Politics through the 1980s

From the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

The link is here

POLITICS. For most of its history, Cleveland has been governed much like other American cities. A mayor elected at large and a council chosen by wards have usually constituted the formal instruments of administration and legislation, while a multiplicity of private groups have sought to influence the direction of public policy. With some exceptions, Cleveland’s mayors before World War II were business and professional men of old-stock Protestant ancestry. Those who were 2nd-generation Americans, such as HARRY L. DAVIS† and FRED KOHLER†, were Protestants whose fathers came from Wales and Germany, respectively. The election of FRANK LAUSCHE† in 1941 brought Catholic and Slovenian background to the mayoralty, and since Lausche, Cleveland’s mayors have come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and from the black community (see AFRICAN AMERICANS). Ward elections made the council reflect the ethnic diversity of the city much earlier. In 1903 councilmen separated into the “Irish” and the “Germans” for purposes of playing baseball, and surnames of council representatives at the time indicate that the team titles made sense. By the 1920s, people of Southern and Eastern European origins, along with an occasional black, began to win seats on the council and increasingly to play leadership roles. By the 1930s the general ethnic makeup of the ward and the background of the councilperson corresponded fairly closely, making the council something of a representative democracy among the larger nationality groups in the city. Only a minority of council members were workers; most were small businessmen and professionals, especially lawyers–a development not always pleasing to the city’s economic elite who had to bribe councilmen to get what they thought they were entitled to as a matter of right. Individual council members lacked the time, staff, or expertise to deal with complicated matters of physical development or the city’s relationships with its privately owned public-service corporations. The council, then, was reactive rather than proactive.

Yet it was not corruption or incapacity that most concerned leading businessmen, but the council’s inescapable parochialism. Cleveland’s legislature was a living embodiment of the dictum that all politics are local politics. Council members were products of particular wards with their individual mixtures of ethnicity and class, and they approached proposals primarily from the perspective of “What’s in it for my ward?” Whether or not they formally articulated their views, most believed that the city was primarily a collection of neighborhoods where people lived most of their lives and did not want to be taxed for the sole benefit of downtown or some distant ward on the other side of town. The elite, on the other hand, saw the city as an organic whole, with its various parts organized in a functional and spatial division of labor under the direction of downtown business and professional leaders. These men believed that what was good for major industry and downtown business was good for the city as a whole and wanted public policies that promoted economic growth and maintained an orderly and efficient city. From this perspective, the council’s insistence on ensuring that each part of the city benefited equally from city improvements simply promoted inefficiency or wasteful duplication.

Parochialism came from the voters as well as members of the council. Ohio’s stringent limitations upon cities’ taxing and borrowing power meant that additional levies and many bond issues for capital improvements had to be approved by the voters. The council could issue bonds only to a stipulated percentage of the city’s tax duplicate, the total of assessed valuation of property in Cleveland. After 1902 the council had to secure a 60% “For” vote on any bonds that it wished to issue that would raise the total face value of bonds outstanding beyond the 4% of the duplicate. The total permitted of such voter-approved bonds was an additional 4% of the duplicate. Proposals to build bridges or eliminate grade crossings usually required voter approval, and the 60% majority meant that any organized opposition could defeat a bond issue. Thus, any grade-crossing elimination had to package sites from western, eastern, or southern portions of the city or face certain defeat. Sometimes the council tried to leave the proposed location of a bridge off the bond-issue ballot to minimize opposition from those who wanted the bridge somewhere else. The most important spatial separation in Cleveland was that between east and west sides, divided by the broad valley of the CUYAHOGA RIVER. The location of the central business district east of the river was a result of the 1825 decision to locate the northern terminus of the Ohio canal there–a circumstance which facilitated its commercial and residential development. West-siders had much more reason to cross over than east-siders, many of whom could see little reason to approve bond issues for bridges that they would rarely use. Outside the formal structure of government, the most important political players were the party organization, and such groups as the Chamber of Commerce (GREATER CLEVELAND GROWTH ASSN.) and the Chamber of Industry, an association organized in 1907 to promote west side interests. In addition, there were a number of locally oriented improvement associations. As in other cities, the party organizations were most concerned with organizational maintenance and the avoidance of divisive issues. Those who wished something from the city found it useful to have friends in both major parties. Major businessmen were overwhelmingly Republican, but the VAN SWERINGENS†’ man in council was Democrat JAMES J. MCGINTY†. The Chamber of Commerce, an outgrowth of the earlier Board of Trade, was extremely influential in the city’s political life. In the early 20th century, it had a paid staff and could command the time and attention of the most important men in the city. Its committees consisted of leading industrialists and their commercial and professional allies. These committees prepared well-researched and -written reports on items of interest to the chamber. These resources were precisely what the council lacked, so that in many instances the chamber could control the agenda and frame the terms of debate. The chamber’s style was to seek agreement among all the economic interests involved in a particular policy area. Where such agreement was possible, as in the Group Plan of public buildings, the projects were moved forward. Where it was not, such as lakefront development, nothing much happened.

