The Observer, October 14, 2005
Volume XXXVIII, Issue 7
Cleveland on Fire: Incumbent Campbell: the worst choice for Cleveland
Incumbent candidates historically have an advantage over challengers in election years: name recognition, satisfaction biases, and a myriad of unorganized candidates opposing them. Mayor Jane Campbell has those advantages; however, in last week's primary election she received less than 30 percent of the vote – a second place finish to Frank Jackson, who received 38 percent. Campbell has proven herself an ineffective leader for the city, and should not be re-elected on Nov. 8.
Having taken constant pressure from the media about her lack of positive work in office, Campbell can readily respond with her accomplishments: The Lakefront Development Plan, a business improvement district, Steelyard Commons, the continued growth of the Warehouse District, the Convention Center and other pledged developments such as The Avenue District, the Flats redevelopment, and the Euclid Corridor Project. While she touts those efforts, nearly none of it can be traced back to her. Granted, City Hall does do paperwork, approval, and administrative tasks, but Campbell is far from responsible for those projects. They are rather the product of private investment, planning, and negotiating outside the bounds of the mayor.
Campbell's main accomplishment in my eyes has been the Lakefront Development Plan: a fifty-year, city-wide behemoth of a plan for the redevelopment of our waterfronts. Although it is a great effort that has taken hours of labor, it is simply not going to happen. Over half a century, so much can happen to a city that plans cannot be made definite. She should have made some guidelines and suggestions for how to make a "green city on a blue lake." Some of her plan came under fire by the public, including keeping the underused and overvalued Burke Lakefront Airport. Lastly, much of Campbell's plan is already foiled: she assured the public that the Cuyahoga County Port Authority would move from the northeast section of downtown to open up beautiful land for some of the best development Cleveland has ever seen. However, her administration failed to work out that agreement with the Port Authority, and the land will remain useless to citizens, tourists, and businesses.
On a more everyday level, Campbell again comes up short with her productivity. In one of her more famous mistakes, she implemented an adopt-a-trashcan program. To save costs to the city where she had laid off many workers (police, fire, schools, waste collection and disposal), corporations could get their names on trash cans that the company would have to pick up and transport to the dump – but because no one took part in the program, she had to remove trash cans from many city parks. Both of those ideas brought anger from citizens and businesses, and much criticism from City Council.
Campbell's last budget-saving proposal was to install red-light cameras throughout the city, but protests from Westside council members led the proposed cameras to only be put up on the Eastside. These cameras were originally supposed to be installed by Memorial Day, then set back to Labor Day, and are now scheduled to be up in mid-November. Campbell's ineptitude has delayed even her own ideas (a cost benefit analysis showed that the cameras would not pay for themselves or make up the budget deficit as she claimed they would).
Since I have always been a supporter of the ABC Campaign (Anyone But Campbell), I will vote for Frank Jackson. Jackson has been in City Council for sixteen years, and has been president throughout Campbell's administration four years ago, he helped campaign for her. He is a typical politician who does not say much, especially anything that could come back to bite him. Jackson has been very active in his ward, working for economic stimulation, public housing development, and throughout city council in general. He promotes himself as a citizen of Cleveland who faces the same problems as everyone else – friends and family unemployed, in jail, or lost in school. That is a sharp contrast to Campbell, seen by many to distance herself from the everyday problems of this city.
While Jackson is not an ideal or enlightening candidate for Cleveland, he will handle the everyday necessary tasks of the city better, eliminate the negative attitude surrounding Campbell, and work with developers to keep the area moving forward.
