“The President From Canton” by Grant Segall

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William McKinley

THE PRESIDENT FROM CANTON

by Grant Segall

Greeting the nation from his front porch in Canton, nursing his frail wife, sporting scarlet carnations from a foe, soft-peddling his views, the dapper little William McKinley seemed like the quintessential Victorian. The impression deepened when assassin Leon Czolgosz from Cleveland froze him in time and Teddy Roosevelt rough-rode into the Progressive era.

But McKinley launched what became known as the American Century. He helped make a former colony a colonizer and the world’s biggest manufacturer. He planned the Panama Canal and the Open Door policy toward China. He promoted labor rights, mediation and arbitration. He created the White House’s war room, press briefings and press receptions.

He also started a century-long rise in presidential power. Future President Woodrow Wilson wrote in 1900, “The president of the United States is now, as of course, at the front of affairs, as no president, except Lincoln, has been since the first quarter of the 19th century.”

McKinley broadened a Republican base that mostly dominated until 1932. While he quaintly campaigned from his porch, innovative backers paid the way of an estimated 750,000 visitors from around the country. They also used early polls and movies.

Historian Allan Peskin of Cleveland State University once told The Plain Dealer, “McKinley was the first modern president.”

Biographer Kevin Phillips wrote, “The Progressive era is said to begin with Teddy Roosevelt, when in fact McKinley put in place the political organization, the antimachine spirit, the critical party realignment, the cadre of skilled GOP statesmen…, the firm commitment to popular and economic democracy and the leadership needed.”

Supporters called him the Idol of Ohio. Critics called him Wobbly Willie. Republican boss Tom Platt of New York thought the Ohioan “much too amiable and much too impressionable.” Joseph Cannon, future House speaker, said McKinley kept his ear so close to the ground, grasshoppers jumped inside.

McKinley was hard to gauge. He wrote little, spoke calmly and wore mild expressions. But colleagues saw a master behind the mask. Fellow Congressman Robert LaFollette, future Wisconsin governor and senator, said, “Back of his courteous and affable manner was a firmness that never yielded conviction, and while scarcely seeming to force issues, he usually achieved exactly what he sought.” Elihu Root, McKinley’s war secretary, later Nobelist and senator, said the president would “bring about an agreement exactly along the lines of his own original ideas while [Cabinet] members thought the ideas were theirs.”

Most modern historians agree. Quentin R. Skrabec wrote, “It might be argued that McKinley’s behind the scenes approach was more effective than Roosevelt’s headlines.”

McKinley avoided serious scandals. He refused speaking fees and corporate jobs while in Congress. He shunned endorsements that required patronage.

Some editorial cartoonists drew him as a puppet of Cleveland ally Marcus Alonzo Hanna, dubbed “Marcus Aurelius” or “Dollar Mark.” In 1893, when the economy tumbled, Hanna and fellow tycoons paid off a $130,000 debt that McKinley had incurred backing a friend’s business. Critics sneered, but most of the public sympathized.

While chief executive, McKinley said, “I have never been in doubt since I was old enough to think intelligently that I would someday be made president.”

McKinley was the sixth elected Republican president in a row born a Buckeye. He was born Jan. 29, 1843, the seventh of eight children in a Scotch-Irish, Whig, abolitionist family. He was raised in the northeastern Ohio towns of Niles, Poland and Canton. His father, William Sr., managed and co-owned an iron foundry. Historians say McKinley grew up to promote the local kind of capitalism: small, independent, businesses with good products, good wages and good returns.

He went to a Methodist academy and was baptized. He entered Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa., but soon came home ill and grew depressed. He clerked for the postal service and taught school.

When the Civil War broke out, McKinley enlisted. At Antietam, he insisted on delivering food and coffee through cannon fire. He rose to brevet major and served closely with future leaders like Rutherford B. Hayes. He would become the last of several Civil War veterans in the White House, where he’d go by “Major,” not “Mr. President.”

In peacetime, McKinley spent a year at Albany Law School and started a practice in Canton. Soon he became a Mason, local YMCA president and Stark County Republican county chairman. He was elected county prosecutor in 1869 and narrowly defeated in 1871.

He fell in love with a rare female bank cashier: the slim, blue-eyed, curly-haired Ida Saxton, whose leading family owned the bank and the Repository, a Republican-minded newspaper. The couple married in 1871, when she was 23 and he nearly 28, old for newlyweds back then. They rented two modest houses in turn from her family before finally buying one in 1900. The other is now called the Saxton-McKinley House, part of the National First Ladies Historic Site.

