Reflections on O’Malley versus Ahn

Even in victory, O’Malley was still upset that so many people invested in “absurd” data-driven progress

Last night, after Matthew Ahn conceded to incumbent Michael O’Malley in the the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor election, O’Malley couldn’t resist including a few parting shots in his victory statement: he said the “radical progressive” Ahn had campaigned on “absurd hypotheticals” (he’s referring to the data and research Ahn liked to cite) and that “the real winners are the people of Cuyahoga County, who defeated out-of-state radical interests from meddling in our local justice system; campaign finance reports demonstrate an alarming 70% of Ahn’s money came from outside of Ohio.”

I’d say Ahn did indeed campaign like a “radical progressive” in the truest sense of the phrase. Being a radical progressive means you want to improve things (“progress”) by addressing root causes (“radical”). As for Ahn’s funding, it is perfectly natural that progressives across the country would be excited enough by Ahn’s candidacy that they gave a lot of money. After all, these donors have been essential to the trend of progressive victories that has been transforming criminal justice across the country. Meanwhile, O’Malley’s own funding showed that 70% of his final finance report came from Republicans. Maybe he is bitter about this graphic.

Screenshot from the Matthew Ahn for Prosecutor Facebook page.

O’Malley and his supporters have no argument against the radical progressive approach to criminal justice except to throw insults like “absurd” or, in the words of the Plain Dealer, “bizarre” and “nonsense.”

As for Matthew Ahn, here is the statement he emailed to supporters the next day:

Keith,

When we first embarked upon this endeavor, we knew the challenge we were accepting.

They threatened us, they mocked us, they told us a commitment to justice was never possible.

And yet every step of the way, we demonstrated there is a hunger for more.

I am exceptionally proud of what we accomplished, which includes forever changing the narrative about criminal justice in this town. No matter what the result was tonight, we have a lot of work to do in this town.

People don’t feel safe. People don’t feel heard. And this reality isn’t changing in a 4-year term.

I certainly congratulate the incumbent on his win. And I hope that in the next 4 years, we do not lead the state in a disproven approach to juvenile crime. We do not lead the state in wrongful convictions. We do not lead the nation in death sentences.

Please know we’re just getting started.

Together, we will bring Justice, For All to Cuyahoga County.

With eternal gratitude,

Matthew Ahn

Applying lessons from the campaign

For anyone engaged in the movement for human liberation, Ahn’s defeat was a major disappointment. Still, the fight goes on, and we are in a somewhat better position than we were before Ahn announced his candidacy over a year ago. The public is now better informed (despite the Plain Dealer’s best efforts), we understand our own challenges better, and we have stronger relationships forged by our shared effort. Below are a few reflections.

1. The Plain Dealer is a problem. I’m not sure how much power they actually wield, but their editorial stance is extremely hostile to progressives. In a recent editorial, they made the wild claim that the Democratic Party has been taken over by radical fringe thinkers every bit as noxious to American society as the MAGA insurrectionists who have taken over the Republican Party. They repeated this in their podcast the day after the election. They consider their own stance to be inherently reasonable because it is “centrist,” which I think they define as being halfway between Hillary Clinton (whose supporters are still in control of the Democratic Party) to their left and Donald Trump to their right. In reality this puts them somewhere in the range of Richard Nixon, both in terms of politics and moral fiber. The Plain Dealer’s antipathy to progressives extends so far as to reject data and research if it doesn’t fit their “centrist” worldview, for example calling Ahn’s well-founded claims about public safety “bizarre” and generally agreeing with Michael O’Malley’s assessment that it is absurd to take criminological research seriously. (When the “centrist” opinion is in line with established science, as with vaccines and climate change, the Plain Dealer will embrace it and emphasize the importance of adhering to science. This is not evidence that they respect science and reason, except as an occasionally useful rhetorical cudgel. Like any other intellectually dishonest partisan, all they ever do is justify their pre-conceived position with whatever arguments are at hand. In other words, science and data are a weapon to be wielded against their enemies when possible, but when it is inconvenient it will be dismissed out of hand.) Maybe the right response to this is something along the lines of what happened to the New York Times last week because of their Zionist propaganda. Of course, that requires coordination and a willingness to take on great personal risk. I’m not sure the Plain Dealer’s quite that important. Another way forward may be to challenge the Plain Dealer’s status as the paper of record. An alliance between alternative news sources (Signal, The Land, Marshall Project, Scene, Freshwater, Axios, etc) could challenge PD’s supremacy. As for me, I will try to step up my production of media criticism. If nothing else, at least this criticism is read by allies in the movement, which I hope helps us move forward rationally.
2. Another way voters are deceived is by endorsement-trading. Endorsement-trading is the practice of elected officials automatically endorsing incumbents because they want to maintain good working relationships and they want the favor returned in the future. One councilperson told me it was “a tradition” that the council always endorsed each other, and she felt obligated to maintain that. The problem is that to endorse someone is to tell the public “I think this is the best person to vote for,” which is, in many cases, a lie. It’s disturbing how flippantly our elected officials engage in lying to the public this way. Unions also tend to endorse incumbents for similar reasons. Elected officials and unions should stop abusing the public trust by pretending endorsements are something they aren’t.
3. O’Malley poked a bear when he chose to go to war with the Greater Cleveland Congregations. It didn’t help Ahn win the election, but GCC focuses on playing the long game. I hope their supporters have been made into permanent, committed allies in the effort to educate the public about criminal justice and public safety.
4. I’m not sure what this means for the project of contesting for power within the Democratic Party. Despite making somewhat miraculous gains on that front in the past three years, we still haven’t been able to convert that into any electoral success. I still believe it’s a worthy project, but it’s probably not as important as I previously thought.
5. Movement organizers who strive to build a better world need your help. Anyone looking to make a difference should join a progressive organization that is doing the work of community building, education, and agitation. The Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus is a good place to start, because we share the efforts of lots of other organizations in our newsletter, and you can find where you fit best.