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“She
looked us in the eye, shook our hands and said she would
support [Councilman Michael] Ashford,” said a livid
Councilman Frank Szollosi of a meeting he, Ashford and
Councilman Joe McNamara had held with Webb 90 minutes prior
to the general session.
As a
result, Ashford was ousted from the post he had gained just
a few months ago and, once again, the Lucas County
Democratic Party looked impotent and foolish as Sobczak and
Webb joined the Republican caucus to move a fellow Democrat
out of the top position in the city’s legislative body.
The
council session to undertake the start-of-the-term
organization began with a call for nominations and only the
names of Ashford and Sobczak were placed into consideration.
But before the roll could be taken, Councilman D. Michael
Collins moved to have the two nominees address their
colleagues and the public on two questions: what their
qualifications were and what their goals and objectives
were.
Then
ensued some legislative squabbling about how and why such
speeches could be accomplished. In the event, Ashford
proceeded with his address and spoke of his achievements,
particularly that as council president in minimizing the
contentiousness so prevalent among the members and that as a
candidate of winning re-election with 73 percent of the
vote.
Ashford
promised to focus on safety, affordable housing, repairing
streets and curbs and job creation.
Sobczak
spoke of his skills as a negotiator honed during the course
of his career as a Teamsters official and promised to
re-instate a council retreat, to bring transparency to the
process of appointing committee chairmanships and to improve
communication.
When the
roll was taken, Ashford, Szollosi, McNamara, Phil Copeland,
Mike Craig and Wilma Brown voted for Ashford. Sobczak,
Collins, Webb, George Sarantou, Betty Shultz and Tom
Waniewski voted for Sobczak. Sarantou, Shultz and Waniewski
are Republicans, Collins is an independent and all the other
nine council members are Democrats.
It was
then time for Mayor Carty Finkbeiner to cast the deciding
vote to break the 6 to 6 tie. Finkbeiner announced that he
would speak with the two candidates in his office for 15
minutes, a puzzling decision to some because Sobczak has
backed the mayor unhesitatingly for most of his tenure and
Ashford has battled Finkbeiner at virtually every
opportunity. Nevertheless, the drama played out.
After
about 45 minutes, the mayor re-assumed his seat on the dais
and after a bit of squabbling with McNamara, who urged
Finkbeiner to simply cast his vote rather than take the time
to make a speech … made a speech.
“We need
to work as closely as possible and put aside politics and
focus on citizens’ issues,” said Finkbeiner thanking the two
candidates for their “honesty and candor.” Casting his vote
for Sobczak, the mayor thanked Ashford “for his tour of duty
which has been commendable.”
Apparently, that tour of duty was not really commendable
enough in the eyes of the mayor who earlier in the week
penned a letter castigating Ashford for his lack of
leadership, especially with respect to the 2008 budget
proposal.
“Mike,
are your critics right that you are not ready to be Council
President?” wrote Finkbeiner in that missive. “You can’t be
reached when needed, you miss meetings in my office that you
have agreed to attend, and you don’t return calls … You have
shown little leadership on a very important issue to the
City – the 2008 budget.”
The
letter was circulated to council members on Monday, December
31 but there was no indication from Webb on Wednesday
whether it played any part in her decision to cast a vote
for Ashford.
Indeed
there had been little indication from many who had spoken
with Webb in preceding days, and on the day of the vote,
that she intended to do anything but vote for Ashford.
On
Monday, December 31, Webb returned a telephone call to
George Hillard, precinct person, ward chairman and member of
the executive committee of the Lucas County Democratic Party
and assured Hillard, he told The Truth, that Ashford had her
support.
“I’m
highly disappointed,” said Hillard, “that she lied to me.”
Hillard
was not alone in his disappointment.
Webb
called Ron Rothenbuhler, chairman of the Democratic Party,
on Tuesday evening at about 8:30 to talk about her decision.
