With strong name recognition and a campaign war chest surpassing $200,000, McGinty was the clear front-runner from the start. His campaign claims to have sent absentee ballots to every voter in Cuyahoga County, and voter turnout from Cleveland’s West Side and the western suburbs were expected to be strongly in his favor.
McGinty says he’s ready to restore public confidence in the very office bypassed by federal investigators during recent corruption investigations. He says one thing he’ll do as county prosecutor is create a “public corruption” unit.
“It’ll aggressively look at all possibilities -- public contract and other abuses -- and eliminate the problem. This is not going to happen again.”
McGinty says he’s looking at how other cities and counties have modeled their prosecutor offices, and is especially impressed with a data-driven model used in Arizona’s Maricopa County.
Coming in at a surprise second was Stephanie Hall, a former police officer and the only African-American in the race. She had campaigned for better tracking of racial data in the justice system, as a way to reduce disparities in sentencing and incarceration for minorities.
Candidates Subodh Chandra, Robert Triozzi, and James McDonnell placed third, fourth, and fifth respectively.
Republicans didn’t field a candidate for the county prosecutor’s race, but McGinty will still face independent candidate Edward Wade Jr. But with a dominant Democratic presence in Cuyahoga County, McGinty’s largely expected to take the office in November.