The couple’s two girls died young. The grieving mother developed seizures and became an invalid for the rest of her life. William took to reading the Bible and playing cars with her for a couple hours per day.

In 1876, miners were arrested for rioting in nearby Massillon. McKinley defended them for free. Just one was convicted. The lawyer’s success turned a foe, mine owner Hanna, into a supporter.

That year, at age 34, McKinley won election to Congress. Over the next 14 years, Democrats tried to gerrymander him out of office whenever they could. He lost in 1882 but retook the seat in 1884. One opponent always gave him a carnation to wear for their debates. McKinley wore the seemingly lucky flower for life.

The congressman championed tariffs to boost domestic goods and wages. He backed the Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act. On one of the era’s hottest issues, he supported “sound money” standards of gold and sometimes silver too.

In 1888, he was wooed for the presidential nomination but kept a pledge to support Ohio Senator John Sherman. In 1890, he narrowly lost a bid for speaker of the House but began to chair the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

That year, he passed the McKinley Tariff, raising rates on most imports to a record 48 percent, but conceding some breaks for special interests. The Democrats gerrymandered his seat again, and phony peddlers offered goods at daunting prices blamed on tariffs. He lost by 300 votes, but won the governorship in 1891 and again in 1893.

He persuaded the Statehouse to tax railroads, telegraphs, telephone lines and foreign corporations. He won a labor arbitration board and fines for bosses who fired unionists. He promoted workplace safety, led a relief drive for starving miners and successfully mediated a railroad strike. He also sent the National Guard to quell a violent strike.

McKinley reportedly waved to Ida every morning from the spot outside the Statehouse where his statue now stands, then waved again every afternoon from a window. She tried to attend official events but often had fits during them. He calmly covered her face with a handkerchief or carried her from the room.

In 1892, he refused presidential consideration again but finished third at the convention anyway. In 1894, he stumped in 300 cities for Republicans. The next year, he declined renomination as governor and took quiet aim at the White House.

By tradition, he stayed home during the 1896 convention. He won on the first ballot, with 661 1⁄2 votes to 84 1⁄2 for his nearest rival. The vice-presidential nominee was Garret Hobart, head of the New Jersey state senate.

As Democratic incumbent Grover Cleveland prepared to step down, William Jennings Bryan swept the Democratic and Populist nominations with his “cross of gold” demand for free and unlimited currency. Then he stumped over 18,000 miles and seemed to surge.

McKinley kept to his porch meanwhile. “I might just as well put a trapeze on my front lawn… as go out speaking against Bryan,” he reportedly said. “I have to think when I speak.”

But his homey campaign was hardly homespun. Like James Garfield in Mentor 16 years earlier, he gave well-scripted greetings that newspapers spread afar. He campaigned for a “full dinner pail.” He said, “It is a good deal better to open up the mills of the United States to the labor of America than to open up the mints of the United States to the silver of the world.”

Hanna billed him as an “advance agent of prosperity.” The tycoon deployed some 1,400 speakers and 200 million pamphlets in a nation of just 14 million voters. He raised a war chest estimated anywhere from $3.5 million to $10 million, which would be worth about $269 million in 2014 dollars. The bounty included $250,000 from John D. Rockefeller, Hanna’s schoolmate at Cleveland’s Central High School.

Bryan’s polemics—rural, nativist, fundamentalist and classist—eventually turned many previously Democratic workers in the swelling cities toward moderate, inclusive McKinley. The Republican got 271 electoral votes to 176 and 51.0% of the popular votes—the first presidential majority in 24 years.

Taking office on March 4, McKinley called a special session of Congress and won the highest tariffs yet. Soon the economy began to surge. In 1898, for the first time, the U.S. would export more manufactured goods than it imported.

Meanwhile, McKinley stripped civil service protections from about 4,000 jobs. His first cabinet picks were weak, and six of the eight fell out during the first term. But his choice of an aging John Sherman for secretary of state opened up a Senate seat for Hanna.

The president appointed some black officials and pushed recruitment and promotion of black troops, but did little else to stop the nation’s rising discrimination. He visited the Tuskegee Institute and Confederate memorials. He denounced lynching but did little to stop it.

