This is Kenn Dowell. Cleveland-born, Glenville-raised, and never afraid to say what needs to be said.
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That’s the whole story people will tell you about Cuyahoga County Council and the sheriff. It’s not the real one.
Here’s what nobody’s saying: Chris Ronayne won a fight he never had to show up for. He didn’t need to whip votes. He didn’t need to survive a floor count. He needed one thing: for Sweeney to not have eight votes by August 4th. He got it without ever casting a ballot himself. That’s not losing gracefully. That’s winning quietly, and quiet wins never show up on a scoreboard, so nobody has to answer for them.
Sweeney’s amendment would have put the sheriff back on the ballot starting in 2028, ending the appointed system Cuyahoga’s run since it blew up its old government in 2009 after Sheriff Gerald McFaul pleaded guilty to theft in office. Every other county in Ohio, all 87 of them, elects its sheriff.
Cuyahoga’s been the outlier, and an unstable one: nine sheriffs in and out since the reform. Ronayne countered with his own amendment to restore his power to fire a sheriff, a power council stripped from the executive in 2019.
Both needed eight votes to reach November’s ballot. Neither got there. Council killed Ronayne’s firing power in July. Tuesday, Sweeney’s bill died the same way: not by vote, but by the sponsor admitting the math wasn’t there.
Now pay attention, because this decides who runs this county going forward. The elected-sheriff question isn’t dead. It moved to a charter review commission that won’t be seated until September 2027, reporting in June 2028. Right now, Ronayne appoints that commission, all of it. Councilmember Michael Gallagher said the quiet part out loud in July: “That cake is already baked.” He wasn’t talking about the sheriff. He was talking about who controls the table where the sheriff question gets decided next.
That’s the move. You don’t have to beat your opposition on the floor if you can move the fight into a room you own. Council’s already fighting to split those commission appointments so it isn’t Ronayne’s board alone deciding what goes back on the ballot in 2028. Watch that fight. It matters more than the vote that didn’t happen.
Now let’s talk about how Ronayne got there without ever asking for votes directly. In that same July meeting, Ronayne and Council President Dale Miller argued an appointed sheriff protects diversity, pointing to national data showing elected sheriffs run 91 percent white and 98 percent male. Gallagher, a Black councilmember, called it what it was: race-baiting.
Then he reminded the room Cuyahoga’s had three county executives since 2009. All three, white men. The people making the diversity argument have never run that test on their own office.
That’s not an accident. That’s strategy. You take a question about accountability, about who can fire the person running a 1,200-person department and a county jail, and dress it up as a question about representation. Representation is harder for Black elected officials to vote against in public, even when they know exactly what’s happening. It fractures opposition without anyone whipping a single vote.
I need to say this plainly. I was in some of those rooms. For years, Black leaders in this county believed what Ronayne and Miller are arguing now: that getting a Black person appointed was easier, and safer, than getting one elected. An appointment only needs one person to say yes. An election needs a majority of a county that hasn’t always voted the way we needed it to. So the thinking went: take the sure thing.
I understood that once. I don’t agree with it now, and haven’t for a long time. The seat handed to you can be taken back by the same hand that gave it, on that hand’s timeline, for that hand’s reasons. An appointed Black sheriff, an appointed Black board member, answers first to whoever holds the pen.
An elected one answers to the people who voted. That’s the entire difference between power and permission. Cuyahoga’s already lived what permission looks like: nine sheriffs in and out since 2011, at the pleasure of whoever sat in the executive’s chair.
Cuyahoga’s running that same argument right now, new names attached. Keep the job appointed, diversity gets protected by design. Put it on the ballot, and you’re trusting electorates that run 91 percent white and 98 percent male nationally. It sounds like caution. It functions as control. Convert a fight over who holds power into a fight over who deserves protection, and you don’t have to win the argument. You just make it too costly for the other side to keep pushing.
One more thing, because it’s getting buried. The sheriff Ronayne appointed, Harold Pretel, said publicly he thinks the job should be elected. He called it critical, constitutional, a model that works in the other 87 counties. When the man an executive hand-picked won’t defend the system that put him there, that’s the appointed man telling you the appointed system doesn’t hold.
So no, Tuesday wasn’t a story about a sheriff. It was a story about how you win in this county without ever losing in public. Run the clock. Move the fight to a room you already own. Use representation as a wedge before anyone can call it what it is. Sweeney gets another shot in 2027. Whether it’s a fair one depends on who’s sitting on that commission, and that fight is happening right now, mostly out of sight.
I’ve spent 25 years in the rooms where Cuyahoga County’s decisions actually get made: campaigns, council fights, corporate tables, church basements. If you want the analysis that comes from the room, not the press release, subscribe at Realpower.tv The work continues there.