Conspicuously absent from the deliberations of the chamber were small businessmen, workers, and those of recent immigrant origin. They were “the people” whose function it was to man the factories, do the domestic chores, and approve the initiatives of the chamber at the polls. Still, so long as most business and professional leaders lived within the city limits, the chamber maintained a general interest in the functioning of the city. A city that promoted the well-being of its workers would be an economically efficient unit. By the mid-1920s, however, most of its leaders no longer lived in the city; the chamber expressed less interest in the general welfare and focused more exclusively on economic development and keeping taxes down. The census of 1930 indicated that the suburbs taken together were of higher socioeconomic status than the city, as affluent Clevelanders sought a more commodious lifestyle outside the city. The political impact of suburbanization was highlighted in 1931 when the 3 leading candidates for the mayoralty all had to move back into the city to establish legal residences.

Although leaders of the CITIZENS LEAGUE OF GREATER CLEVELAND lived in the suburbs, as a leading civic organization the league believed in the concept of Greater Cleveland. As such, the group still had the right to promote the cause of good government in the city. Like good government organizations in other cities, it sought to promote better candidates for public office and fiscal responsibility on the part of city government. One of those principles was nonpartisanship, which Cleveland at least nominally adopted in the HOME RULE charter of 1913. A commission under the leadership of Mayor NEWTON D. BAKER† wrote the charter which included initiative and referendum provisions, 
nomination by petition, and elections using a nonpartisan, preferential ballot. This last provision was designed to weaken the role of the party organization and to ensure election by majorities. In most but not all cases, candidates who had the support of the party organization fared much better than those who did not. In the late 19th century, Republicans won more elections in Cleveland than Democrats did. TOM JOHNSON† and Newton Baker reversed this pattern in the early 20th century, but from 1916-41, Cleveland again was primarily a Republican city, as least for the mayoralty.

In the 1920s Cleveland departed from the mayor-council form to adopt the CITY MANAGER PLAN, which was supposed to limit even further the role of the political parties. The reality was that the parties learned how to use this new arrangement almost as well as the mayor-council form. Under the plan, Republican party leader MAURICE MASCHKE† and his Democratic opposite BURR GONGWER† reached an agreement during the City Manager experiment to split the reduced party patronage between them 60%-40% respectively. By 1931 the city manager form of government was abandoned in favor of a return to the mayor-council pattern. Despite experiments in municipal governments designed to limit party influence, both the county Democratic and Republican parties enjoyed a period of stability during the first 3 decades of the 20th century.

In the 1920s Cleveland’s African Americans, then concentrated on the near east side, constituted an important component of the Republican organization, electing 3 city councilmen in 1927. The Democrats under Gongwer also appealed to the black community for its support, endorsing black candidates for council and municipal judge. During the 1930s black inclusion in the New Deal prompted them to shift their allegiance to the Democratic party, where they became a significant proportion of the city’s emerging Democratic majority. When the Democratic party came to the fore during the Depression, the county parties became destabilized as contending forces fought to succeed their longtime leaders. Five years after Maschke’s retirement GEORGE H. BENDER†, former state senator and congressman-at-large, took over the county Republican party organization following a bitter conflict with Mayor HAROLD H. BURTON† and ward leaders over the distribution of patronage. Former Mayor RAY T. MILLER† was elected chairman of the county Democratic party in 1938, but court challenges by other party factions delayed the final settlement until 1940, when Gongwer was removed. Miller was able to consolidate the local nationality groups and the blacks into a potent voting block, and since the 1940s Democrats have far outnumbered Republicans within the city, although Republican mayors, such as Ralph Perk and George Voinovich, were elected in the 1970s and 1980s. Over the years, the diversity of Cleveland’s population had been evident as candidates with effective political names, such as Corrigan, Metzenbaum, Celebrezze, Sawicki, Carr, and Stokes, among others, won elective office in Cleveland or on the county, congressional, or state level.

