Point of Reviəw: At 90, A Look Back at George Forbes

Image by Angelo Maneage

Roldo Bartimole is an independent journalist who started a political newsletter in 1968 following the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The bi-weekly newsletter, Point of View, ran from June 1968 to December 2000. The four-page sheet dealt with city politics, business, charity, and civic behavior in Cleveland, Ohio. For the last 21 years Bartimole has been writing for alternative newspapers and websites, particularly Have Coffee Will Write. In September 2021 he decided at 88 he would write no more. Cleveland Review of Books is pleased to republish selections from Bartimole’s extensive work here, in an ongoing series, Point of Reviəw.

Originally Published on March 8, 2021 in Have Coffee Will Write.

I remember when I once wrote a piece about George Forbes that was considered “too favorable” by an alternative press editor.

He felt that it would confuse people.

Why?

Because I hadn’t really been kind in my coverage of Forbes. He held power over City Council from 1974 through 1989. And to simply say, he held power, is to minimize the grip on how things would go.

He intended to remain in City Council very long.

He told Frank Keegan in the late ’70s:

Not very much longer. I have come to the conclusion that you do what you can. Like Dr. King said, ‘I’ve been to the Mountain top.’ I went to see Ahmed (Evans) at Auburndale and 123rd Street. I was the last guy to see him, along with Walter Beach (former Browns player). I talked to him and told him to cool it and I would be back. When I went back, I was shot at like I was a rabbit.

That was the day of the Glenville shootout, July 23, 1968.

Forbes was then Mayor Carl Stokes’ front man.

Now, George Forbes will be 90 years old on April 4. He has led a long, successful life.

I likely have spent more time writing about him than any other Cleveland figure.

You simply couldn’t avoid it if you were a reporter in his years of power.

The truth is that there were aspects of George Forbes that you couldn’t not like.

To cover City Hall during his time, you couldn’t avoid him.

I once wrote a piece in 1982, “My Monday with George. Better than dinner with Andre.”

“Each Monday George gives life lessons, rare performances,” I continued.

I wrote of two political moves he made.

In the first, he passed a 25 percent water rate hike everyone was against with now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t deftness. He walked away from the meeting looking disappointed. The absence of applause reveals the lack of appreciation.

The rate hike of 25 percent followed one of 15 percent. And it was assumed that all other 20 councilmen were opposed.

Forbes tilted the outcome by feigning outrage that Mayor George Voinovich would lay off water department workers. Somehow many of those workers showed up en masse at the meeting. George “ranted and raged” at possible layoffs as “a political thing.”

Now he set it as a Council vs. administration, not a rate hike vote.

“It’s bullshit and we are not going to be pressured… This business of politics, you can’t beat us at that. You can’t beat me at my game,” as he slams Ed Richard, then Voinovich’s person at the table.

Then to toss some confusion into what the meeting is about, Forbes talks to one of the water department people in the audience, a question seemingly out of nowhere.

“Butch,” says Forbes, “how long you been with the city now?”

He doesn’t wait for a answer. He addresses Richard again: You ain’t going to lay off Butch. I’ll tell you right now…”

Another slight diversion.

Forbes ask an administration person: “Is the mayor there?”

I guess he expected a “no” answer. But it’s “Yes.”

Now in full command, I wrote, Forbes then says, “I don’t want him.”

Call the roll, says the Council President.

“It’s 10 to zip, without a word of protest.”

I wrote: He had stopped on a dime, reversed directions and the dime was standing on end.”

Forbes and Carl Stokes were the principal black politicians as Cleveland changed from an old white ethnic town in the civil rights era. Stokes was still a creature of the rights era.

I remember when Stokes returned to town. I ran into him on the street and he invited to me see the renovation of what would be his new law office. He said to me, “You didn’t think I came back to be a councilman did you?”

I certainly didn’t.

It was also apparent that Stokes still wanted to taste the power he had held. But his time had passed.

He had been eclipsed by George Forbes.

Stokes struck out at Forbes in 1985 with a bitter attack.

“He has turned out to be a foul-mouthed, unregenerated politician of the most despicable sort and I think he ought to be out of office.”

He went on to charge Forbes with helping some with rewards for himself.

It so happened that soon after his attack, Stokes, as chief judge had to appear before Forbes to have the court’s budget approved.

It was a scene made for a TV drama.

I wrote:

Forbes came to the table quietly, looking more stern than usual, a tense frown. There were no words by him to open the meeting.

Forbes then passed over several other budgets to summon Stokes, who had taken a front row seat.

Forbes seemed unusually grave, tense muscles in his forehead revealing his intense unease.

Had this been a year earlier the two might have joked. But to Stokes Forbes was ‘Mr. Chairman.’ To Forbes, Stokes was ‘Sir.’ There were no smiles, no personal words at all.

The evidence of animosity between the two was more in what didn’t happen and what wasn’t said by two old friends.

It was clear that Forbes wanted this man out of his sphere—quickly.

‘Any questions?’ asked Forbes after a reading by (Merce) Cotner of the basic figures of the budget. Then almost immediately, ‘You may leave, sir.’

But there were question from Council members. Then Stokes asked to address the body but it was only to ask for extra bailiffs.

As more questions were asked, Forbes became irritated. “John,” he address a member, “Come on, let’s wind it up.” Gary Kucinich then prolonged it with another question, which Stokes took concise language to answer.

Forbes ended his career by leaving Council to run for mayor. He lost to Michael White. That changed the nature of City Hall politics. White became a different kind of servant to the town’s power people.

Forbes became a part-time professor in addition to his lawyering.

I was surprised when he asked me to address his Baldwin-Wallace political science students. But I went anyway. Twice actually.

At one of the sessions, I brought along a blow-up photo of Forbes grabbing me as he tossed me out of a meeting.

I wasn’t sure what response I’d get from him. But I wasn’t surprised at all at the response.

“Pass it around,” he said and the photo went around the room.

You couldn’t embarrass George. He knows himself.