McKinley telegraphed, telephoned and traveled widely. He became the first president to visit California. Death stopped his plans to be the first abroad, but he’d already crossed borders in other ways. He helped pass the Hague Convention on warfare and create the Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration. He helped crush China’s Boxer Rebellion and launch the Open Door policy to help U.S. exports there. He sent Marines to Nicaragua to defend Americans’ property.

In 1898, journalists and “imperialists”—a positive word at first—urged McKinley to free Cuba from a brutal Spain. McKinley balked. “I have been through one war; I have seen the dead piled up; and I do not want to see another.”

Then the Maine sank off Havana, and Navy officials blamed a probably innocent Spain. McKinley led what Secretary of State John Hay of Cleveland famously called “a splendid little war.” The president directed the troops in some detail. He won wartime taxes on high inheritances and more. He also persuaded Congress to annex Hawaii.

The war took just four months. Spain agreed to free Cuba and cede Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the U.S. The Senate narrowly accepted the territories, and U.S. troops spent four years quelling Filipino insurgents.

Unlike most predecessors, McKinley stumped for congressional candidates in mid-term. The Republicans kept control of both houses.

He sought treaties on dual standards for currency, but gold strikes were undercutting silver. In 1900, he signed the Gold Standard Actwith a gold pen.

At the 1900 Republican convention, the only question was who’d replace the late Hobart as vice president. Hanna lobbied hard against Roosevelt, but McKinley refused to interfere, and the New Yorker prevailed.

Bryan was renominated by the Democrats and stumped widely again, as did Roosevelt. McKinley returned to his porch, and Hanna raised more millions. The incumbent’s victory was bigger than before: 292 to 155 in electoral votes; 51.7 percent to 45.5 percent in popular votes.

During his second term, he planned a commerce and labor department. He also told an aide, “The trust question has got to be taken up in earnest, and soon.” He’d already called trusts “dangerous conspiracies… obnoxious to common law and the public welfare.” But his attorneys said they lacked power against the trusts, and he proposed no stronger laws.

On Sept. 5, 1901, at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, he said treaties to lower tariffs would help the nation’s growing industries. “We should sell anywhere we can and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales.”

Despite rising assassinations overseas, he insisted on shaking hands with strangers at the exposition the next day. “No one would wish to hurt me,” he said. A young girl reportedly asked for his lucky carnation. He complied. Then Czolgosz approached to act for anarchy. McKinley offered a hand. A bullet flew deflected off his coat button. Another lodged in his stomach.

The crowd grabbed Czolgosz. “Don’t let them hurt him,” McKinley murmured from a chair. He turned to his secretary, George Cortelyou: “My wife, Cortelyou, be careful how you tell her – oh, be careful!”

McKinley languished for eight days at a nearby house. Doctors spoke optimistically but missed the bullet and a case of gangrene. On the 13th, he said, “It is useless, gentlemen. I think we ought to have prayer.” Ida cried and begged to go with him “We are all going; we are all going,” he replied. “God’s will be done, not ours.” He died early the next day.

Roosevelt took the oath and said, “It shall be my aim to continue absolutely unbroken the policy of President McKinley.” Czolgosz was promptly tried and electrocuted.

McKinley grew even more popular in death. Mourners put his likeness on the $500 bill, his name on the continent’s highest mountain and his coffin in a new memorial in Canton. They also made Ohio’s state flower the scarlet carnation.

McKinley’s reputation has weathered well. Biographer Kevin Phillips called him “an upright and effective president of the solid second rank.” H. Wayne Morgan wrote, “He was not a ‘great’ president, but he fulfilled an exacting and critical role with success and ability displayed by no other contemporary.”

For further reading:

William McKinley by Kevin Phillips, 2003, Henry Holt & Co.

The Presidency of William McKinley by Lewis L. Gould, 1980, University Press of Kansas.

William McKinley and His America by H. Wayne Morgan, 2003, Kent State University Press.

William McKinley and Our America by Richard L. McElroy, 1996, Stark County Historical Society.

Places to visit:

McKinley Presidential Library and Museum, 800 McKinley Monument Dr. NW, Canton, OH 44708, 330-455-7043, www.mckinleymuseum.org.

National First Ladies’ Library, 331 Market Ave. S., Canton, OH 44702, 330-452-0876, www.firstladies.org.

About the Author

Grant Segall has spent 39 years on daily newspapers, including 30 at The Plain Dealer. He currently writes the My Cleveland column and covers the Berea school district for the PD and Sun News. He has shared in three national prizes and won several state and regional ones.