“I had
asked everyone to make a decision and not look like fools
like we did six months ago,” said Rothenbuhler of his advice
to his party’s councilmen. “She said, ‘yes, I’m going to
support Ashford, I don’t think Mark Sobczak has the votes.’
I’m highly disappointed she could not have told me the
truth.”
And on
Wednesday morning, the morning of the vote, Webb spoke with
George Davis, Jr., former chief steward for the local UAW,
now retired, and former vice chairman of the Democratic
Party. Webb assured Davis, he said, that “everything was
going to be all right.” Davis and Webb had conferred on
several occasions prior to this last call and she had
repeatedly suggested to him that Ashford had her vote.
“Your
word is all you’ve got,” said Davis on the morning after the
vote. “In my opinion, it seems to me that these people don’t
want to see black people in positions of power, we’re going
backwards in this town. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Then
came the meeting just prior to the vote that Webb held with
her three colleagues – Ashford, McNamara and Szollosi –
during which she iterated her support for Ashford.
“She
gave us her word,” said Szollosi. “It’s breathtaking.”
Szollosi
was doubly upset that the last minute reassurance had
prevented his group from coming up with a plan B – perhaps
placing a third candidate’s name in nomination in order to
avoid the tie and making unnecessary the mayor’s
intervention.
For her
part, Webb did not deny that she had indeed given her word
to her three colleagues but she declined, initially, to
comment on Szollosi’s observation that she had lied to the
group. She spoke instead of the difficulty she had faced in
recent days.
“I have
struggled with my decision,” said Webb. “I did not make it
lightly. I was physically ill last night. But I hope my
Democratic colleagues will realize in time that I had the
best interests of the city at heart.”
Such
realization did not appear to be on the immediate horizon.
Several Democratic Party elected officials voiced their fear
that a return to the highly contentious days of the A and B
team split was inevitable in the wake of Wednesday’s vote
and Webb’s deceit.
And as
Wednesday’s session ended, observers were faced with two
questions about what had occurred during the day’s time gaps
– the first gap being the 90 minutes between the
Webb/Ashford supporters meeting and the vote and the second
being the 15 minutes – that stretched in almost an hour –
during which the mayor interviewed the two prospective
candidates.
For his
part, Ashford told this paper later, explaining the second
gap, he could not come to terms with the mayor.
“Why am
I here?” Ashford said he asked Finkbeiner at the onset of
their conversation. “You haven’t had a conversation with me
since ’06 and you know where Sobczak stands.”
But,
Finkbeiner, said Ashford, wanted to review once more the
four hot button issues that would take so much of council’s
time over the next few months: the ¾ tax levy, the $4.8
million garbage fee, the method of moving cases from the
city courts to the county by booking suspects on state
charges and lowering the operating costs for the municipal
courts.
Ashford
told the mayor that he could only support him on the ¾ levy.
“As I
was going out the door, I repeated ‘I’m going to fight you
on the garbage fee,’” said Ashford.
The
councilman also repeated his warning to the mayor that the
county was going to move the court costs back to the city by
billing the city for emergency services and would go to
court, if necessary, in order to win.
“I
disagreed with him on three out of four and the meeting was
to confirm his overall opinion,” said Ashford.
As for
his take on the Webb flip-flop, Ashford was less than
surprised.
“I never
believed Lindsay,” said Ashford of her promise to support
him. “I told Craig that ‘the building trades are going to
come in at the 25th hour and put too much
pressure on her. I don’t trust her. Sobczak is her mentor.’
That’s what happens in politics.”
The
90-minute gap during which Webb completed her turnabout was
finally explained by the end of the week. She admitted that
the promises of support for Ashford were a ploy to impact
the proceedings in a manner that would bring about the
desired result of forcing a tie. That’s how the game is
played, concluded the new councilwoman.
However,
not everyone who observed Wednesday’s events was quite so
resigned to the notion that “anything goes” in politics.
Growled
one irate and highly-placed official in the Democratic Party
of Webb’s actions: “Who is ever going to trust her again …
on either side?” |
