (including the very same Dan O'Malley whom Bibb wanted to replace Wondolowski with).

The bare reality is that Lakewood City Council members Kyle Baker, Tom Bullock, Sarah Kepple, John Litten and Jason Shachner are simply intolerant of voters defying them, just like Budish and his enablers on County Council. The only "sour grapes" in evidence, here, are from the entitled political class which preaches united respect for election results and moving forward, when they win, but practices anything goes to overturn any result which they lose.

Vote for fresh faces, get familiar faces anyway. It isn't complicated.

If it's an irony, that these two most recent middle fingers to independent-minded voters flew up in response to a rare successful vote for change in Cleveland, it's the kind of irony which is all too tedious.

Credit Council member Tristan Rader for voting against this travesty. For all voters' failings, they deserve at least an expectation that when they do rouse themselves to vote for change, the people in office will concede that much; if not more, then not less. Unfortunately, voters may not expect that much from most of Cuyahoga County's cliquish and entitled politicians.

But voters deserve better.