One thing’s clear from Tuesday’s Ohio election: We’ll never trust polling ever again: Today in Ohio

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Despite polling showing Matt Dolan and Bernie Moreno were neck-and-neck in the three-way U.S. Senate primary, Moreno won in a landslide.

We’re talking about Moreno’s Trump endorsement and the pointlessness of polling on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with editorial board member Lisa Garvin, impact editor Leila Atassi and content director Laura Johnston.

You’ve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom text account, in which he shares what we’re thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up here: https://joinsubtext.com/chrisquinn.

You can now join the conversation. Call 833-648-6329 (833-OHTODAY) if you’d like to leave a message we can play on the podcast.

Here’s what else we’re asking about today:

You want to say it’s over, but it’s really just beginning, the 8-month march to the November election. Who prevailed in the battle to be the Republican candidate facing three-term Senator Sherrod Brown?

For the second time in the last three elections, we saw a serious fight to be the Democratic nominee for Cuyahoga County prosecutor. We had a wholly inexperienced challenger against a lifelong public servant. Who won?

The last we talked about MacKenzie Scott giving money out in Cleveland, it was to the city schools, where the spending of it has become controversial. She gave a bunch of Cleveland non-profits more millions of her Amazon fortune Tuesday, including one that works to reduce infant mortality. Who got the cash, and what will they do with it?

What gives with Intel? The state rolled out the red carpet, provided incredible inducements to get them to build a chip factory here. Intel told us when it would open. And now, not. What’s going on with this plant. Will it ever open, or are we dealing with Lordstown Motors redux?

The worry on the kind of report we’re about to discuss is how accurate it is and how the counting is done. A group promoting Downtown Cleveland say, surprise, surprise, that more workers and visitors were in the city’s core last year than in 2022. How big is the jump?

How many times can you say that lead paint is the biggest threat to Cleveland children, and how many times have we heard that Cleveland is doing something to get rid of that threat. The program is failing yet again, Courtney. How is the city going to attempt changing that?

Here’s a story you don’t see every day. A dragon bit someone in Akron. Repeatedly. How did that come to pass?

This one seems overdue. How is the city of Cleveland planning to honor Jesse Owens, whose Olympic exploits in Berlin are not all that far from the century mark?

Voting on the next Rock Hall inductees is under way, and the artists who have been snubbed yet again have been written about. But what about inductees who snub the Rock Hall ceremony. It’s in Cleveland this year. Who might now show up to accept the honors, and who are some of the others who were no-shows in the past?

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Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.

Chris (00:02.335)

One thing that’s clear from Tuesday’s election is polling is completely and utterly useless. None of the polls came close to what happened yesterday. We’ve pulled back from using them largely because of that, but holy moly, were they wrong. It’s Today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. Chris Quinn here with Lisa Garvin, Laura Johnston and Courtney Astolfi on this post-primary election day in Ohio.

That’s how we’ll be starting. Lisa, you want to say it’s over because we finally got to the election at the end of all those commercials, but it’s really just beginning. The eight month march to the November election. Who prevailed in the battle to be the Republican candidate facing three term Senator Sherrod Brown?

Lisa (00:51.524)

It was political neophyte and Trump sycophant Bernie Moreno, the Cleveland businessman. He got about 50 percent of the vote with about 66 percent of the precincts reporting. Matt Dolan was in second with 33 percent and LaRose trailing at 18 percent. Associated Press called the race like an hour after the polls closed. They called the race at 8 30 p.m. for Moreno and in his victory speech at Westlake Double Tree Hotel, he thanked his staff, family and Trump.

And apparently he spoke with Trump right after his victory. And he also let us know about his campaign themes because he’s really been kind of thin about that. He says he’s gonna try and tie Senator Sherrod Brown to President Joe Biden. He says the Ohio economy declined in the 50 years that Brown’s held office. And he said, quote, “‘We have an opportunity to retire that old commie.’” And I’m sorry.

Chris (01:43.727)

Well, he also has a model and following what J.D. Vance did to win two years ago. This will be Sherrod’s probably toughest fight. He’s always won handily. It is interesting that both the Democrats and the Republicans largely got the candidate they wanted on the Republican side. As we mentioned last week, Democrats were pushing people to vote for Moreno because they think that Sherrod can mop the floor with them.

