RAISING CAIN
Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH) - January 14, 1996
Author: MICHAEL HEATON PLAIN DEALER REPORTER

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Madeline Cain likes to talk. She likes to talk even when she isn't being paid for it.

She likes to talk because she believes that is how people solve problems.

On this cold night in December - a month before she is to take office as mayor of Lakewood - she is at it again. This time she sits in the dining room of a modest home on Lincoln Ave. where Pat and Anita Seldon live.

Christmas lights adorn several houses on the quiet block, but Cain doesn't seem to notice. She has come to talk about a recent night when James L. Sliter, a bullet lodged in his neck, fell on the Seldons' front lawn.

The Seldons had called City Hall demanding to know what the politicians intended to do about the shooting. After a frustrating conversation with the outgoing mayor of Lakewood, they were given Cain's phone number. Madeline Cain, 46, Lakewood's first Democratic mayor in 19 years and its first woman mayor, agreed to meet with the Seldons.

Over coffee and Christmas cookies, Cain tells the Seldons what she knows about the shooting. On Nov. 27, 1995, at 8 p.m., Sliter and his wife were walking to the corner grocery store when Sliter was hailed by three youths seeking directions. As soon as he began to give directions, he was held up. Sliter, a fireman, resisted, and the armed robbers shot him in the neck. He struggled for a few steps and then fell on the Seldons' lawn. At the time, the Seldons' two children were asleep in bed.

Six members of a gang called the "Laos Boys" were arrested in the shooting, Cain tells the Seldons. The gang is from Cleveland and no one from Lakewood is involved, she assures the frightened residents.

"When I was a kid, I grew up on Fulton near St. Rocco's and once had a bullet go through my bedroom window," Anita Seldon tells Cain. "I just never thought anything like that could happen in Lakewood."

No matter what other issue faces Cain as she takes the helm of city management, it is that refrain that will echo throughout her term. She heard it during her mayoral campaign and she will hear it again and again as she holds office: How could anything like that happen in Lakewood?

How can Lakewood, a so-called inner-ring suburb of Cleveland, effectively deal with the urban woes that increasingly are crossing its borders? The town of 60,000 people has always been known as a quiet city with a low crime rate that offered more laughs than tears to the readers of the weekly crime blotter. But violent crimes like the one involving Sliter and the July 1995 murder of Vincent Drost have citizens asking tough questions of their politicians.

"I appreciated her taking the time," says Pat Seldon after his evening meeting with Cain. "And she strikes me as being genuinely concerned. But she's got a lot of work ahead of her."

If Cain has her way, she won't be the only one working hard.

"Lakewood has always had a patriarchal form of government," says Cain, who will supervise some 600 employees. "City Hall was like a father who took care of the children's needs. That style of government no longer works. And besides, we can't afford it."

She wants the Seldons and their neighbors to form a neighborhood watch group. She vows to return to talk with them about how such a group might make a difference. She calls it "citizen empowerment."

Now the time has come to turn all that talk into action.

Madeline Ann Cain was born in 1949, the second of four girls raised in Cleveland on W. 104th St.

Her father, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Edward Cain, who died in 1985 at age 80, was, by all accounts, a principled public servant who quit high school to help raise nine siblings after his father's death. Years later, after earning his high school equivalency diploma, he put himself through John Carroll University. He later graduated magna cum laude from what is now the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University.

His first job was at the prosecutor's office, where he took on tough, often controversial cases that he didn't hide from his family. Instead, he used the cases to preach tolerance and compassion for those who had less, his children recall.

To hear Madeline's three sisters and her mother, Rita, 78, tell it, the entire family developed a social conscience because of Edward Cain. Which is why the family yielded two nurses, Mary, 48, and Rita, 42, a social worker, Chris, 42, and a politician. But of all the girls, says Rita Cain, Madeline is most like her father.

"The truth is that I'm a blend of my mother and father," says Cain diplomatically. "I got his ethical base and her fire. My ability to work a room and connect with people comes from her absolutely. She was the force around our house. He was lucky. He had four doting daughters who worshiped him. She ran the place," she says.

Cain also credits her independence to the birth of her two younger sisters, Chris and Rita, twins that overwhelmed her mother's time and energy. "I was up and out the door," she says. "That was me."

Cain was so independent that her family and friends were shocked when she announced in 1968, during her senior year at St. Augustine's Academy in Lakewood, that she would enter the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine's. Her mother had made the family regular churchgoers, but social service - not religion - was the focus of their daily life.

"I was very impressed with the nuns at Augustine's," says Cain. "They opened up a whole new world to me. They were socially active. I was 19 years old and sitting down to dinner every night with women who had Ph.D.s, who were directors of hospitals, who were nurses and teachers. We'd talk about what was in the paper every day. And there was a lot in the papers in those days," she says.

Cain attended Ursuline College in 1970, graduating in 1973 with majors in English and theology. She immediately began teaching English at St. Augustine's Academy.

But after eight years, Cain decided that she was not meant for the life of a nun. She did not take her final vows.