Segall has freelanced for Time, The Washington Post, and many other publications. His John D. Rockefeller: Anointed With Oil has been published by Oxford University Press and by houses in Korea and China. His short stories have been published in college journals, including Whiskey Island at Cleveland State, and in independent zines. He lives in Shaker Heights and has three sons.

Arnold Pinkney was one of Cleveland’s most effective political strategists: Brent Larkin

http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/01/arnold_pinkney_was_one_of_clev.html

Arnold Pinkney was one of Cleveland’s most effective political strategists: Brent Larkin

Gallery: Arnold Pinkney, civil rights leader, political consultant, dies

Stay connected to cleveland.com

Arnold Pinkney was blessed with the rare ability to figure out where voters were headed, and get there first.

That gift made Pinkney one of the most effective political strategists and campaign managers in Cleveland history.

Over the course of a political life that spanned nearly half a century, Pinkney’s candidates won a whole lot more races than they lost.

But Pinkney, who died Monday at the age of 83, didn’t win them all. And two of those losses were tough to take.

Because they were his own.

Pinkney ran for mayor in 1971 and 1975, defeated both times by Ralph Perk. Of the two, 1971 was, by far, the most disappointing.

In one of the most memorable mayoral races ever waged in Cleveland, events beyond Pinkney’s control conspired to cost him a victory.

Pinkney’s mentor was former Mayor Carl Stokes. He worked as a top City Hall aide to the nation’s first black, big-city mayor, and in 1969 managed Stokes’ winning re-election campaign.

Of all the members of the city’s growing black political class in the 1960s, Pinkney always thought Stokes stood head and shoulders above them all.

“Only one person had the charisma, the experience and the drive to win that job,” Pinkney recalled a few years ago. “Back then, it took a special talent for a black to be elected mayor. And only Carl had that talent.”

With the black church as its foundation, Stokes’ political base was built to last. And when he decided not to seek re-election in 1971, Pinkney hoped to use that base to become the city’s second black mayor.

Stokes quickly got on board. But first he had a score to settle.

Partisan primaries were held in those days. In the Republican primary, Ralph Perk easily dispatched a young state representative from Collinwood named George Voinovich.

Pinkney ran as an independent, leaving Council President Anthony Garofoli and businessman James Carney as the Democratic candidates.

Stokes disliked Garofoli, and in the waning days of the primary campaign he recorded a message endorsing Carney that was telephoned into the home of virtually every black voter in the city. Political robo-calling was in its infancy at the time, but that call enabled Carney to upset the favored Garofoli.

Stokes had flexed his sizable political muscle to punish a fellow Democrat, but he was playing a risky game. After convincing blacks to support Carney in the primary, he asked them to switch back to Pinkney in the general election five weeks later.

It backfired. About one in five black voters stuck with Carney, enough to swing the election to Perk, a Republican.

The 1971 campaign was my first as a reporter for the Cleveland Press. And I distinctly remember that, aside from Perk and a handful of his closest allies, no one thought he would win.

Afterwards, some who knew Stokes well thought he never wanted Pinkney to win, that he wanted at the time to be known as Cleveland’s first — and only — black mayor.

Pinkney never bought that. But he did come to believe Stokes’ strategy cost him the election.

“There’s no question Stokes’ endorsement of Carney siphoned votes from me 35 days later,” he recalled 20 years later. “I indicated to him (Stokes) that I didn’t think the strategy would work, but Carl prevailed.”

By 1975, Cleveland had switched to nonpartisan mayoral contests where the top two finishers in the primary would meet in a runoff election.

In the primary election, Pinkney finished first in a five-candidate field, nearly 4,000 votes ahead of Perk, who was seeking a third, two-year term.

Years later, Perk would admit he played possum in the primary. By taking a dive in Round 1 of the voting, Perk hoped to scare his supporters (i.e. white voters) and increase turnout on the West Side.

It worked. In the runoff election, he beat Pinkney by 17,000 votes.

Pinkney never again sought elected office, instead devoting his time to campaign consulting and selling insurance.

He played a key role in many statewide campaigns, notably Dick Celeste’s three runs (two of them successful) for governor. In 1984, he managed Jesse Jackson’s race for president.

When Gerald Austin, another veteran political consultant with deep Cleveland ties, was offered the job of managing Jackson’s presidential campaign in 1988, the first person he called was Pinkney.

“Arnold told me if Jackson and I could both control our egos, we’d learn a lot from each other,” recalled Austin. “So I took it. Arnold was special. He was a wonderful teacher, a real gentleman, a dear friend.”