So it’s an odd one where both sides want it. What I don’t get, and I said it at the beginning, in the past couple of weeks, this race got hugely nasty because polls were showing it was a toss-up. It wasn’t a toss-up. He got more than both of the other candidates combined. How often do you see that in a three-way race that’s quote unquote close?

Lisa (02:34.74)

Yeah, and it’s going to get a lot uglier, I think. You know, this race has attracted a lot of national attention. You know, Republicans are probably, national Republicans are probably going to throw a lot of money at this race because this could flip the Senate. If Brown is defeated, there’s a razor thin majority in the Senate. So, you know, they’re going to try and push Moreno over the finish line.

Chris (02:56.003)

Yeah, but Moreno also has that feel of Ed Fitzgerald where his campaign could implode. That’s one of the reasons the Democrats wanted him in there. The thing though that’s clear is this is a Trump state. I mean, he won both times by 8% in his own presidential election. He single-handedly got JD Vance to be the guy that emerged two years ago. His endorsement of Bernie Moreno clearly made the difference. No one has any idea who Bernie Moreno was.

He was a Northeast Ohio car dealer who, you know, decided to run for Senate. And yet he wins in a three-way race against entrenched politicians because he gets the Trump endorsement. That could be the difference in November. Trump’s on the ballot, people go to the polls, Bernie Moreno becomes the senator.

laura (03:44.544)

We’ve talked a lot of this past year about civil discourse and the primaries and how the fringiest people come out to vote in the party primary. But in the beginning, primaries were a good idea because party bosses used to just anoint the candidate, right? Doesn’t it feel like we’re back in that party boss thing where whoever Trump deems the candidate, that’s who’s winning? Because it’s like the people don’t even, I mean, they matter. They’re voting.

but they’re doing exactly what the party boss tells them to do.

Chris (04:16.739)

Rich Exner tells us this morning he won in every county. He won all 88 counties, including Cuyahoga and Lake and Jago, where Matt Dolan has been a regular presence. It says everything you need to know. Anybody that questions where Ohio is, I raised the question this morning, is there any state in this country where what Trump says counts so much?

Lisa (04:20.278)

Wow.

laura (04:31.962)

Mm-hmm.

laura (04:43.912)

I mean, probably look at, you know, Alabama or Florida or something. I don’t know that we’re the Trumpiest of Trump states, but maybe the one, the Trumpiest state that thinks it used to be a moderate state.

Chris (04:55.963)

But he gets behind a virtual unknown, a guy who’s a big time clown, who has flip-flopped all over the place on his positions, and he wins going away. I mean, to beat Matt Dolan by, what, 17 points. I mean, Frank LaRose cooked his own goose when he tried to get everybody to destroy their ability to change the Constitution. You know, what’s funny is when you talk to anybody about Frank LaRose from five, six years ago, they all liked him.

laura (05:14.225)

Mm-hmm.

Chris (05:24.571)

They all found him to be a real politician, a thoughtful guy. At some point along the way, he sold his soul and Ohioans get that. So he got slaughtered. I don’t know if he could win another statewide election ever again. But for Matt Dolan to go down that hard, it’s just, it’s Trump. It’s the Donald Trump factor. And you wonder what that means come November. It sure could be out just because of Donald Trump.

laura (05:24.948)

Mm-hmm.

Chris (05:50.851)

Amazing. It’s a story we’ll be analyzing in all sorts of ways today. Check for the follow-up stories on cleveland.com and you’re listening to Today in Ohio. For the second time in the last three elections, we thought we were seeing a serious fight to be the Democratic nominee for Cuyahoga County prosecutor. We had a very inexperienced challenger against the lifelong public servant, but Laura, this wasn’t close either. This was another landslide. Who won?

laura (06:17.048)

Yeah, Mike O’Malley won and he was winning from the very beginning with the absentee and early vote in. He was winning about two to one and he ended up winning 60% to 40% against Matthew Onn, who’s 32, a former public defender in the federal system and visiting law professor at Cleveland State University who had never managed more than a half dozen law students when he was in the defender’s office. Whereas Mike O’Malley has been leading.