"I went in at the age of 18 and then at 25 the world looked so different to me," she says today. "There were so many unsettling realizations at that time in my life. I realized that I was not going to save the world and that my lifestyle as a nun had its own limitations."

Cain wanted more from her personal life. She hoped to marry and have children someday. That was "the driving force in the decision," says Cain, who today attends St. Mark Catholic Church in Lakewood regularly.

The other nuns at the convent regretted her departure.

"While she was interested in issues and serious concerns," says Sister Mary Denis, Cain's high school journalism teacher and later a mentor and friend, "she was a regular kid. She brought the same enthusiasm to having fun as she did to her interest in politics. And as a young nun she was certainly one who looked to have leadership potential. People felt bad when she left."

But Cain says she has never regretted her decision. She says she has not forgotten her time at the convent and is still influenced by the lessons she learned there. She recalls her first vows in which she pledged herself to the service of God and the needs of others.

"In many ways," says Cain, "my life is still in keeping with the promises I made that day."

Cain left the Lakewood convent in 1975 and hopped from menial job to menial job: clerical worker at the Cleveland Clinic, proofreader at Penton Publishing and a member of the public relations department at St. Vincent Charity Hospital. In 1979, she took a job running a management-training program for Euclid National Bank.

But when a job as a clerk of Lakewood City Council opened in 1981, she applied, eager to learn more about politics. Her job required her to set agendas for council meetings, research issues for members, and generally do whatever it took to aid the council's workings. For someone as eager to learn the inner workings of community politics as Cain was, there was no better position. She met the local players. She made friends and a good impression.

And Cain was enthusiastic.

"After a heated debate she once tried to vote as clerk of council," recalls Tom McBride, a retired Cleveland school principal who was Lakewood City Council president from 1972 to 1987. "Clerk of council doesn't have a vote."

But Cain was determined to get that vote sometime soon. She enrolled in a graduate program at Cleveland State University and began work on a degree in public administration. She graduated in 1985. That same year, Cain took a job as legislative liaison for the Cuyahoga County commissioners. Her job was to lobby state representatives in Columbus for bills the commissioners deemed important to the county. During that time she met the two politicians she says influenced her the most: commissioners Tim Hagan and Mary Boyle.

"Mary for her energy," says Cain. "I used to watch her work a room. She looks people in the eye and engages them. She also knew how to ask tough policy questions, to take the fiscal point of view.

"With Tim there was never any pretense. I always got the impression that if an issue cost him his job, then it does," Cain says with obvious admiration.

By 1988, Cain had impressed enough people with her hard work that when state Rep. Francine Panehal announced her retirement, she endorsed Madeline Cain for the job. Cain, a political unknown at the time, faced a tough campaign against Cleveland City Council President Jay Westbrook. Cain defeated him in a close election.

"What I remember mostly about that was staying up very late on election night because it was a close race," recalls Westbrook. "I didn't expect anything other than a tough campaign from her. Since that time we've worked together closely when she was state rep and have had a very good relationship."

Cain took office for the first of her four terms as state representative for District 17, representing all of Lakewood and wards 18 and 19, about 45,000 people, in Cleveland, in January 1989. She concentrated her efforts on economic development, fiscal, safety and human-service issues, and earned an annual salary of $41,000.

"She was smart, hard-working and a straight shooter," recalls Thomas Suddes, a Plain Dealer political reporter in Columbus. "She chose her shots carefully and got things done. Unlike some legislators who introduce 100 bills and get none of them passed, Cain made progress. She wouldn't waste your time with self-serving politicking."

Cain authored 13 bills, including the Ohio Anti-Stalking Bill, after a Cleveland constituent was killed on her front porch after two years of harassment by a stalker. Cain also wrote a bill that makes it easier for blind children to take their guide dogs into public places and another that eases zoning regulations for housing for the mentally retarded.

The only criticism her colleagues offer is that she tends to "use psychobabble" when arguing her points.

Cain pleads guilty.

"You will never get a sound bite out of me," she says. "I think my strength is analysis, but it can also be my weakness. I tend to overanalyze and get too caught up in thought over things."

While Cain worked in Columbus, she lived two days a week with her sister Rita and her husband, Ray Murphy. The Murphys, with their two young boys, had moved to Columbus a year before Cain was elected state representative.

"It really worked out well for everybody," says Rita Murphy. "She'd watch the kids so Ray and I could go out. Or sometimes she and I would go out. I think living with us was a kind of reality check for her. She got to see how an average family struggles to get along."

It also gave Cain a chance to get to know her nephews.

"Madeline has a kind of magical relationship with all of her nieces and nephews," says Ray Murphy. "It's hard to explain, but they're all really attached to her and she to them."

But after six years of part-time life in Columbus, Cain decided it was time for change. She had maintained a home in Lakewood during her tenure as a state representative and she began thinking about returning to the city full time.

She considered running for mayor after the incumbent, David Harbarger, announced he would not run again. Harbarger had completed the term of Anthony Sinagra and was elected to a full term beginning in 1992.

"This is the honest-to-God's truth: People came to me and asked me to run," says Cain. "Not political people. People in church, people at the store, people on the street.

