SCHEDULING A SCHOOL LEVY: Mayor Campbell says she and her school board plan to put a school levy on the ballot in October or November, i.e. on the city's primary or general election day. Campbell's main rival for mayor, Council President Frank Jackson, has attacked her for waiting too long; he wants an August levy vote.

At last night's school board meeting, several City Council Members (Zack Reed, Joe Cimperman, Kevin Conwell) and others including Rev. C. J. Matthews of the Cleveland SCLC chapter called on the board to hold the vote during the summer and said they're ready to campaign for it. Schools CEO Byrd-Bennett responded that she'd take it up with the mayor on Friday.

From a cynical electoral point of view, it's obvious why Jackson wants the levy out of the way early. If it's on the November or even the October ballot, he can't attack Campbell on schools issues without appearing to undermine the levy, while all the sunny campaign messages about the schools can only benefit the incumbent mayor. But an August vote would at least neutralize the issue -- and a second levy defeat, which is highly likely, would give Jackson a big stick to beat Campbell with among minority voters, parents and corporate donors.

Is Frank Jackson calculating this cynically? Is the Mayor? How about the Councilmen and ministers at the School Board last night (who looked to me like a pretty pro-Jackson bunch)? Yes, yes, and I don't know but it wouldn't startle me.

Okay, but what about those who really just want to get a levy passed? Isn't this so urgent that we should get it on the ballot as soon as possible? And wouldn't Campbell's best possible move be to challenge everyone -- Jackson, Triozzi, Draper, all the Councilmen -- to put City Hall politics aside for four months and join in a united campaign to save the schools?

Yes, this would make perfect sense... if the Mayor thought she had any chance of winning such a vote. Conventional analysis says, however, that a levy's chances of passage in August are slim to none. Two important reasons:

• Low turnout. School taxes generally do better in high-turnout elections, which include more African-American and Hispanic voters, more low-income voters generally, a higher proportion of tenants, etc. There will be this kind of turnout in November, and a smaller version of it in October. But a special vote in August will be tiny, drawing only the likeliest of likely voters (i.e. older, homeowning, middle-class non-parents). Of course, if the school forces could mount a really successful turnout drive among low-income parents, they could turn this logic inside out (small general turnout + big parent turnout = win for parents). But that's a huge "if", especially considering that...


• In the summer, schools are closed and teachers are on vacation. A big get-out-the-vote campaign for a levy, especially in a low-visibility single-issue election, takes a massive hands-on volunteer effort. The absolute worst time to attempt this is July and early August, when the schools' day-to-day connection with families is broken, and teachers are scattered to their vacations and summer jobs. Again, this conventional logic could be inverted; hundreds of teachers could agree to devote their vacations to full-time campaigning, and the maintenance unions could agree to keep the schools open for the campaign at no cost. (Hey, how about a free summer program for kids sponsored by the levy campaign? Boy, that would get parents' attention!) But this would entail an unprecedented level of innovation, collaboration, and personal commitment -- not something the Mayor has any reason to rely on, especially this year.
  

So while there's a way to win in August, it's a long shot. And if it loses, that's it... there's no way to try again in November. The Mayor's plan of holding off until the city elections appears, from this outsider's vantage point, to be a lot more prudent.

But having said that, if I were Campbell or Byrd-Bennett, I'd still be taking a hard look at August scenarios. And I'd be asking some hard questions, as suggested above: Is Frank Jackson actually willing to suspend mayor's-race hostilities for four months, and unite behind a levy campaign? Could we get five hundred or more CFT members to volunteer their summers to campaign door-to-door? Could we get a full-bore campaign effort from other unions, and the funds we need from the business community? Can we find some trusted campaign management -- with no axe to grind in the mayor's race -- to put this all together in a few weeks?

If all these questions turn out to have positive answers, an August levy effort might be worth a shot. Otherwise, it's just smoke and mirrors... mayoral politics by other means.
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