For any number of reasons, it feels like the election came and went in Lakewood with only limited comment since; November's first Observer had a brief summary of local returns, and then… by two weeks later we were deep in the surreal limbo of pandemic and slow-motion attempted coup d'état.
But some kind of reality still exists—despite rejection by millions—and it needn't be completely swept away just yet. Not sure that our newspaper needs month-afterward election chitchat, but there does exist a political hot-stove league in Lakewood; if only for that audience, I have collected a few thoughts on the City of Homes' 2020 voting.
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At the top of the ballot, not surprisingly Lakewood voted for Biden/Harris in a landslide.
Breaking this down a bit, the most interesting detail may be that Trump actually improved his total from 2016, slightly. This essentially reflects the national trend of a higher turnout election which “lifted all boats.” As Lakewoodites wryly observed, Trump did get “more votes than Obama” in the big picture, but Biden got still more votes. In Lakewood, Trump did run a few votes behind 2016 in precincts here and there, while Biden scored more votes than Clinton in every precinct.
Overall, in Lakewood, a slightly larger base of registered voters showed up at a greater rate than in 2016, and voted more Democratic. No great shocks, here, although these numbers are interesting given that overall turnout fell in Cleveland from 2016 to 2020.
Besides the presidency, Lakewood had little in the way of “hot contests” on our ballots this year, and while some literature went to doors and mailboxes, I think the City of Homes may have been as left to its own devices in 2020 as in any even-numbered election in many a year. Cleveland had a school levy, with for and against groups going at it, and much of the county had some sort of ballot measure or down-ballot contest with a local angle. That Lakewood voted, anyway, speaks I think to the facts that this was generally a high-turnout election, and Lakewood seems to be relatively engaged. (Cleveland’s dismal participation rate was similar for the election and the Census, while Lakewood actually managed a higher Census response rate than in 2010, I understand.)
One can only imagine another world in which a referendum on House Bill 6 had not been kept off the ballot by the bribery-industrial complex. As it is, signs around the city mostly told the tale of Lakewood’s ballot: a lot of interest in the presidential election, some showing of support for incumbent US and Ohio House representatives facing token opposition, and a smattering of judges.
Two Lakewood residents were running for office: state Rep. Skindell handily won Lakewood and House District 13, while Judge John O’Donnell handily won Lakewood but lost the statewide race for Ohio Supreme Court for a third time. (Possibly another of the umpteen judicial candidates also lives in Lakewood; I can’t know everything.)
The other Democratic candidate for Ohio Supreme Court, Judge Jennifer Brunner, did better in Lakewood and statewide, and will be Justice Brunner beginning next year. (Brunner was, apparently, the only Democratic candidate in the country to defeat a Republican incumbent, in a statewide race, in a state which Biden lost. The map of where Brunner won is truly wild for political data crunchers.)
Bringing things back toward the vicinity of Lakewood, it’s worth noting that one of Ohio’s few genuinely competitive 2020 statehouse races played out next door in Rocky River and parts west. Of further significance to Lakewood, the Democratic challenger was former Lakewood City Council member Monique Smith, now a resident of Fairview Park. Eagerly assisted by many activists from both sides of the Rocky River, Smith narrowly defeated a Republican incumbent in one exception to statewide trends.
Because of those statewide trends, the result in House District 16 is not otherwise that consequential; Ohio’s legislature appears likely to become even more reactionary and crank-ish over the next two years, and woe betide the reality-based communities in its path. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As political tidbit, however, Smith’s election offers the novel result that Lakewood will have three former council members in the legislature next year, even though Lakewood has only one state rep and one state senator as a community. If this novelty has precedent it’s before my time.
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