Whether mayors or managers, Cleveland’s chief executives have found themselves chronically short of money. Before 1909 Ohio permitted reassessment of property for purposes of taxation only every decade. Thus Cleveland’s government could not take advantage of the rapid rise in property values in the prosperous first years of the century. When Cleveland was able to more than double its tax duplicate, the legislature in Columbus limited the rate of taxation. By the Smith Act, property for all purposes combined–city, county, schools, and state–was limited to a total of 10 mills, or 1% of the duplicate. By referendum, the voters could approve an additional 5 mills. This legislation crippled municipal operating budgets. By 1919 Cleveland had accumulated operating deficits totaling $7 million and had to issue “revenue deficiency bonds” to cope. In the early 1920s, the legislature did grant some relief by giving more latitude to city officials and voters in setting higher tax limits for themselves. In the 1920s the city could finance its activities without undue strain. The Depression shattered Cleveland’s economy, and with it its fiscal stability. Because of the city’s concentration of capital-goods production, it suffered terribly from unemployment, lower tax collections, and high relief needs throughout the 1930s. World War II restored Cleveland’s prosperity, and the 1950 census recorded the largest population in the city’s history, 914,000.

The lessons of municipal frugality during the Depression were too well learned. Beginning with Lausche, most of Cleveland’s mayors continued to practice the fiscal austerity of the 1930s, confident that their thrifty administrations could accommodate requirements of more prosperous times as well as ensure their reelection to office. Increasingly independent of the county Democratic party, they successfully appealed to the city’s nationality groups that formed their political base. In their political campaigns mayors Lausche, Burke, Celebrezze, Locher, and Perk stressed frugality in city administration, holding the line on taxes, and living within the city’s income–at the same time they tried to project the image of a vigorous forward-looking city. A majority of the voters responded by reelecting them to office. In the meantime, the war economy of the 1940s and the pent-up demand of the postwar years induced thousands of southern blacks to migrate to Cleveland, swelling the black population from 9.7% of the total in 1940 to 38.3% in 1970. For example, the HOUGH area on the east side went from 95.1% white in 1950 to 74.2% black in 1960. The larger black population after 1945 intensified the exodus of Cleveland’s white middle class residents and businesses to the suburbs as the prevailing mix of the city’s population changed. Ethnic and racial identifications and antipathies, always significant in Cleveland politics, increased in importance as sources of political decision making. Politics and constituent interests took precedence over the growing problems of Cleveland as a whole, and the need for municipal leadership was not addressed by its caretaker governments. This was evident when Mayor Ralph Locher won reelection in 1965 with only 37% of the total vote. His razor-thin margin over State Representative Carl B. Stokes, who ran as an independent, demonstrated that the majority of Clevelanders did not feel they were being served effectively.

The continuing policy of municipal frugality challenged the city water and sewer departments’ ability to meet service demand in the rapidly expanding suburbs. This led civic reformers to revive efforts to strengthen regional authority by reorganizing Cuyahoga County so that it could administer area-wide municipal functions. Voters, however, turned down county home rule charters that would accomplish this in 1950 and 1959 (see REGIONAL GOVERNMENT). As the combination of accelerated suburbanization and a decline in the city’s economic base became evident, some type of metropolitan authority was needed for its area-wide services. Financially unable to manage its regional water pollution control and transit systems in the 1970s, Cleveland was forced to transfer the ownership and management of each to a single-function regional district. Since the suburban population exceeded that of the city in 1970, the price for regional cooperation was shared authority to appoint the districts’ Board of Trustees among the city, county and suburbs. The new partnership diluted Cleveland’s municipal control and gave political legitimacy to a changed balance of power in the metropolitan region.

Complicating the city’s problems was the central cleavage of race. For a brief moment in the late 1960s, it looked as if Mayor Carl Stokes had succeeded in forging a coalition of downtown business leaders and the black community. Whatever hopes existed evaporated after the GLENVILLE SHOOTOUTbetween black nationalists and Cleveland police, which led to 7 deaths and weakened Stokes’s credibility among a majority of whites, although he was elected to a second term in 1969. At that time Cleveland could no longer provide all the basic services out of its own resources without voter-approved tax increases–a proposition made difficult by the city’s declining economic base, racial tensions, and the politics of municipal frugality. Aware of Cleveland’s deteriorating finances, Stokes used his municipal leadership to try and increase the city income tax, but racial politics prevented him from building the needed consensus to obtain voter approval. Stokes was followed by 2 white ethnics, Ralph Perk, a Republican and dedicated defender of the status quo, and Dennis Kucinich, a maverick young Democrat who was elected in 1977 on a “no new taxes” platform. Kucinich was a self-styled urban populist out to defend the interests of the neighborhoods against the excessive demands of downtown business. He combined some reasonable policy perspectives with an abrasive and confrontational style that made difficult any cooperation between the city’s economic and political leadership. Financially, intergovernmental transfer payments such as revenue sharing had allowed the city to stay afloat until 1978, when the city could no longer pay its bills and was brought to DEFAULTduring the Kucinich mayoralty. The shock of default enabled his successor, George Voinovich, to raise taxes and restore Cleveland’s financial creditability. He also instituted civility in the city’s political discourse which allowed the long-sought reduction in the 33-member city council to take place (for recent mayors, see MAYORAL ADMINISTRATION OF [name]).

