Brent Larkin

1 week ago | cleveland.com | Brent Larkin

No holder of high office in Ohio has enjoyed a longer career in elected life than Sherrod Brown. Voters sidelined Brown for only two years between 1975 and 2025. And in 2006, they sent Brown to the U.S. Senate for the first of three terms, courtesy of a landslide victory, gale-force wind at his back, over incumbent Mike DeWine. When DeWine leaves office as governor at the end of next year, he will have been in office for 46 of the previous 50 years, only slightly fewer than Brown’s 48.

3 weeks ago | cleveland.com | Brent Larkin

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- On the last night of his life, George Voinovich joined his beloved wife Janet on a short walk to the end of their street, where they shared a pizza from a bench they had purchased on the Lake Erie shoreline. It was one of their favorite spots.

1 month ago | cleveland.com | Brent Larkin

Not once has Gov. Mike DeWine publicly strayed from his belief that the people who live here must decide if taxpayers subsidize the Browns’ desire to abandon Cleveland for a new stadium complex in Brook Park. “This is a decision that needs to be made locally,” said DeWine, when asked about the controversy prior to leaving Columbus for meetings in Cleveland last December. “We get involved in these things, but ultimately the local community makes the decision and decides which way to go.”Case closed.

1 month ago | cleveland.com | Brent Larkin

Measuring a city’s well-being involves rounding up the usual suspects. Jobs, schools, health, crime, poverty, workforce readiness, culture and access to recreation are all part of the formula. But the voting public’s involvement in a city’s political process is another reliable metric. History tends to prove that such involvement is an asset. When the middle class flees a city, so, too, does voter engagement in the political process.

2 months ago | cleveland.com | Brent Larkin

Let the voters decide. That’s the only truly equitable way to resolve with finality whether local taxpayers should finance $600 million of a new stadium complex for the Browns in Brook Park. Even if a popular vote on the $600 million cannot take place in Cuyahoga County until early next year, county voters should be allowed to determine if a single cent of county tax money can be used to finance a pricey covered stadium 12 miles from downtown Cleveland.