For 40 years, Pinkney, Lou Stokes and George Forbes formed a political triumvirate that permeated every aspect of black political life in Greater Cleveland.

One Saturday morning in the late summer of 2011, Pinkney and House Speaker Bill Batchelder sat at a table in Forbes’ home and drew a new congressional district that protected the seat held by Rep. Marcia Fudge. Stokes signed off on the district via telephone.

Slowed a bit by illness, Pinkney nevertheless played an instrumental role in the 2012 school levy campaign that saw voters overwhelmingly agree to fund Mayor Frank Jackson’s school reform plan. And last fall he served as an adviser to Jackson’s re-election effort.

Former Plain Dealer editorial page editor Mary Anne Sharkey worked with Pinkney on those and other campaigns. From Pinkney, she learned the importance of a ground game in winning citywide elections, watching as he “dispatched troops with the precision of a general.”

Pinkney wasn’t averse to using social media and other 21st-century political tools, but his talents and tactics remained decidedly old school. Nevertheless, they worked.

“Arnold had a golden gut,” said Sharkey. “He did not need focus groups. He knew this town.”

About as well as anyone who ever lived.

Brent Larkin was The Plain Dealer’s editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009.

Arnold Pinkney obituary from Plain Dealer

Arnold Pinkney obituary from Plain Dealer January 13, 2014
http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2014/01/post_51.html

Political strategist Arnold Pinkney, consultant to Jesse Jackson, Frank Jackson and others, dies

By Plain Dealer staff

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Arnold Pinkney, who rose from the steel mills of Youngstown to become a nationally known political strategist and the manager of Jesse Jackson’s historic presidential campaign, died Monday — mere months after his most recent campaign.

He was 83.

Pinkney was best known locally as the shrewd kingmaker who put Louis Stokes in Congress and Frank Jackson in the Cleveland mayor’s office. In between, he was a trusted tactician for former Mayor Michael R. White and former Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste.

Friends said Pinkney had been ill for months. But his influence remained considerable in local politics. Last June he endorsed Armond Budish for Cuyahoga County executive, becoming one of the Beachwood-based state representative’s key early backers. He also remained close with Mayor Jackson through his successful bid last fall for a third term.

A statement from Hospice of the Western Reserve and forwarded by the Cleveland NAACP said Pinkney passed at 1:30 p.m. at the David Simpson Hospice House. His family thanked well-wishers but asked for privacy in the statement. Arrangements with the E.F. Boyd & Son Funeral Home are pending.

“The Cleveland community has lost a remarkable public servant who cared deeply about the future of our children and the well-being of all people,” said U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge, a Democrat from Warrensville Heights and chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. “Mr. Pinkney has been a friend and an astute political mentor to many, including me. My thoughts and prayers go out to his wife Betty, his daughter Traci and all other members of his family.”Said Budish, in an emailed statement: “Our hearts, thoughts and prayers go out to Arnold’s family today. Mr. Pinkney was a dedicated leader and public servant not just to the African American community, but also to all of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. His imprint on this region has been historic, and he will be sorely missed but not forgotten.”

Political consultant Mary Anne Sharkey, who worked with Pinkney on levy campaigns and on Frank Jackson’s campaigns, said Pinkney remained engaged on the mayor’s recent re-election campaign. She recalled working with Pinkney to prepare Jackson for a City Club of Cleveland debate with challenger Ken Lanci.

“Arnold paid attention to everything from soup to nuts,” said Sharkey, who was at Cleveland City Council’s Finance Committee meeting Monday afternoon as word of Pinkney’s death spread. Council members, she said, observed a moment of silence.

An insurance broker, Pinkney drew national attention as the campaign manager in civil-rights leader Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential bid. Jackson didn’t win, but he credited Pinkney with running a campaign that mobilized millions of previously disenfranchised poor and minority voters.

“I am very sad today,” Jackson told the Northeast Ohio Media Group in a telephone interview Monday. “With his passing, a huge part of history goes with him — that generation, led by Carl Stokes and Lou Stokes.

“A civic leader who could push or pull,” Jackson added. “He could manage in the background or lead from the forefront. He was forever blessed with a good mind and courage and could be trusted. His legacy of service will be with us a long time.”

Pinkney often said the highlight of his career occurred years earlier in the ballroom of the Beverly Hills Hilton in Los Angeles.

