Rob Portman

U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican, was endorsed by Black Lives Matter in Cuyahoga County, a group identified with Jeff Mixon, a local Democrat. The county Democratic party wants Mixon to resign from its executive committee.

(John Minchillo, Associated Press)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cuyahoga County Democratic Party Monday asked Jeff Mixon, who has a group called Black Lives Matter in Cuyahoga County, to resign from the party's executive committee in light of an endorsement by Mixon's group of a Republican U.S. senator's reelection.

By endorsing Sen. Rob Portman when the party has endorsed Portman's Democratic challenger, former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, Mixon violated the local party's unity rule, said party chairman Stuart Garson. The rule says no party officer or executive committee member "may oppose any endorsed Democratic candidate" in a partisan race.

Mixon, however, appeared in a mood to challenge the county party, saying Garson has now "ignited a war that will not end well" for Cuyahoga County Democrats.

"Stu Garson, the face of STRUCTURAL RACISM in Cuyahoga County, failed to utter a single word during the judicial and prosecutorial debacles that essentially gave racist police officers the green light to murder innocent, unarmed African-Americans," Mixon said in an email to the media.

"Instead of seeking justice, he surrendered what was left of his moral conscience to the political power of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association," Mixon's email said. "Now, he is seeking my resignation for yielding to my own moral conscience."

If Mixon doesn't resign from the executive committee, a 600-member group that exists to vote on local party endorsements, county Democrats will have to use internal proceedings to try to oust him.

"I'm not here to challenge the right to endorse," Garson said in a telephone interview. But if a Democrat on the executive committee endorses a Republican in a partisan race, it is a violation of the party's rules, he said.

Mixon's reaction provides the latest episode in which he has thrust himself, or been thrust, into the limelight. His group has a name that led many to believe he is part of the Black Lives Matter national movement, protesting police violence against black men and women and fighting inequality.

When Mixon announced that Black Lives Matter in Cuyahoga County endorsed Portman, the immediate public and press reaction was as if the Pope had changed his religion.

It quickly became clear, as Cleveland Scene reported two weeks earlier, that Mixon's group had no affiliation with the national Black Lives Matter organization. The local group affiliated with the national movement is called Black Lives Matter in Cleveland, and it further affirmed that difference Friday.

It added in an email, "Black Lives Matter Cleveland is not in the business of endorsing candidates, but rather holding them accountable to the people that they serve."

Mixon himself acknowledged the difference in a phone call with cleveland.com Friday, and said his group is using political tactics rather than protests to fight racial inequality.

Those tactics, he said, extended to criticizing Strickland, whose record of helping the disenfranchised, he said, paled compared with Portman's.

Mixon has now added the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party to his list of those harming minority interests. The charge could draw public interest. But it also overlooks the county Democrats' long connection with Cleveland-area African-American officeholders and voters. In Cuyahoga County, they are intertwined, as last evidenced by the overwhelming support for President Barack Obama's elections.

"Because of a deep disdain for the Republican Party, the African-American vote has long been taken for granted by the corrupt Cuyahoga County Democratic Party -- a party whose legislation forms the foundation of STRUCTURAL RACISM in Cuyahoga County," Mixon said in his email.

Mixon also contended in this and a separate email Monday that Garson's attempt to oust him is hypocritical because, he said, Congresswoman Marcia Fudge violated the same rule with impunity in 2013.

Mixon has not returned a request made by email and phone message to discuss this further. His charge appeared to be in reference to a Cleveland City Council election in 2013. Fudge, a former mayor of neighboring Warrensville Heights, backed a challenger rather than the incumbent Cleveland councilman, who had establishment Democratic support.

Both candidates in that race, however, were Democrats, and the race was nonpartisan.

Garson said the 2013 situation not only differed from Mixon's endorsement of a Republican, but that the party bylaws were updated in 2014 after a three-plus-year, section-by-section review to make sure the rules were clear.

Mixon made one more point in his defense: By stating that Black Lives Matter in Cuyahoga County endorsed Portman, and by criticizing Strickland, he was merely stating what the executive board of Black Lives Matter in Cuyahoga County had decided -- but putting it "in my unique style of prose."

Mixon lists himself as president of Black Lives Matter of Cuyahoga County, but it is unclear how that group is structured or whom the other officers might be.

Mixon suggested Friday that his group's organizational structure allows it to take political action, unlike most other nonprofits. An online search of IRS and Federal Election Commission records, which list similarly structured organizations, showed no listings for Black Lives Matter in Cuyahoga County.