{"id":23524,"date":"2016-02-24T08:00:05","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T13:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=23524"},"modified":"2016-02-24T10:38:21","modified_gmt":"2016-02-24T15:38:21","slug":"no-hard-feelingssays-councilman-polensek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/24\/no-hard-feelingssays-councilman-polensek\/","title":{"rendered":"NO HARD FEELINGS,
SAYS COUNCILMAN POLENSEK"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Nobody <\/strong>out-talks<\/strong><\/span> Cleveland Councilman Mike Polensek. He’s the quote machine. He once said, \u201cI\u2019m old-school Collinwood. You mess with me or my property, and I mess with you.\u201d He called former councilman Jay Westbook a \u201cweasel,\u201d and former mayor Mike White a \u201cson of a bitch, but our son of a bitch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Polensek,<\/a>

Polensek, 2002<\/p><\/div>\n

Before Polensek was a councilman, he was a machinist at White Motors. I saw Polensek frequently in 1981 and 1982, when I was a reporter for the Sun Scoop Journal<\/em>. Polensek ran for city council against Dave Trenton — a fellow incumbent Slovenian — in 1981. The city wards had been redrawn, and Polensek or Trenton was going to be out of a job. Trenton was “shanty Slovenian,” said my editor, another Slovenian.\u00a0\u00a0 Trenton was slightly rougher-edged than Polensek. For instance, Trenton smoked a cigar in public.<\/p>\n

\"polensek\"<\/a>The editor endorsed Trenton, maybe because he and Trenton played softball together. The editor told me to survey the 14,000 registered voters in the ward. I\u00a0talked to 75 people. Trenton received 32 votes in my poll. He had a plurality. The paper ran this headline: \u201cTrenton called favorite in Ward 11 race.\u201d\u00a0 And the endorsement stated: \u201cAs council\u2019s majority leader, Trenton can serve the community from a position of strength . . . [He has] invaluable connections downtown.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Polensek, <\/strong>the underdog,<\/span> won!<\/span><\/span> When I walked into Polensek’s victory party at the Italian Cooperative Association Hall on St. Clair Avenue, a Polensek supporter announced, \u201cYour paper endorsed Trenton!\u201d Another man said, \u201cYou\u2019re in the wrong place. You’re going to eat crow when you write up your shit. You\u2019re one of the worst writers ever! What are you doing here?\u201d A woman, somewhat calmer than the men, said, \u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019re going to find what you\u2019re looking for here.\u201d<\/p>\n

They didn’t like me. (I was a curly-haired hippie Jew from the Heights. That didn’t help.) But Polensek liked me — liked me enough. He liked media people, period. He said, \u201cOh well, you\u2019re here. Like I told your boss, I knew we’d win.\u201d\u00a0 I said I would have voted for Polensek if I lived in Ward 11. Polensek wasn\u2019t impressed. He said, \u201cYou\u2019re disrespecting your boss.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polensek is still a councilman 35 years later. I ran into him a couple years ago and said, \u201cYou remember the ICA Hall,\u00a0 when some of your supporters wanted to kill me?\u201d<\/p>\n

He was<\/strong> <\/span>foggy on it.\u00a0I wasn’t. He said, “No hard feelings.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nobody out-talks Cleveland Councilman Mike Polensek. He’s the quote machine. He once said, \u201cI\u2019m old-school Collinwood. You mess with me or my property, and I mess with you.\u201d He called former councilman Jay Westbook a \u201cweasel,\u201d and former mayor Mike White a \u201cson of a bitch, but our son of a bitch.\u201d Before Polensek was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cleveland-full","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23524"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24246,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23524\/revisions\/24246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}