Structural reformers had urged a small council for many years to avoid the parochial limitations of small wards. The most extreme versions pressed for at-large elections of a small council, a provision that almost assured elite domination. Clevelanders recognized that this proposal would not allow for the social diversity of the city. Other proposals for reduction in the size of the council had foundered on racial divisions and animosities. Finally, in 1981, the voters approved a charter amendment reducing the council from 33 to 21 members. Such structural changes, however, could do only so much. To be well governed, cities need adequate resources, competent officials, and an electorate supportive of quality. Cleveland has sometimes but not always had all these things at once.

Although the city’s population continued to decline in 1993, new leadership under Mayor Michael White (see MAYORAL ADMINISTRATION OF MICHAEL R. WHITE) appeared to offer hope for future improvement in Cleveland’s downtown area and in its neighborhoods as well.

James F. Richardson

Univ. of Akron

 

Home Rule

From the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

The link is here

HOME RULE, established in 1912, freed Cleveland from most state-imposed restrictions of the management of its affairs by allowing it to write its own city charter. From the time the municipality was incorporated in 1836, the state had largely determined the way Cleveland conducted its business, and lacking a general grant of powers, it was unable to deal with the problems arising from its unprecedented growth during the 19th and 20th centuries. A conference of cities, led by NEWTON D. BAKER†, drew up the home rule amendment, which was approved by a state convention called to redraft Ohio’s constitution. Despite opposition from rural interests, the amendment was approved by Ohio’s voters in 1912.

CLEVELAND CITY COUNCIL authorized the election of a charter commission to write the charter, and two slates of candidates were presented to the voters: one assembled by Mayor Baker’s nonpartisan committee and one proposed by the Progressive Constitutional League. At a special election held in Feb. 1913, the voters approved the Baker slate of commissioners. It took 4 months to produce Cleveland’s first home rule charter, partly due to a disagreement within the commission on the size of the new city council. Those advocating a small council elected at large maintained that it would be more efficient, less expensive, and would eliminate the corruption associated with the political machines. Those favoring a large council elected by ward argued that it was more democratic, since councilmen were directly answerable to their constituent’s concerns. The new charter, modeled after the Federal plan, maintained the council-mayor form of government, with city council reduced from 32 to 26 members elected by wards. The executive and legislative branches were separated, with the mayor appointing department heads independent of city council approval. Mayor and council were elected on a nonpartisan ballot for 2 years. Initiative, referendum, and recall were adopted to give the people more control over their government. On 1 Jan. 1914, the voters approved the charter by a 2 to 1 margin. It remained in effect until the city adopted the CITY MANAGER PLAN.

Water System

From the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

The link is here

WATER SYSTEM. The production, purification, and distribution of potable water constitutes a “hidden system” in the infrastructure of the modern city. Until faucets run dry, or reservoirs are exhausted, citizens tend to remain unaware of the nature and condition of the complex technological, social, and political attributes of the water system.

Early settlers in Cleveland were dependent on surface-water supplies from ponds, lakes, rivers, and streams, and upon dug wells, the latter becoming more prevalent as population density increased in the early walking city. A town pump on PUBLIC SQUARE is reported to have been in operation in 1812. Ca. 1820 a well existed at Bank (W. 6th) and Superior designated mainly for firefighting. At the same time, “every family had a well; however, Benhu Johnson hauled lake water when droughts set in . . . [for] twenty-five cents for two barrels.” In Jan. 1833 the privately owned Cleveland Water Co. was chartered to supply water for the village, but the city council continued its involvement, allocating $35 in 1840 to sink public wells at PUBLIC SQUARE. By 1852 water was being drawn from springs, wells, canals, and the CUYAHOGA RIVER, with storage cistern-based pumps utilized in the business district for firefighting and public use. A dependable public water system to provide fresh water, together with a sewage system to dispose of the used water, was needed. Both were capital-intensive municipal functions that reflected a growing concern for local public health and the needs of Cleveland’s growing businesses. The city was prosperous enough to acquire the needed financing for a municipal waterworks, and a popular vote (1,230 to 599) in 1853 authorized the city to issue $400,000 in bonds to build it. Water was first brought from Lake Erie in Sept. 1856, via a 50″ boilerplate pipe tunnel extending 300′ into the lake, reaching shore at about W. 58th St. At the same time, the KENTUCKY ST. RESERVOIR at Kentucky (W. 38th) and Prospect (later Franklin) streets was opened to store water pumped by 2 Cornish steam engines, the first west of the Alleghenies. Two distribution mains totaling 44 mi. were established, along with a water fountain on Public Square. By 1864 most of the 75 cisterns placed around the city for firefighting had been supplanted by piped water. Cleveland now had the ability to provide fire protection for the city and make a constant volume of fresh water readily available for residential and business needs. In 1856, the waterworks’ first year of full operation, 127 million gallons of water (38,000 gallons per day) were distributed (in 1900, distribution was about 20 billion gallons–about 5.5 million gallons per day; in 1970, about 129 billion gallons–about 35.3 million gallons per day).

