Cleveland City Councilman Zack Reed gave up his Ward 2 seat to challenge incumbent mayor Frank Jackson and lost. But Ideastream’s Mark Urycki reports Reed believes he made a difference.
Zack Reed sounded a bit frustrated in his concession speech after losing by 19 percentage points.
“The voters of the city of Cleveland spoke and they want to continue down the path we’ve been going down for the last 12 years,” Reed said.
Reed campaigned on the argument that neighborhoods needed more attention and downtown development less. And he wanted to hire more police.
“It was a good message,” Reed said. “You started from the beginning of ‘He’s crazy, he’s out of his mind, he wants to hire 400 more police (officers).’ … (Jackson says) he wants to hire 300 police. You start from a conversation of we’ve only traditionally had only 2 police cadet classes, now he set about to put on five.”
The 56-year-old Reed said he will serve out the rest of his term and then decide what he is going to do next.
