In the end, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty would have been hard-pressed to find a black storefront preacher to provide him with political cover from the towering shadow of Tamir Rice.

On Tuesday, his stunning lack of appeal to African-American voters cost him his job.

A voting analysis of the prosecutor's contest by Rich Exner of Cleveland.com shows the deep degree of black antipathy toward McGinty. In Cuyahoga County, 282 precincts have black voting-age majorities. McGinty lost every single one of those precincts -- and lost badly.

While McGinty, a first-term incumbent, was able to eke out a paper-thin victory in the white majority precincts over challenger Michael O'Malley -- 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent -- black voters countywide threw 70 percent of their support to O'Malley.

The result was a bloodletting: O'Malley, a former Cleveland councilman and assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor, won the election 55 percent to 44 percent.

It's doubtful that McGinty saw this drubbing coming until it was too late. But he should have. By the time Congresswoman Marcia Fudge and a collection of prominent black clergy members endorsed O'Malley, a virtual unknown in the black community, McGinty had already alienated far too many influential blacks.

Fudge and powerful clergy members chafed at his handling of the grand jury proceedings that determined whether two officers involved in the 2013 shooting of Tamir would be indicted. The officers were not indicted.

Still others took umbrage at McGinty's ill-revised remark that the Rice family and legal team were exploiting the boy's death for financial gain. Some question why he chose to prosecute the case in the first place, rather than bringing in an outside prosecutor.

These concerns would have been substantial enough to weaken even a strong candidate with lasting ties to the African-American community, which McGinty did not possess. But when you throw in a certain tone deafness and perceived aloofness, which he routinely exhibits, a spirited primary election challenge to his office became predictable.

Ultimately, despite his tenaciousness -- often criticized as a personality defect -- McGinty did get important work done. Those efforts could have been more heavily promoted in African-American communities.

His dogged handling of more than 4,700 rape kits that went untested for decades in the evidence rooms of Cleveland and surrounding area police departments resulted in the indictments and convictions of scores of rapists who had long gone undetected.

Working in cooperation with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department and Cleveland police, hundreds of violent rapists have been identified by their DNA and taken off the street.

And here's the rub: most of the rape victims were poor, black, drug-addicted and/or mentally ill women. The evidence of their assaults routinely went untested for years in evidence rooms, while their attackers continued on.

Few cared for these women. Even fewer fought for them. McGinty went after the rapists with a vengeance.

But even the campaign commercial he aired in the weeks leading up to his defeat missed an opportunity to connect with African-American communities. The commercial featured a white rape victim, whose case his office had solved. Important mileage could have also been gained, however, if he had also featured some of the black survivors who, ironically, came from the same communities that overwhelmingly voted to toss him from office.

So, given that no Republican or Independent candidate filed in the race, what is the mandate for Michael O'Malley, who will be Cuyahoga County's next prosecutor?

How will he reform the office to respond to the concerns of African-American voters who swept him into the job?

It's far from crystal clear. The alliances are new and untested.

At a January meeting where O'Malley eagerly sought the endorsement of a group of black pastors, Bishop Eugene Ward Jr., pastor of Greater Love Missionary Full Gospel Baptist Church, offered what could prove to be the local election quote of the year:

"Do I pick the witch or the devil," he asked about the decision to choose between McGinty and O'Malley.

He then answered his own question.

"We're going with the devil you don't know."

Ward was keeping it painfully honest. He has more than a passing familiarity with the prosecutor. McGinty successfully prosecuted the pastor's son, Aric Ward, last summer.

Aric, 17, was sentenced to six years in prison for shooting and wounding a man who had testified against the Heartless Felons in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court.

So how will an O'Malley office be run?

I suppose the devil is in the details.