Cuyahoga Democrats boycotting Judge4yourself (2024)

Cuyahoga County Democrats are complaining again about the Judicial Candidates Rating Coalition, a group of legal bar associations that produces the site Judge4Yourself.com. As we have noted before, candidates for Cleveland Municipal Court and other courts have charged the process is biased. Republican candidates have also complained in the past when their candidates received poor ratings.

Last month the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party said its six candidates for contested Common Pleas Court races this November would not participate in the review process.

“This decision is not a permanent one, nor was it made at the behest of CCDP leadership, but as Chair I fully support our Democratic candidates,” Party Chair David Brock said in a press release about the decision.

Brock cited a number of reasons, some old and some new.

“On multiple occasions, candidates appeared before the committee and received a certain rating, then just two years later, with more legal experience under their belt, reappeared before the body only to see their ratings decline,” he wrote.

Judge4Yourself has always been the target of criticism for perceived bias, especially from candidates who received poor ratings. A review of past election cycles shows a racially and politically diverse mix of candidates receiving a range of ratings.

A request to the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, one of the six groups in the coalition, went unanswered. But the coalition told Signal Cleveland last September it is committed to a fair process, noting it has expanded the bar associations and groups that participate and continues to try to ensure lawyers reviewing candidates have had experience in the courts for which they are being asked to judge potential jurists.

🗳️For more on this year’s November election, visit our Election Signals 2024 page.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrations target home of County Executive

Last Friday, dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstraters assembled on the tree lawn and sidewalk in front of Cuyahoga County Chris Ronayne’s home in the Edgewater neighborhood of Cleveland.

It was part of an ongoing campaign to push public officials to divest financial interest in Israel. In this case, the demonstrators were reacting to Cuyahoga County Council’s recent decision to no longer consider legislation to divest from $16 million in Israel bonds, and to Ronayne’s decision to not meet with demonstrators.

The afternoon demonstration was led by Chance Zurub, a former staff attorney with the Ohio chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who has been behind the microphone at demonstrations at Cleveland City Council, Cuyahoga County Council and Case Western Reserve University.

“Chris Ronayne does not know what is coming to him,” Zurub said in a reference to ongoing demonstrations directed at him.

The event was documented by the group on social media and drew a number of Cleveland police officers, who were positioned between the demonstrators and Ronayne’s house. There were no arrests made, though traffic stopped at times in the area as demonstrators marched from nearby Baltic Children’s Park to Ronayne’s house.

A spokeswoman for Ronayne said the demonstrators were at his house for two hours but declined to say if Ronayne or his family were home at the time.

Big money for solar

In case you missed the news, it’s worth noting that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is sending $129 million Northeast Ohio’s way. The grant – split between Painesville, Cuyahoga County and Cleveland – will pay for solar panel arrays at five sites in the region, plus tree plantings and other environmental restoration work. The biggest project will help Painesville retire its city-owned coal power plant. Local officials celebrated the grant at a press event on Friday, where U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown summarized the news succinctly: “That’s some real money, y’all.”

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The column was updated to note that Chance Zurub no longer works for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. He left his job as staff attorney on May 31.