With the advent of piped water, traditional privies, storage cisterns, and other means for disposing of sewage rapidly became inadequate. The first sewer in Cleveland is reported to have been built for surface drainage of Euclid St. in 1856. Two years later a rudimentary sewage system consisting of open drains conveying the wastewater downhill toward the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie was begun. To gain access to fresh water beyond Lake Erie’s polluted shoreline, a new water-intake crib and tunnel were built some 6,600′ offshore in 1874. However, in 1881 city health officials protested that some 25 sewers, factories, oil refineries, and other industries were polluting the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie, source of the city’s drinking water. By that time, 125 mi. of water mains had been completed in Cleveland, and the system’s capacity was about 10 million gallons per day, serving about a third of Cleveland citizens. In the 1880s the original Kentucky St. Reservoir had already become inadequate, requiring the building of the Fairmount and Kinsman reservoirs to service the growing population moving toward the heights east of downtown Cleveland.

To mitigate the growing pollution, the water system extended intakes farther and farther out into Lake Erie, and early in the 20th century finally provided treatment of the raw water. In 1890 a new 7′ diameter, 9,117′ long water inlet tunnel was completed. Yet another 9′ diameter intake tunnel was begun in 1896, extending 26,000′ into the lake, one of the longest in the world at that time; it was completed in 1904 after a considerable loss of life during its construction (see WATERWORKS TUNNEL DISASTERS). The intake structure for this tunnel, which at a distance resembled a freighter, was known as the “5 Mile Crib,” the distance from the actual lake intake to the Kirtland pumping station, built in 1904 at Kirtland St. (E. 49th St.). Seven years later, in 1911, Cleveland introduced water chlorination to reduce the instance of water-borne bacteria, on the recommendation of Drs. Howard Haskins and ROGER G. PERKINS†. Still unfiltered, the water was found unpalatable; in 1915 it was reported that on at least one occasion, thousands of people patronized springs in places such as WADE PARK and ROCKEFELLER PARK, requiring police to keep order. About 1916, the original 6,600′ intake tunnel west of the “5 Mile Crib” was extended about 26,000′ from shore to feed water to the Division Ave. filtration plant, which became operative in 1918. By 1920 the system of water mains had grown to 985 total miles, and it continued to grow in response to Cleveland’s expanded water needs. The Baldwin Filtration Plant on the border of CLEVELAND HEIGHTS was completed in 1925, with a reservoir capacity of more than 135 million gallons, capable of pumping up to 200 million gallons per day (see BALDWIN RESERVOIR). In addition, expansion and alterations begun much earlier on the Kirtland station were completed in 1927, giving Cleveland wholly filtered and chlorinated water.

As a municipal industry, the waterworks was expected to be self-supporting, and improved water quality was expensive; the water system’s debt grew from $1,775,000 in 1886, to $4,266,000 in 1906, and reached $27 million in 1930. Beginning in 1856, charges were levied on water users in the form of a semi-annual flat fee paid by the owner of each dwelling or building, to pay off the bonds issued for construction and expansions. Widespread criticism of poor water quality and inadequate service, however, slowed customer growth until after the turn of the century, when both the quality and delivery of water improved. With the universal introduction of water meters into dwellings by 1908, the amount of water used could be gauged more accurately, producing more equitable customer charges. As a result of the growing customer base, the water debt accumulated from past improvements was easily amortized.

By the 1940s Cleveland’s water system included cribs, 4 lake tunnels, 2 filtration plants (Division Ave. and Baldwin), 3 major pumping stations (Kirtland, Fairmount, and Division), and 2,700 mi. of water mains. During the post-World War II period, a new 3.5-mi., 10′ diameter tunnel was built into the lake to supply water to the new Nottingham Filtration Plant and pumping station in northeast Cleveland. Completed in 1951, the plant had a capacity of about 150 million gallons per day. A fourth, 2.5-mi, 8′ diameter tunnel, completed in 1958, extended northward into Lake Erie from the Crown Filtration Plant inWESTLAKE. The plant had a daily capacity of 50 million gallons, making the nominal capacity of the water system about 225 billion gallons annually. In 1970 the system had over 4,000 mi. of water mains, serving 75 sq. mi. in Cleveland and an additional 450 sq. mi. in Cuyahoga, Medina, Lorain, and Lake counties. Since 1856, when Cleveland’s public water supply was established, annual consumption has increased an average of 12 billion gallons each decade–much of the increase coming in the 20th century. However, between 1970 and 1986 daily water consumption declined from about 545 million gallons to approx. 320 million gallons (about 118 billion gallons annually). Much of the decline may be accounted for by demographic changes and the loss of business and industry from greater Cleveland. The city’s water system, however, had expanded its service area, providing water for Cleveland and 68 surrounding suburbs and municipalities in Cuyahoga, Lake, Summit, and Medina counties in 1986. The system had grown to about 5,800 mi. of water mains, serving some 400,000 accounts.

