Op-Ed: County Dems reformers make moves to eliminate party machines, strengthen Democratic Party

By Keith Wilson

A big shift in Cuyahoga County politics is now underway, as a reform movement called Build Back Cuyahoga has filled the void left by the collapse of former county prosecutor Bill Mason’s political machine. Mason had wielded outsized influence in the county since the 1990s, helping to pick and choose who got elected through controlling the position of Cuyahoga County Democratic Party (CCDP) chair. After Build Back Cuyahoga’s strength was shown in two major victories in 2022, the movement’s vision for the future of Cuyahoga County politics appears to be bearing fruit. 

Major news outlets have neglected to follow up on this important story since the end of Mason’s reign was profiled in a February 2022 Plain Dealer piece, “Bill Mason’s political machine kingless after attempt to influence Cuyahoga County executive race”. In the story, political strategists were quoted saying that Mason wanted to pick politicians he could influence, and that he didn’t favor Chris Ronayne for county executive because he couldn’t “control” him. 

Now, Ronayne was recently elected county executive by a landslide and has been sworn into office. Fourteen months ago, political newcomer Justin Bibb won the Cleveland mayor’s race by a sweeping margin, despite opposition from Mason’s dwindling political machine.

The story of what has replaced that machine, and what this means for Cuyahoga County, needs to be told. 

The Build Back Cuyahoga movement

Formed in 2021 by a group of activists from the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus, the goal of Build Back Cuyahoga is to democratize and professionalize CCDP by insulating the party against the influence of machines like Mason’s. The movement won two major victories last year. First, on June 18, Build Back Cuyahoga activist David Brock was elected CCDP chair. Then, on Nov. 8, Brock and his leadership team showed their strength by leading the Democratic Party to a shocking sweep of Cuyahoga County elections. With these two victories, the foundation is set for the movement to change county politics with a few key reforms.

To understand how this is all possible and why the position of CCDP chair is so important, it’s useful to understand a bit about CCDP’s structure and history. 

Why the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party chair matters

The CCDP bylaws give the chair enormous influence over candidate endorsements in Democratic Party primaries, and in deep blue Cuyahoga County, these endorsements usually determine who gets elected, from county executive to Cleveland city council members. Because of this, the chair has become the nexus of power through which political machines can exert control. 

Once the party apparatus is captured by a machine, the party’s focus shifts toward exerting and maintaining its power to advance its own agenda, while the work of recruiting, nominating, and electing effective public officials gets deprioritized. This results in a disproportionate number of elected officials who are either ineffective or overly invested in the status quo. Effective solutions to social problems are ignored, while favoritism abounds. 

Basically, political machines equals bad politicians. These politicians tend to be more responsive to the kingmakers who put them in office than to the voters. They also tend not to want to rock the boat or make the kinds of dramatic changes that are needed to improve Cuyahoga County. 

As voters become disillusioned with the process, turnout at the polls suffers, fewer people vote, and there’s less civic engagement. For Cuyahoga County Democrats in particular, there is another problem – low turnout at the local level in majority Democratic areas also reinforces the current Republican dominance in statewide elections. 

Build Back Cuyahoga intends to undermine the source of these political machines by eliminating the source of their power: Democratic primary endorsements. To do that, it was first necessary to beat the party’s machine players at their own game.

The Central Committee and the rise and fall of Bill Mason’s machine

The CCDP chair is elected by the party’s Central Committee, so the key to controlling the party machine is to fill the Central Committee with allies. (Importantly, the Central Committee also votes on changes to the bylaws, including the rules governing party endorsements.) Since the 1990s, former Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason has been acknowledged to be the master of this process. In 2010, the Plain Dealer published an article describing the moment in 1991 that Mason realized he needed to control the Central Committee if he wanted to wield power in the county:

When longtime County Prosecutor John T. Corrigan stepped down in 1991, Mason was a young assistant prosecutor who wanted Corrigan’s son, Michael, to get the job. But the Democratic Party’s central committee, the largely anonymous foot soldiers who often determine which people get coveted political posts, passed over Michael Corrigan and appointed Stephanie Tubbs Jones.

“It was an education for everyone involved,” Mason told The Plain Dealer in 1998. “We decided then to take control of the process so it would never happen again.”

The process for joining the Central Committee is structurally quite democratic, with one seat allotted to each of the 975 precincts in Cuyahoga County. Democrats in each precinct elect their Central Committee representative every four years on the Democratic primary ballot. In practice, though, very few of these seats are contested democratically, and many remain unfilled. Far from the democratic ideal drawn up in the party’s bylaws, these seats are typically only filled when the friends, family, and allies of political operators are coaxed into taking the job.