Minnesota Sen. Hubert Humphrey had made a strong showing, but narrowly lost the California primary in his quest for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination. As the partisan crowd cheered, the former vice president’s wife, Muriel, motioned for Pinkney — then her husband’s deputy campaign manager — to join the candidate on stage.

“We’re going to win this race,” Humphrey told Pinkney on national television. “And if we win, you’re coming to Washington with me to help put this country back together.”

Everyone back in Ohio was watching, and Pinkney was convinced he was headed to the nation’s capital for a cabinet post or a high-level White House position.

“It was one of the proudest moments of my life,” Pinkney would recall years later.

Humphrey didn’t win, and Pinkney didn’t go to Washington. But his fascination with politics lasted until his death. It was an attraction that began at an early age.

An education in politics

His father, David, was vice chairman of the Mahoning County Republican Party and favored Wendell Willkie over Franklin D. Roosevelt. His mother, Catherine, served as a precinct committeewoman. Their politics cast the boy as an underdog in the overwhelmingly Democratic steel town.

“Me and one other kid, a white kid, were the only ones in our whole school to wear Willkie buttons,” he said with a chuckle.

Pinkney’s father died just three months before his son, the youngest of five children, graduated from high school. To help the family make ends meet, the 17-year-old Pinkney moonlighted in steel mills.

It was around that time that he discovered Humphrey, who was to become a surrogate father. Listening to the 1948 Democratic National Convention on the radio, the teenager heard the youthful mayor of Minneapolis deliver an impassioned plea for his party to embrace civil rights — a plea so strident it drove Southern segregationists from the Philadelphia convention hall.

The speech rang in Pinkney’s ears for years. Decades later in hotel rooms from Portland to Pittsburgh, Humphrey and Pinkney would share meals and talk politics until dawn. Pinkney rode in Muriel Humphrey’s limousine during the senator’s funeral.

Young Pinkney was moved by Humphrey, but his first ambition was to play baseball. His exploits on the diamond at Albion College in Michigan eventually landed him in the school’s sports hall of fame. A talented shortstop with a strong bat, Pinkney played ball with Major Leaguers while stationed in Europe during an 18-month stint in the Army.

Pinkney held his own with the big-leaguers, but Indians scout Paul O’Dea warned the young man that he would be in his late 20s by the time he made it to the majors.

“He said, ‘Your race needs more lawyers than baseball players,'” Pinkney recalled.

Heeding O’Dea’s advice, Pinkney came to Cleveland in 1955 and enrolled in law school at Western Reserve University, but dropped out when he ran out of money. He met his wife, Betty, while at Albion. The couple later had a daughter, Traci.

The young family man went to work, becoming the first black agent hired by Prudential Insurance Co. He was soon drawn to causes, heading a membership drive for the NAACP and picketing a supermarket chain for not hiring blacks.

Partnering with the Stokes brothers

Pinkney met the Stokes brothers while doing bail bond work, and he soon became involved in local politics. After seeing Pinkney run successful local judicial campaigns, Louis Stokes tapped Pinkney to run his 1968 Congressional bid. The victory made Stokes Ohio’s first black congressman. Pinkney’s reputation grew after he helped Carl Stokes, the first black mayor of a major American city, survive a tough re-election fight.

“It’s like watching a symphony,” Louis Stokes said of Pinkney’s campaigns during a 2001 interview. “I’ve seen a lot of campaigns and Arnold is unquestionably the best I’ve ever seen.”

Pinkney did not spend his whole career behind the scenes. He served as Cleveland school board president from 1971 to 1978. The post thrust him into the public spotlight during the start of the district’s tumultuous desegregation case.

Pinkney’s visibility grew, but it wasn’t enough to propel him to higher office. He made unsuccessful runs for mayor in 1972 and 1975. After the latter loss, he moved to Shaker Heights to remove himself from consideration for future races.

The affable Pinkney was known for campaigning hard in white West Side wards where support for a black candidate ranged for disinterest to outright hostility. Pinkney would later tell of walking into a Kamms’ Corner tavern and hearing himself being loudly disparaged by a guy standing at the bar.

“The guy said, ‘He don’t have the nerve to come in here,'” Pinkney recalled years later. “I tapped him on the shoulder and shook his hand. He said he lived in Fairview Park, but if he lived in Cleveland, he would have voted for me.”

But Pinkney also discovered a considerable down side to public service. While serving on the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority in 1984, Pinkney was convicted of having an unlawful interest in a public contract. Pinkney argued he sold insurance to the board only after a board attorney told him such a deal was legal.

