Op-Ed

By Ryan Puente

Campaign manager Ryan Puente and candidate Justin Bibb keep a close eye on the election results as they come in on Primary night. Bibb surprised almost everyone by coming in first in a seven candidate field.

Three hundred fifty-five days (355) ago, in the midst of a global pandemic, a skinny 33-year-old black man from the city’s southeast side set out on a journey to become Cleveland’s first new mayor in 16 years. He campaigned rigorously across the city, offering residents a renewed sense of hope, vision, energy and urgency about addressing society’s most pressing challenges.

Tonight, shortly after midnight, Justin M. Bibb will take his official oath of office and write the next chapter in Cleveland’s 226-year history.

One thing is certain: change will not come easy.

As we turn the page and look towards building a better tomorrow, I look back on our campaign and share some of my observations as Bibb’s campaign manager before closing that chapter and entering the administration.

Be Bold & Willing to Take Chances

We heard it from many people on the campaign trail: "Bibb and I were naïve, too young and couldn’t win." Others prodded Bibb to spend time in the trenches learning at the city council level or fretted that we were not ready for the rough-and-tumble world of Cleveland politics. Undeterred by that mindset, our campaign was the first to announce in early January, months before the field was set or a decision was made by Mayor Frank G. Jackson not to seek a fifth term. Prior to announcing on January 12, 2021, an independent poll was commissioned in the final days of December 2020; it said only 2% of the electorate recognized Justin Bibb’s name.

Challenging the status quo and taking on entrenched politicians like former Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Council President Kevin Kelley meant taking a chance. From the outset, we trusted our own instincts and sensed early on the strong desire for change that Clevelanders were yearning.

Since that November 2^nd night when voters made Justin Bibb Cleveland’s first millennial mayor by a margin of 26 points, many have suggested that our campaign and our victories were historic. History itself will tell the story years from now, but one thing is certain: none of the legendary races — Carl B. Stokes in 1967, Ralph Perk in 1971, and Michael R. White in 1989 come to mind — were won without the winners taking bold, decisive risks or chances.

Ryan Puente and Justin Bibb with Campaign chair Brad Davy after the candidate announced his candidacy on January 12, 2921. 

Balancing High-Tech & High-Touch

We launched an upstart campaign in a pandemic that robbed us of traditional political events like ward and block club meetings and street festivals. We did not have even the ability to knock on doors in the early days, forcing our campaign to adopt the mantra of “high-tech and high-touch”, a guiding principle I learned from the late Cleveland Schools’s athletic commissioner Leonard Jackson during numerous school levy campaigns and my own research into the well-known taskmaster and master campaigner Arnold R. Pinkney.

High-tech and high-touch required our campaign to be disciplined about balancing technology with meeting voters where they are. To that end, immediately before and after announcing, we identified those critical neighborhood influencers with vast networks who could bring credibility and legitimacy to the campaign with their support. This was no easy task. Candidate Bibb first had to first gain their trust and did so by setting up individual Zoom meetings to share his background and vision. Then he had to earn their support and confidence to tap into their relationships for larger community Zoom gatherings with their neighbors, friends, colleagues and family.

As the season turned from winter to spring, the restrictions and barriers created by COVID-19 eased, but Bibb and the campaign never took for granted the power of shoe leather, pound-the-pavement, grassroots door-to-door campaigning. Team Bibb’s field operations, led by the talented Zoe Toscos and Kenn Johnson (“Kenn with two Ns”), knocked on over 20,000 doors across the city and dialed over 13,000 phones.

Our campaign was the first to launch a sophisticated field operation in May 2021, giving us a chance to tell our own story. In the early days, this allowed Bibb to hold genuine and authentic conversations with voters at their doors. As a first-time, fresh-faced candidate, these interactions offered him the chance to get a pulse of the community, prioritize issues that were top-of-mind for voters like police accountability and then parse the constant “noise” and feedback that’s typical during a campaign from media, insiders, friends and others in the community.

Most importantly, it crystallized our initial assumptions about the electorate’s strong desire for change, new ideas, energy, and fresh blood. We heard that voter hunger consistently relayed back to us in face-to-face conversations with residents at their doors.

And finally, I can’t overstate the reliance on an effective and robust texting program overseen by Zoe Toscos but led by 15-year-old Hazel Smith and 14-year-old Ethan Khorana. Over the course of the year, their operation distributed over 150,000 highly tailored messages targeted to our universe of likely voters. When the negative attacks that originally had Kucinich in their crosshairs shifted their sights to Bibb, our near-daily texting program helped inoculate us and cut through all the noise by communicating our message directly to voters. This allowed us to track in real-time whether our opponents’ attacks were resonating with voters. A strong and deliberate texting program also enabled the campaign to identify core supporters and those undecided voters who required further communication about Bibb and his plans to move Cleveland forward.

Each dollar was critical to boosting Bibb’s name ID so the campaign conducted only two polls, one in the primary and the other in the general election. In the absence of a war chest and ability to conduct frequent polling like some of our opponents, we instead relied heavily on the feedback collected at the doors, on the phones and in text messages. This approach was our best substitute for “tracking polls” and helped guide our strategy and messaging as we neared Election Day in the primary and general.

In sum, relational organizing and genuine conversation, balanced with technological tools, allowed the Bibb brigade to build a big tent coalition that was multi-racial and cross-generational and that spanned the east-west divide that runs deep in Cleveland going back several decades.

The Power of Young People

Not only did the campaign have a young, energetic, and charismatic candidate in Bibb and a 30-year-old campaign manager at the start, it also embraced students and young folks from the early days. Students for Bibb was a coalition led by a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old that eventually grew to over 100 teenagers, college students and young professionals from across the city and region. Our deputy campaign manager/social media director was hired at 25-years-old, our west side field director was only 23, and a 15-year-old oversaw all aspects of the campaign’s yard sign coordination and distribution.

Bibb understood the power of young people and was deliberate about harnessing their energy, ideas, and enthusiasm to support the campaign’s efforts. Students for Bibb assisted in every aspect of the campaign from canvassing, phone banking, opposition research, data visualization and social media.

The Right Leader at the Right Time

A lot of factors came into play to bring us a resounding victory on Election Day. But, in the end, the single most important factor is that a small group of people agreed early on that Justin Bibb was the right leader at the right time. Then, armed with passion for our community, we set a plan in motion to tell Clevelanders about the person we trusted to become the mayor.

Soon, we had over 300 volunteers knocking on doors, making calls, putting up signs, and sending postcards; over 1,000 unique donors to the campaign and out-raised longtime Cleveland politicians and officeholders.  That momentum helped us take our message to the masses using a mix of high impact media (TV, billboards, digital ads, radio). 

In just under one year, Justin Bibb went from 2% name recognition to winning with 63% of the vote. Now, we start the real work of setting a new set of plans into motion.

As Mayor-Elect Justin Bibb assumes office, I hope we never forget our path to victory, the principles of our success and the people that got us here. We ran a truly people-centered campaign, mobilized volunteers young and old, activated online and offline, energized by the promise of a fresh start.

Unprecedented times demanded a new brand of political leadership and together, we wrote a new playbook for Cleveland politics. We’ve just finished the first chapter.

Ryan Puente and Bibb supporter Betty K. Pinkney. Puente has researched and written about the life and accomplishments of Mrs. Pinkney's late husband, Arnold R. Pinkney.

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Puente starts tomorrow as Chief Government Affairs Office in the Bibb cabinet. He was director of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party before signing on as Bibb's campaign manager.