Former East Cleveland Mayor Eric Brewer running for Ohio’s 11th Congressional District seat as a Republican

EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio — Eric J. Brewer spent 4 years because the Mayor of East Cleveland from 2006-09, and in that point he says he was “the one mayor over 4 years to maintain town out of fiscal emergency.”

Brewer additionally takes credit score for serving to reform dysfunctional police and hearth departments, however was not capable of safe a second time period.

“I used to be not re-elected after footage had been launched the day my father died that [were] taken from my private pc,” he advised 3News in a current interview.

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Photographs displaying the then-mayor cross-dressing had been despatched out to voters, with Brewer on the time accusing the police power of leaking them (one thing Chief Scott Gardner denied). Brewer went on to lose to his eventual successor Gary Norton within the main, however would not let the previous rattle him.

“I did not care about it then,” Brewer mentioned when requested if he thought voters would maintain such photographs towards him at present.

Brewer has since labored to maneuver on from that episode, and as an activist would later play a starring function within the eventual closure of the poisonous landfill on Noble Highway. He took an opportunity at working for Cleveland mayor in 2017, however completed a distant eighth in an 11-person main.

Now, the Vietnam Conflict veteran has set his sights on Ohio’s eleventh Congressional District, and believes his probabilities for the seat are good. Earlier this month, voters gave the previous longtime Democrat Brewer the Republican nomination, and he’ll run towards incumbent Rep. Shontel Brown within the normal election.

“I already know that Nina [Turner]’s persons are not going to help Shontel,” Brewer claimed, alluding to the acrimonious main marketing campaign between the 2 Democratic rivals. “I already know as a result of they have been calling me.”

Brewer says he will get his inspiration from Carl and Louis Stokes, two legendary Democratic politicians who modified the Cleveland space. Regardless of his historical past on the left facet of the political spectrum, Brewer tells us his coronary heart has at all times been with the GOP. 

“The anti-lynching legal guidelines on this state, the freedoms that now we have right here for ladies to have the ability to give beginning to their youngsters, saving youngsters from dying, open information legal guidelines, the gun legal guidelines that now we have—having the ability to carry weapons with out all these restrictions—these are American rights,” he acknowledged, “and I believe the Republican Social gathering higher expresses American values.”

Nonetheless, Brewer has a troublesome battle forward in November, as no Republican has gained the geographical seat (both as District 11 or the long-gone District 21) since Harry C. Gahn manner again in 1920. Regardless of the lengthy odds, Brewer issues these fortunes will change in 2022.

“I will have the get together behind me,” he mentioned of the GOP. “I am additionally going to have Democrats behind me who know that I am the better-qualified candidate.”

The final time a Republican gained District 11 in any type was 1980, when J. William Stanton held the seat that was then based mostly throughout a lot of Ashtabula, Geauga, and Lake counties. Following the newest spherical of redistricting, the eleventh now rests solely in Cuyahoga County and consists of the whole cities of Cleveland and East Cleveland inside its boundaries.