Lisa (06:36.296)

I definitely managed more than a half dozen lawsuits when he was in the trial period, the vector prophet. Whereas Michael now is leading the trial for the government because he’s used a huge number of people since 2016. And what this came down to is a lot of statistics and talking about too much policing, too much.

laura (06:45.472)

the prosecutor’s office, which is a huge budget and a huge number of people since 2016. What this came down to is a lot of statistics and talking about too much policing and too much prosecuting versus someone who’s done the job, knows the fight, and has been in the trenches.

Chris (07:08.635)

I think there were two things going on here. One, Matthew An took the bizarro position of wanting to be softer on crime in a period where we’ve seen gun violence like we’ve never seen before. And I think rank and file Democrats were scratching their heads. They don’t wanna go softer on crime at this point. They wanna get the gun toters off the streets. But the second thing that was going on in this race is there is a progressive...

progressive wing of the Democratic Party in Cuyahoga County. It’s as far to the left as the Trumpers are to the right in the Republican Party and they’ve kind of taken over a large section of the official party apparatus. The guy running it is a progressive. He gets to put a whole lot of people on the executive committee which is why Michael Malley didn’t get the 60% he needed to win this thing. Yeah, the endorsement from them.

Lisa (07:43.976)

And it’s really, it can over-release some tools, but it’s just a quick way to copy around. And then you can compress it, and then you can put a thing on it.

laura (07:49.938)

Mm-hmm.

laura (07:59.552)

the endorsement.

Chris (08:02.415)

So he wasn’t on the little postcard people took in. You had the greater Cleveland congregations that keeps trying to throw its weight around, but has never won. They don’t win anything they get behind. They’ve been humiliated at every turn. And I think what happened is, yes, the party apparatus and the most vocal people are the progressives, but by and large, Cuyahoga County isn’t that. It’s a centrist kind of county. And they voted for the guy who’s been doing it for eight years. And...

has kind of kept a lot of politics out of the office. So it’ll be interesting to see how this plays for the progressives that are running the party when the guy who won big is not part of that movement. He’s more of the old style Democrats. Do they start to take back the party and end this foray into the crazy? Matthew An was not qualified for this job. I mean, we looked at him, he doesn’t have the experience. He didn’t know what he was talking about.

Lisa (08:35.359)

Mm-mm. Nope.

laura (08:53.748)

Right.

Chris (08:58.587)

He was making promises he couldn’t keep. I mean, he just was not qualified for this job. If the progressives had managed to come up with somebody with a lot of experience that could make this a philosophical battle, it might’ve been more interesting. Again, though, go ahead.

laura (09:11.28)

It might be, but this is this is Cuyahoga County. We vote, I feel like it’s a very traditional county when it comes to picking their Democrats. The people with the name recognition that people are like, I’ve heard of that guy. Those are the people who generally win. There were four O’Malley’s at least on the ballot yesterday. And people are like, oh, O’Malley, it’s a good Irish name, I’m gonna vote for this guy. I think the fact that any incumbent, regardless of how qualified they are, sorry.

Lisa (09:28.748)

Yes, yes.

laura (09:41.16)

Any challenger, regardless of how qualified they were, would have had trouble unseating O’Malley, I think.

Chris (09:47.243)

You say that today, but as of yesterday, there was a feeling that this was so close that Ahn could win. So, you know, that’s what’s surprising. And I think the reason we felt that way is because of who was vocal. It was the progressives who were out being vocal, the rank and file regular Democrats you’re talking about were sitting back going, what are you talking about? I’m not going with the guy’s gonna be soft on crime.

Lisa (09:53.297)

Mm-hmm.

laura (10:04.394)

That’s true.

laura (10:12.092)

Right. Those are not the people who go to the party meetings and make the endorsement. These are the regular people who vote but aren’t that involved in politics.

Chris (10:23.399)

We don’t really have somebody to do this analysis. Go ahead Courtney.

courtney (10:23.499)

You know, I-

I was kind of surprised to see on get that much of the vote. I guess I wasn’t really in those circles where people were feeling that it was neck and neck. So I didn’t have that perspective here, but I thought, I thought on got much more of the vote than I was expecting. And I wonder if that’s passion for on, or perhaps a vote against O’Malley. I’m kind of surprised.

