BREAKING : Lakewood Mayor FitzGerald Announces Candidacy for Cuyahoga Executive

I've been hearing this rumoured.

Here's the thing. I like Ed and I tihnk he could have a bright political future. However, he is underqualified for the enormous job of county executive, which requires skills and outreach he doesn't have yet.

Problem is — and here's the hidden iceberg of this new charter government — neither does virtually anyone else I can see. I hear names like Joe Cimperman (who I have no idea whether he's thinking of it) and Chris Ronayne (who transparently is. Raise your hand if you HAVEN'T seen Ronayne at a meeting in the last month), and I think the same thing about them as I do about Fitzgerald: these would all be great candidates for Jimmy Dimora's commissioner seat, IF we still had commissioners, so that they could START building a knowledge base about how county government runs. I don't see any of them as qualified yet for a position so vastly powerful it exceeds in the county the power of the President in the nation.

I would be interested in hearing who they will reach out to to fill in their enormous gaps in county administrative knowledge. With Fitzgerald I would need to mull over his potential ties to Bill Mason which I have heard are looser than one might think. When he had a big fundraiser earlier this year, virtually every big-name county officer was on the host committee, except Dimora, Frank Russo — and Mason.
I don't know what that means.

I'm just uneasy about giving so much pwoer to someone who hasn't been hands-on in county government — which is pretty much anyone who might run.

As for Matt Dolan — cue the "gentry from Geauga wants to run the Cuyahoga peasants" commercial. He would be an unmitagated disaster for all of us.

Fitzgerald is the Democrats' silver bullet. In a year when Republicans might seek to capitalize on the corruption and federal investigations of Jimmy Dimora and Frank Russo, Fitzgerald presents the Dems with an opportunity to nominate a former FBI agent, prosecutor, and someone who was overwhelmingly elected Mayor of Lakewood against the Dimora-endorsed candidate just two years ago. If the Democrats are smart, they'll see all they have in a candidate like Fitzgerald, and line up behind him.

When I got home yesterday, I had a big, splashy, glossy, full-colour brochure from Ed and his county executive campaign. So it couldn't be more official. Yet I have just scoured a Plain Dealer from front to back, and there's nothing. I wonder why not.