The Portman campaign grabbed headlines last week when Black Lives Matter of Cuyahoga County announced their endorsement. But establishment Democrats have done their very best to silence what they dismiss as a rogue chapter of the movement simply because the group didn’t fall in line and support Retread Ted Strickland’s failing Senate campaign.
New reports last night from the Cleveland Plain Dealer indicate that the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party asked Jeff Mixon, the group’s president, to resign as a member of the Democratic Party executive committee. Rather than bow down, Mixon shot back that the Party’s legislation, “forms the foundation of STRUCTURAL RACISM” and takes the African American vote for granted.
Democrats want Black Lives Matter group president to resign over Rob Portman’s endorsement
Cleveland Plain Dealer
The Cuyahoga County Democratic Party Monday asked Jeff Mixon, who has a group called Black Lives Matter in Cuyahoga County, to resign from the party’s executive committee in light of an endorsement by Mixon’s group of a Republican U.S. senator’s reelection.
By endorsing Sen. Rob Portman when the party has endorsed Portman’s Democratic challenger, former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, Mixon violated the local party’s unity rule, said party chairman Stuart Garson. The rule says no party officer or executive committee member "may oppose any endorsed Democratic candidate" in a partisan race.
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If Mixon doesn’t resign from the executive committee, a 600-member group that exists to vote on local party endorsements, county Democrats will have to use internal proceedings to try to oust him.
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Mixon…said his group is using political tactics rather than protests to fight racial inequality.
Those tactics, he said, extended to criticizing Strickland, whose record of helping the disenfranchised, he said, paled compared with Portman’s.
Mixon has now added the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party to his list of those harming minority interests. The charge could draw public interest. But it also overlooks the county Democrats’ long connection with Cleveland-area African-American officeholders and voters. In Cuyahoga County, they are intertwined, as last evidenced by the overwhelming support for President Barack Obama’s elections.
"Because of a deep disdain for the Republican Party, the African-American vote has long been taken for granted by the corrupt Cuyahoga County Democratic Party — a party whose legislation forms the foundation of STRUCTURAL RACISM in Cuyahoga County," Mixon said in his email.
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