Chris (10:49.047)

Oh, I think a 60-40 election is a blowout. I mean, there’s always... Nah, you can go back and look at past elections. 60-40 in a contested countywide election, that’s a blowout by any definition. There’s always a discontent. People are always... There’s always a faction that wants to make change, but to lose that badly. It’d be interesting to go back and look at Bill Mason’s margins.

Lisa (10:49.778)

Yeah.

Lisa (10:54.468)

and

courtney (10:54.846)

Well, sure, but more than I was necessarily expecting.

Chris (11:17.391)

at Stephanie Tubbs Jones margins when she ran for prosecutor. Because 60-40 is, that’s beyond landslide. 55% is a landslide, 60% is destroyed.

Lisa (11:27.784)

I was nervous though. I mean, in my neck of the woods, there’s not an O’Malley sign to be found. There were Matthew Ahn signs all over South Euclid, Lindhurst, this whole area. So I was nervous. I really thought that he was gonna give O’Malley a run for his money.

Chris (11:43.555)

And in the end, he really did not. The county tax pass, the Health and Human Services Tax won big, but yeah, as we expect that it would, people do support that in this county because it’s a tax that goes for good purpose. But what were some of the other highlights? Lisa, you were bombarded by vicious messages in a race out in your neck of the woods, who won?

laura (11:48.268)

Yep, 70%.

Lisa (12:06.88)

Yeah, it was Eric Sinnenberg. He won and I was getting a lot of nasty texts from the Elliott Forehand campaign. He’s the incumbent who I didn’t vote for, either time. But yeah, Sinnenberg, I think I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but he won with a comfortable lead, I believe.

Chris (12:23.415)

Laura, did there anything else emerge that was surprising in this election?

laura (12:26.892)

Purnell Jones won his seat back, kept his seat, 82% of the vote, which, I mean, talk about a blowout, right? So he’s the president of council. He will remain the president of council as long as I can see. And Mike Castleberry won in his race. That was District 4, Middleburg Heights, Parma, Parma Heights. So yeah, county council will have two new faces, but not in Purnell Jones’ seat.

Lisa (12:32.077)

Wow.

Chris (12:55.483)

And Derek Marin won in his battle for Congress. He’s the guy that didn’t quite make it to House Speaker in that ugly fight with Jason Stevens. He’s pretty much a Trump-er kind of guy. And there was some question about whether he’d get the support he did.

laura (13:07.773)

Yeah.

laura (13:11.188)

And then Jason Stevens didn’t have all of his people win in their contested races because this is all going back to the battle for house leadership against Matt Huffman, who’s not even in the Ohio house yet, but assumes he will win and then try to take over the house like he runs the Senate. So it kind of a midst bag for Stevens. We’ll have to see what happens the rest of this year.

Chris (13:33.411)

Okay, you’re listening to Today in Ohio. Last we talked about Mackenzie Scott giving money out in Cleveland, it was to the city schools where the spending has become quite controversial. She gave a bunch of money to Cleveland nonprofits, more millions of her Amazon fortune on Tuesday, including one that works on infant mortality, which is one of the biggest issues we have in Cleveland. Courtney, who got the cash? What will they do with it?

courtney (13:59.034)

Yeah, these are some organizations that are familiar names around town and doing really good work as nonprofits in Cleveland. Mackenzie Scott gifted the Fairfax Renaissance Development Corporation one million dollars. And that’s the that’s the CDC that represents the Fairfax neighborhood in the area around the Cleveland Clinic. And then with even larger awards, two million dollars each. Scott gifted birthing beautiful communities.

the LGBT Community Center of Greater Cleveland and towards employment. So each of those three got 2 million a piece. And these organizations were among 6,000 who applied last year for grants from Mackenzie Scott’s organization, Yield Giving. The nonprofit ended up choosing 361 of those organizations. And kind of the idea of the grants was to advance the voices and opportunities of folks with few means.

and also groups who are fighting systemic issues and discrimination. Birthing Beautiful Communities is a big one in Cleveland. Like you said, our infant mortality rates are just deeply concerning and way too high. And Birthing Beautiful Communities is actually working on opening a birthing center on the East side. I believe it won some local ARPA money and that’s kind of been a big project underway and they’re getting some of the cash.

you know, the LGBT center supports Cleveland’s LGBTQ plus population and they’re involved in a host of issues around town and then the final organization towards employment, they do workforce development.