During the postwar period, purification and filtration continued to be improved. Beginning in 1965, sodium silicofluoride was added to the water to control tooth decay. In 1986, purification processes of settling and filtration were augmented by the use of aluminum sulfate for impurities coagulation, potassium permanganate for oxidation, chlorine for disinfection, and activated carbon for taste and odor control. Although most communities in Cuyahoga, Medina, and Summit counties served by Cleveland’s water system had direct service, CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, BEDFORD, EAST CLEVELAND, andLAKEWOOD purchased their water in bulk for many years and redistributed it to customers, charging their own water rates. In 1986 this bulk service was extended to Lake County.

Some of Cleveland’s suburbs, dissatisfied with the quality of water service and the high rates charged, initiated lawsuits in the 1970s to regionalize the ownership and management of the system, similar to the NORTHEAST OHIO REGIONAL SEWER DISTRICT, organized in 1972. In order to avoid losing control of the system, the City of Cleveland had to agree to a more equitable formula for setting suburban water rates and undertake a massive program of renovation, rehabilitation, and improvement of the system–a program that in 1982 was projected to cost roughly $918 million. Cost projections were revised regularly as interest rates and projected demand for water changed; for the 1986-92 period, the projected investment in repairs and improvements was calculated at about $380 million. It was expected that the capital-repair and improvements program will extend into the 1990s before completion. Since the water system is a self-supporting utility, funds for the capital-improvement program were acquired through increases in water rates to repay bonds sold for construction purposes. These increases caused some political furor in the city council, however, despite the fact that Cleveland’s water rates remained among the lowest of any major American city.

Willis E. Sibley

Bluestone, Daniel M., ed. Cleveland (1978).

City of Cleveland Water Div. The Cleveland Water Story (ca. 1970).

The Power Brokers – Glory Days of the Political Bosses

Plain Dealer magazine article written by Brent Larkin in May, 1991 about Cleveland’s political bosses

The link is here

THE POWER BROKERS GLORY DAYS OF POLITICAL BOSSES

By Brent Larkin

Compared to “The Red Boss,” they were pikers, all of them. The men of Tammany Hall? Big deal. They only ran New York City. Richard Daley? Come on. His power died at the Chicago city limits.

 

Cleveland has had its share of powerful political bosses, men like Maurice Maschke, Ray T. Miller, Albert Porter and, for a time, Robert E. Hughes. But, in terms of power, prestige and cunning, none could hold a candle to Marcus Alonzo Hanna. “The Red Boss” got his name because Cleveland’s skies turned that color after the smoke spewed from M.A. Hanna & Co. factories. “The Red Boss” got his power because of green, as in the millions earned from the country’s most successful coal and ore mining firm. Political bosses have used their clout to make mayors, county commissioners, judges, even governors and senators. Hanna used his to make a president. He single-handedly engineered the election of a president of the United States.

 

“Dollar Mark,” as he was also known, was born in Lisbon, near Youngstown, in 1837. His father was a doctor who was often in ill health. In 1852, the family moved to Cleveland, where his father abandoned his medical practice and opened a grocery store. After serving briefly in the Civil War, Hanna returned home to work in the family business. He invested in oil wells, steamships and mines. Under Hanna’s leadership, the M.A. Hanna & Co. became an industrial giant. Hanna first entered politics in 1880, when he formed the Cleveland Business Men’s Marching Club. The only place these men marched was to the bank, to make large deposits. It was around this time that Hanna met and befriended William McKinley, a Canton lawyer who journalist William Allan White would later describe as “on the whole dumb and rarely reaching above the least common denominator of the popular intelligence.”

 

McKinley’s shortcomings aside, he was on his way. And Hanna would serve as his tour guide to the top. First, Hanna engineered McKinley’s election as governor, but that was merely a steppingstone. What Hanna wanted was the 1896 Republican nomination for president. In pursuit of that goal, the onetime Cleveland grocer pulled out all the stops. He resigned from his company in order to devote all his time to the campaign. Figuring McKinley needed a friendly newspaper, he bought one – the Cleveland Herald. He traveled the country organizing McKinley clubs and securing contributions. More than $100,000 – an astronomical figure at the time – was spent to win McKinley the nomination.