"At first, I didn't take it seriously. Then I realized that this community needed someone positive. And that they had confidence in me. I felt a responsibility to take a look at this," she says.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday in 1994, she gave the mayoral run serious thought.

"I gathered the troops in my living room for what I thought would be a two-hour discussion on my running for mayor," she recalls. "We asked, `Could I win? What could I bring to the table? Was this the right time for a Democrat?' It went on for five hours. I refer to it now as `The Discernment Process.'

A week later, Cain decided to run for Lakewood mayor.

While Cain was campaigning for mayor, she says she was approached on two occasions by "supporters" who handed her envelopes stuffed with cash. One envelope had $1,000 in it. (She won't say how much the other one held.) Cain opened the envelopes, saw the cash, and handed them back. Nothing like that had happened to her during her six years in Columbus, she says.

The suggestion that she could be bought made her nervous.

"It's tough today. Very scary," she says of life in public office. "I think of all the public officials we've seen over the past few years who have wound up in the headlines and whose careers have been ruined by relatively stupid things. Some more stupid than others.

"That sort of scares me to death. I think of my family, my father, all the people who have supported me over the years. Even the nuns. I never want any of them to be ashamed of me or to sit back five years from now and say the power really went to my head. You have to keep your eyes open all the time."

Lakewood is still recovering from a financial scandal that resulted in nine Lakewood employees being indicted on charges of forgery, theft and passing forged documents in 1994. All of those nine were later convicted of misdemeanors except for Leonard Mikula, the former finance director, who was found guilty of theft in office.

In 1995, Frank Ziegenruecker, a former public works director, plead guilty to stealing city property and admitted an illegal relationship with a private company that was awarded city contracts.

Cain's victory over Republican Councilwoman Pamela J. Smith and independents Brian P. Daw and Paul Hunady was seen in part as a renunciation by the voters of the scandals. She received almost 50 percent of the vote.

But before she could deal with Lakewood's problems, political protocol called for her to recommend a successor to her state post, a task that if managed properly could give Mayor Cain an ally in the Statehouse for years to come.

The Cuyahoga County Democratic delegation would officially name Cain's replacement, but in the past that delegation almost always deferred to the outgoing representative's wishes. But this time Cain was unwilling to take a stand and speak out on her choice.

Delegation members close to Cain say she wanted to recommend Lakewood Councilman Tom George but held off because of the possibility that another Lakewood Democratic council member - JoAnn Boscia - wanted the job. Cain respected Boscia's abilities and didn't want to offend her by choosing George, because as mayor, Cain would have to work with her.

So Cain waited. In the meantime the delegation was being pressured to choose Cleveland Councilman Dan Brady by the county Democratic Party. State Rep. Patrick Sweeney, the delegation's leader, favored either Boscia, who is his cousin, or Bryan Flannery, another Lakewood Democratic council member.

It wasn't until Boscia dropped out of contention that Cain named George as her choice. By then it was too late. Brady got the appointment. Cain's hesitation cost her the opportunity to name a Lakewood Democrat to the post - a logical choice as Lakewood comprises most of the district - and a chance to place a loyal ally in Columbus.

"My consistent position was that I wanted someone for Lakewood in that seat," says Cain.

Today Cain, who earns $65,000 a year as mayor, will have to make even tougher choices and take even tougher stands as she manages a town obsessed with its image. Almost everywhere she goes she is pulled aside by citizens who press her with questions about what she intends to do to keep Lakewood safe. This, despite the fact that statistics show that crime is actually down in Lakewood.

"Does Lakewood have a gang problem?" she is asked.

"Yes and no. If by gang problem you mean an address, a Lakewood address, then no we don't. But if Cleveland gang members are coming into Lakewood and making attacks on citizens or inroads with our kids, then yes we do," answers Cain.

"I don't care where they live. I care what happens on our streets. We're not a gated community. Nor would we want to be. The police in Lakewood are doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. But that by itself is not enough. There's been an erosion of the feeling of safety. That's the piece I have to address," Cain says with certainty.

To Cain's way of thinking, the world and its problems are a puzzle that she must solve. She sees Lakewood and its concerns as pieces of that puzzle. She refers to the "law enforcement piece" and the "budget piece," as well as the "community relations piece."

And yes, she knows she is using psychobabble again, but that is how she sees her role as problem solver and liaison.

"I get the feeling that City Hall is ready for a change. Ready for a breath of fresh air. I've been happy with that reaction," she says.

Cain is determined to make a difference in her community through political leadership. But there is little time in her life for anything else. Her last vacation was five years ago and she has vowed not to take another until she has a "significant other" to share it with.

She has not found the husband and family that she dreamed of when she left the convent. Her life is now about work, an occasional golf game, a movie with friends, and time spent with her six nieces and nephews.

Outside her home hangs a sign that reads, "Bless this Irish home." Inside is a print of a Norman Rockwell painting with people from all over the world gathered. The caption reads: "Do Unto Others." In another corner rests her CD player with a stack of CDs by The Chieftains, an Irish folk group, and two cassettes "Stress Tape 1" and "Stress Tape 2."

Is she anxious about her new role?

"My anxiety? Increasing daily," she says.
 
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