How Build Back Cuyahoga is fixing this

In order to gain the power to elect a new CCDP chair and reform the bylaws, activists in Build Back Cuyahoga spent 2021 preparing for the May 2022 primary elections by recruiting allies to run for Central Committee and promote its reform agenda. (Some Build Back Cuyahoga participants had been working on this for many years prior.) Simply by contesting otherwise uncompetitive Central Committee elections, Build Back Cuyahoga had already begun the process of creating democratic competition. By winning many of these elections, they built a base of support. 

While building its support base, Build Back Cuyahoga also had to promote its reform agenda. In a January 2022 op-ed for The Land, Brock laid out Build Back Cuyahoga’s vision. With an eye toward making Ohio “a true two-party state again,” Brock proposed three reforms:

1. Eliminate intra-party endorsements, especially before filing deadlines. There’s little to be gained from pitting Democrats against each other. 
2. Demand greater involvement by elected and appointed party members to strengthen the activist ranks. 
3. Appoint a full-time chairperson whose focus is on registering voters, promoting and defining Democratic platforms, and getting Democrats to vote. At a time when elected officials already have too much on their plates, this may be the most important step of all. 

Each of these reforms help to shift CCDP’s focus toward the work of growing the party’s base of voters, candidates, and activists and away from internal power struggles. Eliminating intra-party endorsements weakens the machine; demanding greater involvement from elected and appointed party members ensures that CCDP Central Committee members and others work to strengthen the party instead of simply being pawns of various party factions; and having a full-time chairperson helps the party to professionalize its operations and frees up elected officials to focus on governing. With these three reforms, meaningful policy can be achieved to fix the county’s issues, and the party can be competitive statewide again.

Winning the chair, instituting reforms, and professionalizing the party

Soon after publishing his op-ed, Brock announced his candidacy for CCDP chair. The Democratic primary election on May 3 changed the complexion of the Central Committee to be more favorable to reform. Then, on June 18, hundreds of newly elected CCDP Central Committee members, many of whom supported Build Back Cuyahoga’s reform agenda, gathered at Tri-C and elected Brock. 

Only four and a half months after Brock’s election came the first big test for the new CCDP leadership team: Would they be able to help deliver election victories for a slate of Democrats that had been nominated under the previous CCDP chair, Shontel Brown, some of whom were quite weak candidates? The answer was a resounding yes.

The story of the Nov. 8 sweep deserves more thorough reporting, but Brock and CCDP’s election day coordinator Nora Kelley told me the party sent 100,000 handwritten postcards, 600,000 mail pieces, and 92,000 texts ahead of Nov. 8. Election Day distribution of their “sample ballot,” which lists the Democratic candidates, was ramped up as well. The new party leadership team engaged the party apparatus like never before, and new activists were inspired to contribute for the first time. 

“Everyone around the county was invited in to help. People wanted a chance to plug in, and our goal was to create easy onramps for participating,” Kelley told me. 

Weekly meetings with leaders from all across the county, plus active coordination with local and statewide campaigns, helped produce results that helped even the weakest Democratic candidates win their elections. (Whether this was always a good thing for the county is doubtful, but Brock’s team played no role in choosing the nominees. What is relevant here is that Brock and his team were willing and able to lead Democrats to victory, regardless of their strength, ability, or factional loyalties.) Consider the comments made by Democrat Brian Mooney, a Cleveland City Councilman who ran a longshot campaign for judge and upset an incumbent Republican: “I have to credit Dave Brock and the whole team. The proof was there – the sweep of all the races, but particularly my race. I was grossly outspent. I didn’t have the endorsement of the PD or labor or any of the lawyer groups. It really showed yesterday. The Democratic Party and its sample ballot, that’s the key to the block.” 

Mooney’s victory was the more surprising of two major upsets, the other being Patrick Kelly’s victory over incumbent Republican County Councilor Nan Baker. The party also won with larger than expected margins in its other races, most notably Chris Ronayne’s 27.6 point victory over Lee Weingart in the County Executive race. 

The work of codifying Build Back Cuyahoga’s reforms into the CCDP bylaws has been pushed back to 2023, but the November 8 result shows that significant progress has already been made in professionalizing the party. With a CCDP that is newly democratized, newly professionalized, and soon-to-be insulated with reforms against machine politics, the foundation has been set for rebuilding Cuyahoga County and making Ohio competitive for Democrats again. A story of this magnitude deserves more attention.