 

By June 1896, when Republicans convened in St. Louis, McKinley’s nomination was assured. In his book, “The President Makers,” Francis Russell described the scene on the convention floor. “After the applause and the demonstrations following McKinley’s overwhelming nomination of the first ballot, there were cries of Hanna! Hanna! from all over the convention floor. … It was his moment of triumph. A huge crowd met him at the Cleveland railroad station on his return, drowned out his stammered thanks with their cheers, and escorted his carriage home.” But Hanna knew there was work to be done. Ahead was a campaign against Democrat William Jennings Bryan, an eloquent speechmaker capable of taking advantage of the country’s anti-business mood.

 

After the convention Hanna was made chairman of the Republican National Committee. In past presidential campaigns candidates would usually raise between $1 million and $2 million. Hanna raised an estimated $7 million, which enabled him to flood the nation with McKinley campaign literature and other propaganda. That was only half of Hanna’s strategy. The other half involved avoiding comparisons between the charismatic Bryan, with his moving “Cross of Gold” speech, and the dull McKinley. Toward that end, Hanna had McKinley stay home, literally. While Bryan dashed across the country, McKinley campaigned from his front porch in Canton. Groups of reporters and representatives of large voting blocs were brought to McKinley’s home and given rehearsed speeches. It was an early day version of the “Rose Garden strategy.” And it worked.

 

By election day, Hanna’s national organization was an efficient machine. Blacks were brought by trains from the South to northern states that needed Republican votes. Out West, one district counted 48,000 votes, 18,000 votes more than people registered. McKinley won in a walk. Hanna was the forerunner of the modern-day boss. As Russell wrote, “All subsequent American political campaigns have, for better or worse, followed the model established by the Red Boss in 1896.” Hanna followed McKinley to Washington by engineering his election to the

U.S. Senate. In those days, senators were elected by the state legislature. Hanna won by only one vote, amid charges of bribery and threats. To no one’s surprise, Hanna wielded immense power in Washington. Political cartoonists frequently depicted the president as a puppet, with Hanna pulling his strings. Still, there was never any indication McKinley resented Hanna, as the two remained fast friends and inseparable allies.

 

In 1990, McKinley again ran against Bryan and won handily. But Hanna was dealt a rare setback when he failed to stop the nomination of Teddy Roosevelt as vice president. The two disliked each other. Roosevelt once remarked, “I think there is only one thing I do not understand, and that is Ohio politics.”

 

Despite the elevation of Roosevelt to the vice presidency, there was little doubt that McKinley wanted Hanna to succeed him in the Oval Office and that Hanna planned to make such a run. But all that changed on September 6, 1901. While making a speech in Buffalo, McKinley was shot twice by a young man from Cleveland named Leon Czolgosz. The president survived only a few days. Roosevelt became president. When McKinley died, Hanna’s dream died with him.

 

Curiously, Hanna’s vast political power at the national level produced mixed results back home. Hanna retained control of the local Republican organization, but he could not prevent his nemesis, Tom L. Johnson, from winning four terms as mayor. Despite urgings from Wall Street, Hanna did not challenge Roosevelt in 1904. He realized the new president had become too popular. Described by many as a broken man, Hanna was re-elected to the Senate in 1903 and soon took ill. He died on February 15, 1904.

 

“He was the first national boss,” says Cleveland State University history professor Thomas Campbell. “He was truly a remarkable figure. I would say he was, beyond a doubt, the most powerful politician the country had seen up to that point.”

 

While Hanna was the most powerful political boss the nation had seen, Maurice Maschke was the most powerful political boss Cleveland had seen. As GOP chairman for 20 years and an influential figure for 35 years, Maschke dominated local politics. The Harvard-educated Maschke began to dabble in politics in 1897, but his rise through the ranks was meteoric. By 1900, he was the boss of eight city wards, including downtown. By 1904, he had the reputation of the city’s most astute political operative. And, by 1909, Maschke had performed the impossible: He had defeated Johnson, the most revered mayor in the city’s history.

 

As the 1909 mayoral election neared, most Republicans favored conceding re-election to Johnson by not even fielding a candidate. Maschke told them he not only had a candidate, he had a winner. It was Herman C. Baehr, the county recorder. Maschke took the inarticulate Baehr and carefully choreographed his campaign, limiting the candidate to three-minute prepared speeches.

 

“Baehr will win,” insisted Maschke. “Johnson has been mayor for eight years. That’s too long.”

 

Johnson didn’t seem to take his opponent seriously. He stopped campaigning three days before the election, traditionally the critical days in a political contest, and actually left town. Baehr won handily.

