Episode 30: Good Enough for Government Work: The Irish Enter Politics

The ranks of Cleveland city government and Cuyahoga county government were filling with Irish officeholders in the 1890s. Irish Americans occupied the mayor’s office twice that decade. Many of the same folks who were active in the city's Irish organizations were also active in Democratic Party politics--though Irish Republicans also had success at the ballot box in the early 1900s. The progressive reformer, Tom L. Johnson, was not Irish but garnered support across a broad spectrum of the Irish community--from rank and file laborers, who were the backbone of Democratic Party support, to such community leaders as Martin A. Foran, William Gleason, and Hibernian P. J. "Honest Pat" McKenney, a longtime Cleveland councilman and county commissioner. But Johnson's management of the city’s police department may have cost him some Irish votes along the way. Though Johnson promoted the first Irishman to the top position in the police department, he also skipped over and forced out popular Captain Michael English, and lost the Angle vote in the 1909 election.