Right around St. Patrick’s Day, Ward 3 Councilman Joe Cimperman asked Kerry McCormack if he wanted to grab a cup of coffee. As the two walked around McCormack’s Ohio City neighborhood, Cimperman, who announced in January that he would be leaving his post to take a job as president of Global Cleveland, told the then-27-year-old that he intended to appoint him as his successor on City Council. “I was thrilled — and kind of blown away,” McCormack recounts. “Before he announced his decision, this was nothing I had on my radar screen.”
But he was more than prepared to take the reins. The boots-to-the-ground Miami University graduate loves bringing together people. For the past three years, he served as the director of community affairs for Ohio City Inc., where he helped expand the Near West Recreation league from a small local tee ball league with 67 kids to a multi-sport recreation association with 1,200 kids. He also staffed and ran the Ohio City Nonprofit Dialogues, a regular gathering of Ohio City’s nonprofit and faith-based organizations. “One of the things I like about the council position is that it’s not the type of job where you are making sweeping legislation while sitting in your ivory tower,” he says.
McCormack has never been one to sit around. After college, he worked for two-and-a-half years in Madrid as a “language and cultural ambassador” (a fancy term for teacher). He got his first real start in politics running the election campaign for his dad, Tim McCormack —subsequently elected judge on the Ohio Court of Appeals — in his losing bid for Cuyahoga County executive in 2010. “We didn’t do a great job at predicting all that what going on in that race,” he says, adding diplomatically that “the experience exposed me to the political system in Greater Cleveland, which was helpful.” As was his time working as a field organizer for the Democratic Party in 2012.
In April, McCormack was formally sworn into office. One of his first moves was to introduce a bill that would allow allow the city to accept applications for a statewide legislation involving outdoor drinking in approved areas (this passed and one application is currently under review in the Mayor’s office), and he helped push forward legislation that removed language from the city of Cleveland’s non-discrimination code referring to transgender people in not being allowed in public accommodations. But what he is most proud of is helping to save the Cleveland Pride parade, which organizers unexpectedly canceled three to four weeks days before its scheduled date, citing safety concerns. McCormack, who is openly gay, was incensed about the decision.
“I thought, ‘we can’t let this thing die,’” he explains. “Pride isn’t just one organization or event. It’s an international movement to draw visibility to the community.”
Todd Saporito, president and CEO of Cleveland Pride Inc., declared that lack of communication by McCormack was one of the reasons he had decided to cancel the parade — accusations that McCormack vehemently denies. “Myself as well as the city were supportive of the event from day one,” he says.
Nonetheless, McCormack helped pull together a new parade — a celebration that wound through many of the streets of his ward — in 13 days. The process taught him a lesson about his new job: “You may always have someone who doesn’t agree with you or who may blame you for something you didn’t do,” he says. “But as long as you are listening to the community and doing what is really best for the City of Cleveland, you’ll get through it.”