Pinkney, who ran successful school tax campaigns in 1996 and 2001, said in hindsight he would not have done anything differently. "We felt we had a strong message to the people of Cleveland," he said. "Unfortunately, they did not buy our message." (PD Nov. 4)He would not have done anything differently -- even though the campaign he ran lost. A big turnout should have helped, but those extra West Side voters turned out to be anti-gay bigots who don't like school taxes either. And there was a secret campaign against him!
Pinkney had hoped a large voter turnout would help his cause, but he now thinks West Siders who came out to support a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage also opposed the school tax.
Pinkney also believes that police and firefighters in the West Park neighborhood, who faced layoffs in the last year, secretly campaigned against the tax. (PD Nov. 6)
Do you think this guy may be in denial?
I don't claim to know why Issue 112 failed, but the numbers make it abundantly clear how it failed. The key was not the big West Side turnout, which was on the same scale as the big East Side turnout, overwhelming supported John Kerry, and gave Issue 1 less support than the East Side. (Wards 1-10 favored the anti-gay amendment 58% to 42%, while Wards 14-21 split on it 51% to 49%, and Wards 17, 18 and 21 voted it down.)
I don't doubt that lots of police and firefighters voted against the school levy, but if they were running a secret West Side campaign it didn't have that much impact. The falloff in the Ward 14-21 "yes" percentage, compared to the 2001 school bond levy, was only about 5% -- not good for the levy, but not decisive.
What was decisive was the falloff in support on the East Side -- specifically Wards 1 through 10, which are 75% to 98% African-American and typically cast almost half the votes in Cleveland elections. In 2001 these wards supported the school bond levy, on average, by better than 80%. This year their average support for Issue 112 was only 55%. Ward 1, the biggest and highest-income, actually voted against the issue 53% to 47%.
It was this East Side retrenchment, not some unexpected outpouring of West Side anti-gays and cops, that ambushed Pinkney's campaign plan and killed the school levy.
The important question, of course, is why. As I said earlier, I don't claim to know. The easy answer is "Times are tough, voters just feel they can't afford it." And that's certainly an easy answer to believe.
Personally, I think there's more to it. But I'll save that for another day.