UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, Ohio -- Incumbent Cleveland Heights-University Heights school board members held off challengers last week (Nov. 2), retaining their three seats rather handily in an election that had its share of political intrigue.
In the “Battle of the Slates,” Dan Heintz, Malia Lewis and Jodi Sourini overcame concerted opposition from the team of Charles Drake, Maureen “Mo” Lynn and Mordechai Rennert.
That left a seventh candidate, Mario Clopton-Zymler, running on his own. He wound up with a fourth-place finish -- between the two slates.
With both Cleveland Heights and University Heights holding mayoral elections, as well as crowded slates of candidates running for the respective city councils, the combined turnout for the CH-UH School District election came in with an unofficial 36,704 votes cast.
And with all 35 precincts counted, the final, unofficial individual candidate totals were:
-- Malia Lewis: 7,041 votes (19.2 percent)
-- Jodi Sourini: 6,951 (18.9)
-- Dan Heintz: 6,703 (18.3)
-- Mario Clopton-Zymler: 6,074 (16.6)
-- Maureen Lynn: 3,679 (just over 10 percent)
-- Charles Drake: 3,545 (9.7)
-- Mordechai Rennert: 2,711 (7.4)
On Nov. 3, Heintz responded: “I’m very happy with the outcome. Malia, Jodi, Beverly (Wright), Jim (Posch) and I are a great team. We love our school district, its students and staff.
“I believe that the results are a clear indication that our community rejects the fringe-right agenda,” Heintz continued. “Once the MAGA slate’s Trojan horse was exposed, it fell apart.”
Throughout the campaign, Drake, Lynn and Rennert disputed the “Make America Great Again” references, saying the election was about transparency and fiscal reforms, including the prospect of lower taxes, in an entirely different sense of the word “base.”
“We are the highest-taxed district in all of Ohio and the residents have been requesting a performance audit -- especially before they put another levy on a ballot,” Lynn said. “It is unfortunate the the current school board used partisan politics for a completely non-partisan board of education. They simply used slander and malice to turn voters against us.
“What was our ‘MAGA’ agenda that was going to ‘destroy the public schools?’” Lynn continued. “They intentionally published lies about us and handed their flyers out on election day.”
Sourini noted earlier that a performance audit was generally done under normal operations, something the district has not seen in the midst of COVID-19 and that “our community wants us to get our district back on the exciting track we were on before the pandemic hit.
“We were improving our graduation rate, closing our achievement gap and growing our enrollment, all while being fiscally responsible and fighting for Fair School Funding in Columbus,” Sourini added after the election. “I look forward to continuing that work. Our board is a great team. While we don’t always agree, we respect each other and work together to reach consensus for the good of our students, staff and community.”
Lynn contends that the political action committee backing the slate of incumbents was “laced with insiders” from the district.
“Our campaign platform focused on transparency and accountability of the school board and the administration,” Lynn, the treasurer of Tiger Nation 4 Lower Taxes PAC said. “The voters decided in favor of the status quo based on lies about us and our intentions. They just voted in more taxes, continued lack of transparency and a top-heavy, highly-paid administration with no accountability to the students and the communities’ needs.”
The challenger slate’s goals included making sure that the “generous funds” the schools receive are truly going to the students. In addition to the performance audit -- which Clopton-Zymler also said separately that he favored -- the opposition slate also wanted the district to join the state’s “Open Checkbook” public accounting system.
“We heard from many parents about their frustration with getting the resources for their children’s special needs,” Lynn said. “We also wanted to institute a ‘conflict of interest policy’ to insure that board appointments are made with integrity and honesty. We are also concerned about the safety in the schools especially with recent gun incidents in the high school.”
Clopton-Zymler had some separate criticism of his own on political expediency, noting that his campaign committee will remain active, having delivered what he felt was a solid message, a dynamic platform, and an exemplary field/voter outreach plan, raising well over $15,000 in mostly small-dollar contributions.
“And with the best volunteers and surrogates any candidate could ask for,” he said. “We out-worked, out-planned, and in each candidate forum, completely out-performed the incumbent and non-incumbent slates.”
Clopton added that he thankful to his team, proud of himself and humbled by the support of more than 6,000 voters.
At the same time, he felt that the incumbents and some of their supporters “weaponized their privilege” throughout the campaign.
“They used tactics not unfamiliar to previous Black challengers like Tiera Briggs and Katura Simmons,” Clopton-Zymler added. “They directly and indirectly perpetuated a whisper campaign against my candidacy starting as early as April. They kept up these types of antics all the way up to election day, when I observed and called one of them out for campaigning in the parking lot of Imani Temple directly against the requests of the poll officials on site.
“Unfortunately, the incumbents proved that even in the most ‘progressive’ of areas, power will do whatever it takes to remain that way,” Clopton-Zymler continued. “We must always call out these types of politicians for bending the rules, laws, and policies for their benefit.”
Between meetings on Nov. 3, Lewis thanked residents in both cities “for voting to keep me, Dan Heintz, and Jodi Sourini on the board of education for a second term,” adding that they have spent the past four years working with Posch and Wright “to tackle equity throughout our institution, improve our students’ performance, diminish various achievement gaps, and control our district’s spending.
“Our community recognized the value of our efforts and voted for us to continue along the path we were travelling before COVID-19 put a wrench in the works,” Lewis added. “The work continues!”
Her comments echoed the earlier sentiments from Heintz.
“We have a great deal of work ahead of us,” Heintz added on the day after the election. “Last night was permission to keep going, and that’s what we’ll do.”
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