Chris (15:37.055)

Yeah, all deserving. I’m excited about the Birthing Center. That’s an organization that’s managed to have some success in an area where our efforts have repeatedly failed. So it’s good to see. It seems like this organization really does study the local nonprofit scene and awards those that have the best chance of making a difference.

courtney (15:59.966)

And it’s been a lifeline in recent years. She’s given out tons of money all across the country and lots of local organizations. It’s been a huge deal.

Chris (16:09.551)

You’re listening to Today in Ohio. What gives with Intel? The state rolled out the red carpet, provided incredible inducements to get them to build the chip factory here outside Columbus. Intel told us when it would open and now not. What’s going on with this plant? Lisa, will it ever open or are we dealing with Lordstown Motors Redux?

Lisa (16:30.496)

I certainly hope not, but they’ve already sunk a billion dollars into these two Intel chip plants that are going up in New Albany outside of Columbus. This was in a report that they’re required to give to the state. They said that they will not be operational until 2027 or 2028. That’s two to three years after their first target date that they announced at the September 2022 groundbreaking. And they said they would be open by 2025 back then.

Intel spokesperson Ellie Akopyan says this is not a delay. She says our timeline has always been three to five years. The Wall Street Journal first reported this delay in February and they said it was due to market challenges and a slow rollout of federal grant money to grow the domestic chimp industry, but that has changed. We’ve got a press release from Governor DeWine’s office late yesterday saying that U.S. Commerce Department

has allowed $8.5 billion in grant funds to Intel from the CHIPS Act to help build these two plants. Like I said, there is construction underway. Right now, they’ve spent a billion dollars on the first plant. They’ve done ground leveling, a concrete pour, and 70% of the needed infrastructure like electricity and water. They spent 400 million so far on the second plant. They’re awaiting a big concrete pour for that.

and they’re also pouring a foundation for a nearby office building. And they are using mostly Ohio suppliers, about 350 Ohio businesses are supplying parts and labor and so forth for this project.

Chris (18:03.251)

Okay, maybe this is what appears to be on the surface and it’s just normal delays. Although how they can say this isn’t a delay when they announced last fall will be there in 2025. That doesn’t make sense. That’s a rebellion. What I’m a little bit concerned about is the way Ohio officials are trying to say nothing to see here folks. I mean, I would have thought somebody would have said, yeah, we’re a little bit disappointed because we did roll out the red carpet. We provided lots of incentives and now we’re gonna have to wait.

two more years to get a return on that investment, but we trust them. We think they’re doing the right thing and all will be well in the end. And that’s not really what we got. We got a lot of happy talk nonsense. And look, I get it. They’re investing in all that, the concrete foundations. But I think as a lot of pointed out yesterday, so did Peloton, you know, they had that whole place pretty much built when they pulled out.

Lisa (18:52.916)

Yeah, but Peloton was using a flawed business model. I mean, they had this huge pandemic surge where people were buying Pelotons and then when the pandemic ended, they basically went back to the gym. So I think that this is a different business model here. I hear your concern, but I don’t think it’s, I think it’s apples to oranges.

Chris (19:10.895)

Well, except there’s a much lower demand for chips. When they announced all these plans, there were a bunch of cars sitting on lots without the chips they needed. But there have been stories in the past year about how that demand has dropped quite a bit, which I think probably explains this delay that Intel’s looking at the future and thinking, we don’t really need to increase our capacity just yet. I just wish somebody at the state level, Mike DeWine or somebody would have said, honestly,

This is disappointing. We thought we’d have a bunch of people employed there next year, and now we might not see them until even 2028. That’s not what the financial modeling was about when the state gave them lots of our precious tax dollars. So a disappointing story. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. The worry on the kind of report we’re about to discuss is how accurate it is and how the counting is done. I’m always suspicious.

Lisa (19:40.42)

Mm-hmm.