 

By 1914, Maschke was in complete charge of GOP politics. He controlled City Council and was a key figure in Herbert Hoover’s successful 1928 presidential campaign. He persuaded council to name William R. Hopkins as city manager and, when Hopkins began to challenge Maschke, he had council remove him from office.

 

As a lawyer and owner of a title company, Maschke was a wealthy man. Although editorial pages usually denounced him as a dictatorial boss, reporters revered him for the insights and news tips he regularly provided. Only once was Maschke tainted by scandal. He was one of many Republicans indicted during a 1932 probe of the county treasurer’s office, but was unanimously acquitted by a three-judge panel. Maschke’s demise started in 1928, when Democrat Ray T. Miller won the office that all political machines viewed as essential – county prosecutor. A year later, when the Depression rocked the nation, Republicans began to lose their grip on city voters.

 

His power diminished, Maschke resigned as GOP chairman in 1933 and died three years later.

 

“The remarkable thing about Maschke was he was so brilliant,” says Campbell. “He wasn’t the typical boss with a cigar in his mouth. The coalition he put together that defeated Tom L. Johnson was brilliant politics.”

 

When the Depression began to tilt the balance of power to the Democrats, Ray T. Miller was ready. He had studied Maschke’s machine politics. He understood the importance of the black vote, of forging coalitions among ethnic voters. He was ahead of his time in courting the women’s vote.

 

“Women’s involvement was the most important thing that ever happened to American politics,” Miller once said. “Women formed the greatest part of the workmanship where it counted, in the wards.” In 1931, Miller moved from the prosecutor’s office to the mayor’s office. As mayor, he began construction of the Memorial Shoreway and finished building the lakefront Stadium. But the Depression forced Miller to make deep cuts in city services, and he lost his re-election bid. Defeated in another try for mayor in 1935, Miller thought he was finished with politics. Truth was, he was just beginning.

 

In 1940, Miller toppled veteran Democratic chairman W.B. Gongwer from his post. Miller would hold the job for 23 years. As chairman, Miller became a favorite of the Roosevelt White House. He amassed a small fortune as a lawyer and owner of radio station WERE. Miller was to make one more attempt at elected office but was crushed by incumbent Gov. Frank Lausche in the 1948 gubernatorial primary election.

In 1960, Miller became the first big-city chairman to endorse the presidential candidacy of John F. Kennedy. The young candidate’s speech at Euclid Beach Park that year is still remembered for the estimated 100,000 who filled the park. Following the election, Miller was granted easy access to the Kennedy White House.

 

By 1963, Miller was in his 12th term as chairman, but his influence was waning. He had a falling out with Mayor Ralph Locher, and the enemies Miller had made over the years were calling for his ouster. At first, Miller refused, but in 1964, he surprisingly stepped aside. Two years later, Miller died of a heart attack at his Shaker Heights home. He was 73.

 

Miller wasn’t the last of Cleveland’s powerful political bosses. Albert Porter had power – and abused it (see box, page 23). Then there was Robert E. Hughes, who until his recent resignation served as chairman of the county’s Republican organization for more than 22 years. Operating on a political terrain where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than a 3-1 ratio, there was a period, especially in the 1970s, when Hughes enjoyed astounding success.

 

For all but two years from 1971 through 1989, a Republican occupied the mayor’s office, and there was a time when the GOP controlled both the county commission and the auditor’s office. Quite often, Hughes remained one step ahead of local Democratic leaders, sometimes acting when Democrats were merely talking.

 

In no case was that more evident than Hughes’ key role in promoting Virgil Brown as the first black to hold a countywide, non-judicial office. For more than a decade, Brown held a county commission seat. He turned back challenges from two of the county’s most prominent Democrats – Timothy F. Hagan and Benny Bonanno.

 

Hughes’ power ebbed considerably during the 1980s, as the party failed to field candidates for many local offices and found itself deeply in debt. The GOP head also found himself in the midst of several controversies and a major criminal investigation that resulted in no charges. Still, Hughes will be remembered as a chairman who, during his heyday, overcame long odds to engineer Republican victories in campaigns, which, on paper, they had no business winning.

 

While Hughes was once an effective leader, he was not a “boss” in the Hanna sense. Greater Cleveland’s last political boss was probably Ray T. Miller. Gradually, grass-roots politics gave way to TV politics, where candidates rise or fall based on 30-second advertisements.

Today, Cleveland has no bosses. Local political parties have leaders, but the clout and prestige of those leaders is a far cry from when “The Red Boss” single-handedly engineered the election of a president.

 

Brent Larkin, a former Plain Dealer political reporter and columnist, is director of the editorial page.

Teaching Cleveland Digital