WAS THE WHISPER LOUD ENOUGH TO BE BELIEVED?

Did Fannie really whisper in their ears? Did she say, Stephanie Howse?

I find it hard to believe.

I find it difficult to believe that she could have ever anointed anyone to take her place.

 

However, that’s what Council President Martin Sweeney and three colleagues say she did. She told them and no one else apparently.

She wasn’t a selfish person. But about who controlled Ward 7, she was most self-centered. It was hers and no one else’s.

So I’m suspicious of a death bed reversal of such a strong strain in Fannie Lewis.

“I want to believe Fannie told them,” said one Council member who might be more doubtful and distrustful.

Now it is said that Fannie had revived some days before her death.

Then, it seems to me, she would have had more time and judgment to make a decision that she had finalized a successor known to all, not just to Council leadership, but to her neighborhood and to her ward club members.

What makes it more unbelievable is that the young woman chosen said that Fannie had never told her and that she didn’t think “Fannie like her.”

Fannie likely didn’t since she had run against Lewis. She was not generous on this score.

“I can’t see her anointing anyone who ran against her,” said a Councilman.

However, the quick move by Sweeney help divert any possibility that the seat would fall into hands that didn’t fully support the present Council leadership – and since that leadership depends upon Mayor Frank Jackson – Mayor Jackson.

It was all too neat.

Now, however, what has been set in motion is a bitter fight within an explosive ward as to who owns the leadership. In October two contestants will be chosen in a primary by Ward 7 voters will face off in November.

One can expect a large field. More candidates will help Howse, who is young but appears to have credentials for the office.

If anything that may leak reveals the whisper never was uttered there could be an unraveling at Cleveland City Hall that reaches the mayor’s office, already an unstable space.