CLEVELAND — In a different time, in the same city, Frank Jackson would find it almost impossible to win a fourth term as Cleveland’s mayor.
Not because he’s been a bad mayor. But because earlier generations of Clevelanders would have never accepted the low level of services people there are willing to live with today.
History will likely be quite kind to Jackson. And as Jackson runs for an unprecedented fourth four-year term, there’s an abundance of evidence voters remain comfortable with their grandfatherly leader.
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson to seek unprecedented fourth 4-year term
Twice in four years, voters have signed off on spending money for the city’s troubled school system. And last Nov. 8, they easily approved the first payroll tax increase in 35 years, perhaps sensing Cleveland desperately needed the additional funds.
Those votes were persuasive evidence that, even if troubled by the mayor’s response to some of his third-term challenges, Clevelanders know he’s not a fake.
It’s Jackson’s genuineness that is perhaps his greatest strength.
That strength may be enough for him in 2017. But there was a time, not all that long ago, when it wouldn’t have been nearly enough.
Fifty years ago, Cleveland was home to nearly 800,000 people. Most neighborhoods were stable. Its middle class was large and demanding.
Many were deeply engaged in a local political process that provided huge and regular doses of drama and intrigue.
In the 1960s, and through most of the 1980s, Clevelanders would have never tolerated the level of services and safety issues today’s residents live with on a daily basis.
But now — aside from the growing pockets of gentrification, and the few remaining middle class neighborhoods on the city’s outer fringes — Cleveland’s middle class is long gone.
Since 1967, black and white middle-class flight has cost Cleveland more than half its population.
Cleveland’s estimated poverty rate today is just over 36 percent. It was 17.1 percent in 1970, 21.8 percent in 1980 and 28.1 percent in 1990.
When every day is a struggle for economic survival, it’s unreasonable to expect voters to pay attention to politics.
Mike Polensek was elected to City Council in 1977. He is the ultimate political survivor.
Three times, council leaders have configured his ward boundaries in an attempt to defeat him. Three times, it failed.
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“When I came into council, it was all about neighborhood services,” said Polensek. “That’s all my constituents cared about. But most people aren’t engaged anymore.
“Parks aren’t maintained. Streets aren’t fixed. And neighborhoods aren’t safe. But the fact that people don’t pay attention the way they used to works in Frank’s favor.”
In a big way.
Turnout in city mayoral elections makes the irrefutable point that an alarming number of people have stopped caring.
From a high of 79.9 percent in the historic mayoral election of Carl Stokes in 1967, turnout as a percentage of total registered voters has plummeted.
Four years ago, 21 percent of those eligible voted in the election that saw Jackson easily turn back businessman Ken Lanci.
But that 2013 campaign was far livelier than former Mayor Michael White’s 1993 re-election bid against an unknown named David Lee Rock.
In the most lopsided mayoral matchup in Cleveland history, White received 84 percent of the vote. Yet the turnout then was 33 percent, 12 percentage points higher than it was 20 years later.
The real winners in recent Cleveland elections have been poverty and despair.
Dealing with that must be the next mayor’s real challenge.
The renaissance in parts of the city is one of the most remarkable things that’s happened to Cleveland since the early days of the 20th century.
But other parts have town have become places where people are too poor to care; places where, if you grow up poor, you stay poor.
It’s Cleveland biggest problem. And its next mayor will owe his constituents a long-tern solution.
The future of an entire region depends on it.
Brent Larkin was The Plain Dealer’s editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009.
To reach Brent Larkin: blarkin@cleveland.com
This is the first of two columns on Frank Jackson’s unprecedented bid for a fourth term as mayor of Cleveland.
Next week: Can Frank Jackson be beaten?
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