Five years later, a state parole board unanimously recommended a full pardon, and Celeste, who was then governor, pardoned his old friend.

The reigning guru of Cleveland politics

Pinkney spent much of the last two decades championing candidates and causes he believed in. His knack of knowing exactly how many votes a candidate or issue needed to prevail — and precisely where to find those votes — established him as the reigning guru of Cleveland politics.

“Most people take political science course and that kind of thing,” said former Cuyahoga County Deputy Elections Director Lynnie Powell, who first met Pinkney as a 16-year-old campaign volunteer. “Arnold never really did that. He knew in his gut how to run a campaign and how to reach people.”

White, who met Pinkney when he was 14, frequently tapped into that expertise during his three terms as mayor. In a six-year period, White asked Pinkney to run campaigns on five issues, all of them successful: the 1995 effort to extend the countywide tax on cigarettes and alcohol to help pay for construction of Cleveland Browns Stadium; the 1996 Cleveland schools levy campaign; a 1997 campaign to defeat a charter change that would have limited the city’s ability to grant tax abatements; and a 2001 school bond issue.

“I’d rather be on his side than against him,” said Richard DeColibus, the retired Cleveland Teachers Union president who pushed the unsuccessful tax-abatement issue.

Pinkney ran lawyer Raymond Pierce’s mayoral bid in 2001, losing to Jane Campbell and rival political strategist Gerald Austin. But he got revenge four years later when he helped Frank Jackson defeat the Campbell-Austin team.

Through it all, Pinkney remained an active partner in Pinkney Perry Insurance, a firm he and Charles B. Perry opened more than 45 year ago. He also served on the boards of Albion and of Central State University in Wilberforce.

“I have a gift for getting people involved,” Pinkney said in a 2001 interview. “And I like doing it.”

This obituary was written by former Plain Dealer reporter Scott Stephens, with contributions from Plain Dealer reporter Grant Segall.

2015 State of Jewish Cleveland Steve Hoffman and Dan Moulthrop 1.1.15

2015 State of Jewish Cleveland Steve Hoffman and Dan Moulthrop 1.1.15

Envisioning the Future of Jewish Cleveland:
an Interview with Stephen Hoffman
Interview by Dan Moulthrop, CEO Cleveland City Club
January 14, 2015
Sponsored by Siegal Lifelong Learning, the CWRU Jewish Alumni, the Cleveland Jewish News Foundation, the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, and Teaching Cleveland Digital

Ray Shepardson’s rocky love affair with Cleveland by Joanna Connors Plain Dealer May, 2014

Ray Shepardson’s rocky love affair with Cleveland: Death of a Salesman

Part One: Ray Shepardson makes a video about his life in the theater, a video that turned out to be his stunning farewell.

WHEATON, Ill. – April 13, Ray Shepardson’s video:
From the time of his first efforts in Cleveland’s Playhouse Square, Ray Shepardson was known for his remarkable gift for restoring America’s grand movie and vaudeville theaters from the early 20thcentury.

But as he conducts a tour of his memorabilia-filled house in his final video, it becomes apparent that most of his photos and mementos – and his fondest memories – focus not on the theaters that he restored, but on the celebrities who performed on their stages. Among all the photos, only one is of a theater.

He does point out a chandelier from a theater here, a table from another theater there. With a few, he mentions offhandedly that he took them from theaters he was restoring “after our parting of the ways,” or “after our dispute.”

This would prove to be a recurring theme in Ray Shepardson’s career.

As he pursued that career, Shepardson moved from town to town: St. Louis, Missouri. San Antonio, Texas. Seattle. Los Angeles. Chicago. Detroit. And more.

But, though he grew up on a dairy farm outside Seattle, Cleveland was his true home.

A spectacular entrance, a painful exit

He started his career here in 1970, when he worked for the Cleveland schools and was looking for a venue for speakers. He discovered the abandoned theaters of Playhouse Square, and in them discovered his passion and his future.

He was young and enthusiastic, and he had a kind of hip charisma that stood out in the deeply depressed Cleveland of the 1970s. He attracted a core group of believers, crucially Elaine “Lainie” Hadden, the incoming president of the Junior League of Cleveland, and Oliver “Pudge” Henkel, a Jones Day lawyer.

“He was the Pied Piper,” said Joe Garry, who was a professor of theater at Cleveland State University when they met. Garry had directed a production of “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris” at CSU, and his longtime partner, David O. Frazier, was one of its stars.

