Just after Cleveland City Council members elected Blaine Griffin president last November, he reminded them of his link to the administration on its way out of City Hall.
Griffin worked for Mayor Frank Jackson for years before joining council. In last year’s mayoral race, he and Jackson endorsed then-Council President Kevin Kelley, whom Justin Bibb defeated by a large margin.
“Frank Jackson is my best friend. I make no bones about it,” Griffin said at the council leadership vote, which took place days after the Nov. 2 general election. “I had a great working relationship with the past council president. Make no bones about that.”
The freshly chosen council president was building up to his point: That despite those connections, he would be his own man, and council would be independent too.
“But I’m Blaine Griffin. I’m not either of those guys,” he said, referring to Jackson and Kelley. “We’re going to have our own identity. We’re not going to be subservient to any other government body. We are going to be a co-equal branch of government.”
Griffin, who is 51, has years of behind-the-scenes experience in city politics running mayoral and levy campaigns. Now, as old colleagues from the Jackson era move on, Griffin is hoping to stamp his mark on one of City Hall’s most powerful offices.
Not a ‘detractor,’ not a ‘cheerleader’
In the three months of Cleveland’s new Bibb administration, council – and its new president – have made their voices heard.
When the mayor allowed just seven hotels to serve alcohol after closing time during the NBA All-Star Game, Griffin released a statement in support of the bars that lost out. And when Bibb sought to remove a Jackson ally from the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority board, Griffin sang her praises. The mayor later backed down.
Council subjected Bibb’s first budget proposal to extensive and skeptical questioning, passing it with – in Griffin’s words – “grave concerns.”
In an interview with Ideastream Public Media, Griffin said he and Bibb have had a professional relationship. The mayor’s team is “extremely smart,” and the finance director and chief operating officer have earned his respect in the administration’s early days, Griffin said.
“As I told the mayor, and I tell people all the time, you know, my job is not to be his detractor,” Griffin said. “My job is not to be his enemy. My job is also not to be his fan and his cheerleader. My job is to make sure that we as a community hold the administration and ourselves accountable.”
Bibb and Griffin hold regular meetings, according to the mayor’s weekly schedules. The two leaders are on the same side of some issues. Both support a city loan deal to salvage Shaker Square from receivership, for instance.
“My administration is committed to working closely and collaboratively with council,” Bibb told Ideastream Public Media through a spokeswoman. “This type of culture starts with leadership. I meet regularly with Council President Griffin, and we make sure we are available to each other. Frequent communication with council is key as we continue to build relationships. We may not always see eye to eye on an issue, but I know we both want to do what's best for the residents of Cleveland.”
Despite the misgivings he expressed about the city budget, Griffin worked to line up the votes to pass it in March, according to council members.
“There were folks on the fence that the council president was instrumental in getting over the fence,” Ward 3 Councilman Kerry McCormack said in an interview.
McCormack, now Griffin’s majority leader, endorsed Bibb last year and supported the budget. Council members hold a range of views about the new administration, McCormack said, spanning from wanting to give Bibb a chance to “investigating what he’s doing with a scalpel.”
And even though Griffin and Bibb were on opposite sides of the mayor’s race last year, they have “a good working relationship,” McCormack said.
Cleveland may be a strong-mayor city, but the council presidency is a powerful job. Griffin chairs the finance committee, through which all legislation passes. He has added a new focus on diversity, equity and inclusion to that committee.
Asked about council’s plans for this term, Griffin named such issues as taking on source-of-income discrimination in rental housing and supporting mothers in this high-infant-mortality city. He said he hopes to tackle regional issues, too, like controlling cross-jurisdiction police chases.
Council wants the Bibb administration to succeed, Griffin said. But he acknowledged criticism that prior councils were seen as a “rubber stamp” for Jackson, his friend and former boss.
And with several new members, the tenor on council has changed, he said.
“You have a more curious council. You have a council that's younger, they have a lot of great ideas, a council that a lot of people have not come up in the political machinery of the Democratic Party apparatus,” said Griffin, a former vice chair of the county party. “So you have an edgier council.”
An ‘extensive’ Rolodex
Griffin grew up in Youngstown and came to Cleveland in his 20s. He worked at East End Neighborhood House, a settlement house in the Buckeye-Shaker and Woodland Hills areas. In 2001, when he was 30 years old, he ran for a city council seat. He finished in fifth place.
He stayed in politics, helping then-Council President Frank Jackson defeat Mayor Jane Campbell in 2005. Jackson appointed Griffin director of the community relations board. He held that job until city council appointed him to a vacancy in Ward 6 in 2017.
Griffin himself hasn’t run for a citywide office. But he has run successful citywide campaigns: the 2012 school levy, Jackson’s 2013 reelection and the 2016 income tax increase.
“He’s very strategic. He’s very deliberative. He thinks everything through. And he’s great at building and maintaining relationships with people,” Darryle Torbert, a friend and political consultant, said in an interview.
Torbert met Griffin working on Cleveland’s 2012 school levy, he said. In that campaign, Griffin called upon the many connections he had built leading the city’s community relations board.
“The man, his Rolodex, it’s probably one of the most extensive ones I’ve ever seen in my life,” Torbert said.
Becoming council president
Griffin’s political acumen attracted notice. Cleveland Magazine headlined its 2018 profile of the Ward 6 councilman with the question, “Could this man be our next mayor?”
He asked himself the same question. But when the 2021 mayoral race arrived, he decided not to run. A married father of three boys in their 20s, Griffin said he had his family in mind.
There were also political considerations. He would have been one of several Black candidates in the race, possibly splitting Black voters enough to clear the way for a general election showdown between Kelley and Dennis Kucinich, he said.
Plus, in a change election, he might have looked like the old guard.
“I think people wanted change. And I think that as much as I embrace change, I still might have been seen as somebody who was too tied to establishment politics,” Griffin said. “I felt that I needed to establish my own identity and body of work and kind of rebrand myself politically before I trotted myself out there.”
As candidates campaigned publicly for mayor in 2021, Griffin jumped into a more private election: the race for council president.
Ward 15 Councilwoman Jenny Spencer said Griffin “was the first one out of the gate,” approaching her about his candidacy last summer. She committed early to supporting him.
“He is really, really hard not to like when you get to know him, and he’s great to work with as a colleague,” she said. As for what swayed her vote, Spencer said, “it was his diligence and ability to clarify his vision and talk about how he wanted to serve council and Cleveland.”
McCormack also sought the council presidency. Even though they were competitors in that contest, the race did not become acrimonious, he said. When Griffin and supporters called a caucus meeting to elect him council president, McCormack nominated him.
Griffin now holds the job for as long as he can maintain support from at least nine colleagues, a majority of the 17 members of the all-Democratic body.
As for whether he might run for mayor in the future – the 2025 race is three years away – Griffin said he is focused on his job as council president. He said he is at peace with his decision not to seek the mayor’s office last year.
“Mayor Bibb is the mayor now. I’m trying to be the best damn council president this city has ever seen. I’m that competitive,” he said. “God always looks out for babies and fools. I’m definitely not a baby anymore, so maybe this fool might take a shot at something later. But mayor is in the rear view right now. I’m focused on what kind of council president I can be.”