Chris (20:05.583)

But the group promoting downtown Cleveland says, surprise, that more workers and visitors were in the city’s core last year than in 2022. Laura, how big is the jump they’re reporting?

laura (20:17.808)

It’s not big. It’s not even for every month that we had more in 2023 than in 2022. And if you remember, this is coming from that group at the University of Toronto, their school of cities, and the same study, PEG Cleveland, as one of the slowest to recover initially based on zip code data. And then they changed that because they’re only using one zip code and used all of downtown, including Playhouse Square. And then we got

a lot better in the rankings. So nothing had changed in what had actually happened, just the metrics they were using. So visitor foot traffic surpassed 90% of pre-pandemic levels in 2023. The recovery peaked at 93.3%. And the traffic was either up or flat compared to 2022. So June, we had a great month. Downtown saw 4.6 million visitors. That was up from 4.1 million in 2022.

down from 5.4 million in 2019. So this is just the people walking around and my understanding because downtown Cleveland incorporated which would love to tell you we are 100% roaring said workforce recovery is up 26% over 2022 but their recovery rate is still 78.8% of pre-pandemic levels that was based in February. That’s office, service and hospitality workers.

And when you’re talking about a return to office rate, 58.5%. And then it peaked at 64% in August. So we are just probably never going to see the same amount of office users downtown that we saw before the pandemic rearranged all of our lives.

Chris (21:59.463)

Well, and let’s face it, some businesses left downtown, Medical Mutual left downtown, we left downtown, and they’re not coming back because they’re working outside the city now. I just am always suspicious. It’s not like you can put those little counters on the highway to count the cars going by. How do you actually count downtown traffic? And because of the questions about these reports in the past, I just think they’re very spongy.

laura (22:05.086)

Mm-hmm.

laura (22:25.416)

I agree and I mean, it’s not an exact science, but a study commissioned by Downtown Cleveland Corporation incorporated projects downtown to have 26,000 residents by 2032, so that’s still growing. Remember when, I think it was when I moved back around 2007, people started really moving downtown in droves and they said, once we get to all these metrics, 12,000, 20,000, then we’ll have like a real neighborhood, we’ll be able to support.

stores and retail. Now they have 21,000 residents. So that’s a good sized town, Northeast Ohio kind of city inside downtown. But that’s not what you think of when you think of downtown. You think of the offices and the entertainment.

Chris (23:11.803)

when you still don’t have a kid’s playground. Courtney.

courtney (23:11.954)

You know, this kind of actually came up yesterday. City Council took up for the first time in a hearing, Bibb’s big plan to remake downtown Cleveland using a TIF district. And that was part of what some of the mayor’s officials were saying yesterday afternoon is COVID has changed things. The office space, some of it will remain downtown, but businesses need a smaller footprint. And this is part of their work and part of their aim is to turn this into more

of a neighborhood and kind of pivoted somewhat a little bit away from being that central business district. So Cleveland leaders are attempting to move it in that direction, knowing that things have permanently changed out of COVID.

Chris (23:54.451)

When Target opens a store downtown, we’ll know it’s arrived. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. How many times can you say that lead pain is the biggest threat to Cleveland children? And how many times have we heard that Cleveland is doing something to get rid of that threat? Courtney, the program is failing yet again. How is the city going to attempt changing that this time?

laura (23:58.316)

Hehehehe

courtney (23:58.424)

Hehehe

courtney (24:15.154)

Yeah, so for the last year, we’ve seen these just falling numbers of new certifications from landlords under this big law that was passed in 2019. Owners of rental properties have to get their, their homes certified as lead safe and just fewer and fewer folks are doing that. Now, as we get a few years out from the initial rollout, just not much interest there and the city’s been weighing how it’s going, how it, how it wanted to address this trend that we saw unfold over 2023.

Lisa (24:21.86)

under this big law that the chancellor put in place.

courtney (24:44.854)

And now we have some meaty answers about how the city’s pivoting. They’re calling this straight up a retooling of their approach to lead. And, you know, I think one of the most important pieces of this retooling comes from the building and housing department. They’re going to stand up a unit, like a special unit within the housing department that’s really focused on getting owners of, you know, small time landlords, owners of properties that have no more than three units. So you think about all the double houses around Cleveland.

