Tony Madalone meets a Cleveland Tea Party Person
Yesterday evening, Cleveland Tea Party Co-Coordinator
Diana went to a meet-and-greet with Tony Madalone –who is running for Mayor of
Cleveland. Tony who? There are nine mayoral candidates heading into the
September primary, and Cleveland Tea Party just met the one who probably rates the
lowest in name recognition.
According to Cleveland.com, the “elections
records list Tony Madalone as a Republican,” but he is running as an Independent. What follows
are this voter’s first impressions of this candidate.
Madalone is a 32-year old entrepreneur who runs
his own business, Fresh Brewed Tees, and as such, he could speak to his own experiences with City Hall. For example, he spent months going
through the head-banging process of attempting to propose a simple piece of legislation
concerning business permits. As a result, he experienced first-hand the
political foot-dragging and machinations that casual observers may moan and
groan about – but he’s got a few battle scars. It’s a start. He’s also gotten to
know many of the key players in the municipal government through that process
and also by sitting in on City Council meetings. That perhaps goes some way
toward compensating for the fact that he is not running as a sitting Councilman
or Commissioner or School Board member.
Does
he support of oppose sanctuary cities? His response is that it is difficult not to
obey federal law. OK, but that was not quite the forceful stand for law enforcement
that I hoped to hear.
One
of Tony’s priorities is education for all. Even, so, I was not
quite sure where Tony stands on Common
Core. He expressed dismay at the state of education in Cleveland, but pointed out that solutions
are difficult to formulate, especially in the short term. Re: both Common Core and
the teacher’s unions, I hope he refines his positions on these issues and gets more specific.
Tony talked about the crisis in Ohio with heroin
and opioids addiction. His response focused on education, so that potential
users would understand the consequences better and would be less likely to
experiment. I agree that education is important, but I am not sure I entirely
agree that education is, on this issue, the key. A relative of mine, now in
early 20s, succumbed to drug use for (as near as I can tell as an unqualified observer) a number of
reasons, including predatory drug dealers on college campuses, cheap hits, being
convinced that smoking heroin was not addictive, individual personality, and family and
social circumstances. So in my view it is not just about education. Education
would have addressed the myth about non-addictive smoking, but not the other
contributing factors. Cutting off the cheap supplies would seem to be a more do-able option. Just this voter's two cents.
Tony hates the dirt bike track project, especially
since it was approved without any plan in place, and he was critical of the process
by which City Council called its final vote.
On a first impression,
he struck me as someone who is tossing his hat in the ring for a good reason –
wanting a better deal for Cleveland, in part based on his own frustrations with
city government from his experiences as a business entrepreneur. On the downside: he has not held any public office and has no name recognition. And running
a small business is not the same as running City Hall.
I asked him whether he would run again if he didn’t
get across the finish line this time – or whether he might run for another office, such
as Councilman, or Commissioner, or School Board, and he had not thought about
it. But he thought it was a good question (I knew to ask that question from my
training with Ralph King’s and Joe Scarola’s Politics 101 classes.) Tony would
surely have more name recognition in a second or third run.
Thanks, Tony, for putting our little neighborhood on your door-knock schedule. Message to other mayoral candidates: we’re happy
to meet with you, too. Leave a comment below with your email details (or email clevelandteaparty[at]gmail.com, and we’ll take it from
there.
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