Democrat Chris Ronayne will be the next Cuyahoga County executive, defeating Republican Lee Weingart. Unofficial results showed Ronayne leading Weingart by a 2-to-1 margin with 94% of the votes counted.
Ronayne ran as a unifying force who would work well with mayors across the county and stressed the potential of Lake Erie as an economic force.
His election night watch party was celebratory from the beginning. The former president of University Circle, Inc. enjoyed endorsements from dozens of current and former mayors countywide.
“894 days ago, there’s a back story to that, but we started talking about what we were going to do,” Ronayne said during his acceptance speech. “I’ll tell you what, it has been enriching to be out in Cuyahoga County, to remember again our potential and that’s what I want to focus on.”
Ronayne will be the third Cuyahoga County executive since voters approved the county executive and 11-member county council form of government in 2009. He has a long history in government in Cleveland, including stints in the Cuyahoga County planning department and the administration of former Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell.
Despite that history, Ronayne presented himself and his incoming administration as part of a change in the county, what he called the “new Cuyahoga.”
“Our new Cuyahoga will be about new partnerships, it will be about partnerships with our cities,” Ronayne said to cheering supporters, which included many government officials from around the county. “Folks you’ve heard me saying it before, the new Cuyahoga will be about elevating ourselves as the freshwater capital of the world.”
Just before 10 p.m., Lee Weingart spoke to the crowd at his election party at the Shaker Heights Country Club.
He said he hopes Ronayne will answer the "hopes, fears and aspirations" of people he spoke to on his campaign.
"I think we've laid out a vision that I hope someone will pick up, if it's not me, and run with," he said. "A vision to reduce the burden of the government on taxpayers and the citizens; a vision to sell off assets that we shouldn't own as the public, like a hotel and the Medical Mart; a vision to invest in the urban core, where we need investment, we need funding to help people who are just trying to get by who are having a hard time," he said.
Weingart portrayed himself as a fiscally responsible alternative and sought to peel off Black voters disgruntled with a Democratic party that’s held power in the county for years without addressing racial disparities. He battered Ronayne in advertisements and at public appearances over a 2020 ProPublica report that found stark racial disparities in policing by University Circle police, which Ronayne oversaw, and the two other private departments policing that part of Cleveland.
Ultimately, Weingart, who served as a Cuyahoga County Commissioner from 1995 to 1997, was unable to overcome the voter registration disadvantage Republicans face in Cuyahoga County. The Democratic party has a more than two-to-one edge among registered voters. In the last non-presidential year, 2018, the Democratic nominee for governor, Richard Cordray, won 67 percent of the vote in Cuyahoga County while losing to Republican Mike DeWine.
Ronayne replaces two-term Democrat Armond Budish, whose second term in office was marred by a series of deaths in the county jail and a corruption investigation that targeted members of his office.
His plan includes increasing access to the lakefront and developing an annual water expo to draw people to the region. Ronayne also promised to create new housing and mobility departments in county government and an ombudsman position to handle resident complaints.
One of the new executive’s most pressing challenges will be what to do about the county jail. Just last week, two more people died after being brought there.
Both candidates criticized the years-long process that led the outgoing administration and county council to agree to build a jail that can hold up to 2,400 people, with estimated construction costs of $750 million, on a contaminated industrial site near Downtown Cleveland.
Ronayne asked Cuyahoga County Council to hold off until he reaches office. They obliged.
His proposal would scrap the plan to build a single large jail to replace the two buildings – Jail I and Jail II – at the Justice Center in Downtown Cleveland. Instead, he believes Jail II can be renovated while Jail I is torn down. The rest of the capacity could be found at suburban jails such as Euclid or Bedford Heights.
His plan would likely require a drastic reduction in the average daily population at the jail, which right now is around 1,670.
“We need to again act like we did during the pandemic, where actually the jail population was smaller, but we were working more together,” Ronayne said during a recent interview with Ideastream Public Media. “That's my M.O. going forward in the future - working with our cities, working with the state of Ohio, to get this right.”
He proposes an increased focus on bail reform and diversion to bring the population down. It’s unclear how long it will take before those reforms will take hold, if they do at all.
Ronayne formally takes office on January 1.