That’s a good chunk of our housing stock and rental wise. This unit is really aimed at getting those kinds of rental homes up to compliance. Only 8% so far of doubles have been certified as lead safe. So this new unit is trying to just, you know, kind of handle them through the bureaucratic process that’s required to get your lead safe certificate certificate. They want to give them free lead risk assessments, which really haven’t been available, you know, free on the front end so far.

And, you know, they’re also going to refer them to there’s a good chunk of money out there that’s available for home repair grants and incentives and the city is going to try and do better to connect those small time landlords with that money. Because a lot of the times these landlords are just facing really expensive costs of repairs and maybe shying away from the process because they know they can’t afford the work that’s needed to get their properties. Let’s say.

Chris (26:07.663)

It’s such a shame that when the city was just sitting on a ton of money from the American rescue plan, they didn’t say, let’s plow it into this. Let’s go house by house and remove this threat because that would make future generations healthier. Everything we know says that the kids who are exposed to lead are doomed. It hurts their brain. It hurts their intelligence. It hurts their economic wellbeing, makes them more likely to commit crime or have mental health issues. And if you wipe it out, it’s gone forever. It’s not like this one time.

for one generation, every future generation in those houses would be safe from it and we didn’t and we continue to have this poison damaging lives in the long term. It’s generation after generation and it’s just sad that it’s failing yet again.

courtney (26:54.578)

It’s insidious. I mean, the cost of taking care of all the Cleveland homes is just astronomical. You know, it’s a difficult problem. You know, the city has relied on this group of nonprofits and community partners called the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition for doling out some of the small ARPA award that did go to lead. Just a portion of the city’s federal money went to lead. And there’s some problems on the coalition side. Their incentive program is...

performing well above expectations. Lots of people are clamoring for incentives, but last year they didn’t distribute a single home repair grant, and the coalition last year didn’t train a single lead worker according to numbers we got this week.

Chris (27:34.679)

Yeah, it’s a failure. It’s failing. It’s not doing what it’s supposed to do. And another year has gone by where kids are getting poisoned. It’s a failure. They should they should do whatever it takes to get this fixed. They spend so much time debating much less important issues than this. And here we are. It’s a failure. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Okay, here’s a story you don’t see every day. A dragon bit someone. In Akron, over and over again.

Lisa, how did that happen?

Lisa (28:07.252)

Wow, yeah, this is an Akron Zoo employee. He was bitten multiple times by one of two Komodo dragons at the zoo. This happened on March 3rd and that employee is still in recovery. We don’t know his or her name. Also, one of the Komodo dragons not involved in the biting incident was also injured. So it makes me think that maybe they were fighting and the employees stepped between them. But this occurred in an employee service area of the Komodo kingdom at the zoo.

There was an investigation by OSHA. They found no violations of safety standards in this incident. There are two Komodo dragons at the zoo. As I said, one is four-year-old Jasper. He came to the zoo last September and there’s 13-year-old Padar. We don’t know which one did the biting. They do grow up to 10 feet long and they can weigh up to 300 pounds.

Chris (28:56.955)

Yeah, they’re ferocious. I mean, if you’ve ever seen footage of them fighting, you’ve got to treat them. If you’re a zookeeper, like the lions and the tigers, I mean, they can do some serious harm. I just wonder how somebody came to be in that proximity where they could get a tack like that. The zoo’s practices are supposed to prevent that. And how can they say that nothing went wrong? I mean, something went wrong. The Komodo dragon repeatedly got a hold of somebody.

Lisa (29:23.38)

Right, right. And we have very few details on this. And like I said, the other Komodo dragon was injured, which makes me think that they were fighting and the employee tried to stop it, but I’m just speculating.

Chris (29:33.767)

Terrifying I just that would be a terrifying thing to undergo I hope the person that got bitten is better that we don’t know the Komodo dragons don’t have a venom, right? They just have powerful jaws

Lisa (29:45.285)

I don’t think they have venom, no.

Chris (29:47.523)

All right, well, there you go. We’ll end it with the dragon. Thanks for listening to Today in Ohio on this post primary election day. Thanks, Lisa. Thanks, Laura. Thanks, Courtney. We’ll be back on Thursday talking about some news, including more analysis on just what happened on Tuesday.