It is not a far-fetched proposition that Maple Heights mayor Annette Blackwell could win next year’s Democratic primary battle for County Executive.

As of today, Chris Ronayne is the only unequivocally declared candidate for the nomination. Ronayne has some undeniable strengths to draw upon but he would need to shore up some holes in his game if he were to face a serious challenge. That won’t come from state Senator Nickie Antonio, a Lakewood Democrat who told us today that will not enter the county race, but instead run for re-election in the reconfigured Senate district that will stretch from the west end of Lakewood to encompass a significant chunk of Cleveland’s east side.

If Blackwell is to mount the main challenge to Ronayne, she needs to get her act together quickly.

A spokesman from her camp called me today in reply to our weekend inquiries about when she would formally announce whether she would fish or cut bait. He said she was “weighing her options”.

Really?

The spokesman was blissfully unaware that whoever is running the mayor’s campaign website has put up two items that say she’s in the race. One is a press release that for some reason hasn’t been shared with the press. It offers a summary of her qualifications and a declaration that she is ready for a broader leadership role in our community. It reads somewhat like a draft that awaits professional vetting.

But how’s the photo at the top of this article for an unequivocal declaration of candidacy? We screenshot it from her website’s home page.

So, Your Honor, what are you waiting for? Is you is or is you ain’t?

Truth to tell, Blackwell could be a formidable candidate. She has done a remarkable job turning around a first-ring suburb that was in fiscal emergency when she came into office in 2017. Her predecessor had despaired publicly whether the city had any future. Blackwell has brought order to the city’s finances, built relationships with her peers, and brought new jobs and businesses to the community. Much of her strength is in fiscal analysis, something that is sorely needed as we come to the end of the Budish administration.

The primary winner may well be determined by the party endorsement process. That potentially puts the party chair, newly minted Congresswoman Shontel Brown, in position to play an outsized role in the contest. But Brown putting her finger on the scale is not without risk. She will be on the ballot herself, seeking election to a full term as Congress in a newly redrawn district that may be less hospitable to her than the current one.

Next year’s race for county executive will be the fourth since 2009, when voters opted to modernize county government in the aftermath of the outsized corruption of the Dimora-Russo gang. A Blackwell-Ronayne race in some ways evokes the first-ever Democratic primary for county executive. That year, a fresh and ambitious suburban mayor, Ed FitzGerald, was up against a field that included Terri Hamilton Brown, Ronayne’s predecessor as head of University Circle Inc.

FitzGerald got the decided edge when he was just able to squeeze above the 60% threshold vote to the party endorsement over the determined but belated opposition of then-Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, who tried unsuccessfully to rally enough members of the executive committee to vote for “no endorsement”. He won the general election comfortably over then-state rep. Matt Dolan (Dolan is now a state senator and is seeking the GOP nomination to succeed retiring US Senator Rob Portman next year).

In 2014 Armond Budish was able to succeed FitzGerald almost nonchalantly, as neither then-State Sen. Shirley Smith nor former county sheriff Bob Reid could muster much of a challenge. This was true even though Budish, who had served two years as state House majority leader, didn’t particularly want the job, viewing it pretty much as a landing spot while he plotted a future race for governor.

A robust primary campaign between Blackwell and Ronayne on a level playing field — two mid-career high achievers each with some political experience — could be a cleansing and healthy experience for a county Democratic party badly in need of reformation and energy.

The winner would be battle-tested enough on a county wide basis to take on the general election challenge of former county commissioner Lee Weingart, who got in the race first, no doubt sensing the overwhelming weakness of the incumbent Budish. Weingart has been running vigorously ever since. He won’t be a pushover for the Democratic nominee. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that even as I write this, he is at the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner, pushing his candidacy and hoping that he doesn’t get too many questions about his carrying a GOP banner that increasingly stands for white nationalist principles. 

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