The story of how the huge success of “Jacques Brel” planted the seed for the flourishing complex of theaters and real estate that is Playhouse Square today has been told in countless stories. The story of Shepardson’s exit from Cleveland at the end of 1979 is less well known, though the documentary “Staging Success: The Playhouse Square Story” tells much of it.

In that documentary, Shepardson said he had been thinking of leaving anyway. At the time of the departure, he told a Plain Dealer reporter that he was not bitter and had no regrets, and gave the impression that the parting of ways was a mutual decision.

Garry remembers that time much differently. “It was a very painful exit, his exit from Cleveland,” he said. “For all of us. I mean, how do you drive out the prophet from his land?”

Henkel, then the chairman of the Playhouse Square Foundation, said he was the one who had to tell Shepardson of the board’s decision.

“It was very difficult,” Henkel said. “He was the visionary who was able to imagine what the theaters could be, and not only that, but what they could mean for the rest of downtown.”

But, Henkel went on, “Ray had the dream, but we needed the practicality, not just on the business things, but also the organizational things. The organization had reached a point, frankly, that it just had to move on.”

As Forbes magazine explained in 1984: “It did not help [Shepardson’s] reputation that his foundation ran up a $1 million deficit during the 1970s. When he bowed out … the Cleveland Foundation gave over $1 million.”

‘A bull in a china shop’

It was not just the spending and disorganization, though. It was also Ray’s personality. Even the people who loved and admired Shepardson say that he could be moody and stubborn, and that he had an explosive temper.

“He got into disputes with people all the time,” said his wife, Nanette. “He just did. Ray was like a bull in a china shop.”

Garry put it this way: “People asked, ‘When did Raymond become so difficult?’ And I said, ‘Become? He was always difficult.’ “

After leaving Cleveland, Shepardson went on to lead, or consult on, restorations in many other cities. Often, he had plans to stay and run the theater, but it never seemed to work out.

He met Nanette, his third wife, in Detroit. He restored the enormous Fox Theatre there and, later, began programming cabaret – his first love – in the Gem Theatre. She went to work for him, doing group sales and some marketing.

“He loved operating the theater,” she said. “It showed what could happen when Ray gets his way with programming. That place just hummed.”

Ray’s way with programming had a guiding populist philosophy: Theaters are not just for the elite. Bring everyone in by booking as many nights as you can and offering a variety of shows each season – a theatrical show, a singer, a magician, a comedian. Offer ticket deals to subscribers: Buy Two, Get Two Free.

By 1993, Shepardson didn’t like the direction the owner of the Gem was taking. “There was a dispute, but the parting of the ways was eventually amicable,” Nanette said.

A return to Cleveland

So Shepardson returned to Cleveland for what he hoped was his last stop.

He began raising money and planning to turn the Hanna Theatre – which had been closed since 1985 – into a cabaret. Unlike the nonprofit Playhouse Square, it would be a for-profit venture, with five principal investors. By the end, he raised $4 million in investments and bank loans.

Before it opened, Crain’s Cleveland Business reported that Shepardson planned to operate the theater for the next 42 years, the length of his lease with the owner of the Hanna Building.

“If this doesn’t work, I am the one who goes into the woods to drink the hemlock,” he told the Crain’s reporter.

It did not work.

The Hanna Theatre Cabaret opened in September 1997. In an only-in-Cleveland case of bad timing, it opened during a rare moment when one of its teams was actually winning. The entire city was transfixed by the Indians’ amazing run-up to the World Series.

The cabaret opening tanked. Shepardson went back to his investors for more money, but in August 1998, the cabaret closed.

“That was the beginning of the downfall,” said Garry.

Shepardson often joked about killing himself. He had taken out a very large life insurance policy and often said, “I’m worth more dead than I am alive.” Everyone interviewed for this story heard him say it, many times, but they always took it as one of Ray’s self-deprecating jokes.

When the Hanna failed, Garry wondered for the first time if he meant it.

“I was very worried,” he said. “We were watching someone really flail and suffer, and I thought he was in great pain.”

Shepardson stayed in Cleveland and joined an architecture firm as a consultant on theater restoration projects. “I be broke,” he joked in a Crain’s story.

That gig led him to Waukegan, Ill., and the restoration of the Genesee Theatre. The grand old theater brought back the old, enthusiastic Ray, the man who climbed scaffolding and worked round the clock.

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