Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne is campaigning to knock his most persistent legislative critic off the county council, throwing his support behind Democrat Courtney Scheff in her bid to unseat 16-year Republican incumbent Michael Gallagher in District 5. Ronayne has called Gallagher a “captain of chaos,” framing the November race as a chance to erase the last Republican vote on the 11-member body and hand Democrats an 11-0 supermajority.
The fight has been building for years, but it burst into public view when Ronayne hosted a fundraiser for Scheff at P.J. McIntyre's Irish Pub, according to Cleveland.com. At that event, Ronayne described Scheff as exactly the kind of leader Cuyahoga County needs and said she would be a reliable partner to move the county forward. Cleveland.com reports that the Ronayne campaign asked one of its reporters to leave the fundraiser, though the campaign later called it a private event; Cleveland.com editor Chris Quinn said the campaign's own email invitation had invited press coverage.
Gallagher currently represents District 5, covering Strongsville, Berea, North Royalton, Olmsted Falls and Olmsted Township, and has held the seat since Cuyahoga County's charter council was created. He was first elected in November 2010 and took office in January 2011, after 11 years on Strongsville City Council, including three as council president, and a career as Deputy Court Administrator for the 8th District Court of Appeals, according to The Angry Ohioan.
A Career Built on Friction With the Executive
Gallagher is the lone Republican on the Cuyahoga County Council, and per the same Cleveland.com report, he has clashed with Ronayne over the county jail, the county budget, the downtown safety patrol, taxes and sports-stadium financing. In December 2023, he voted against Ronayne's request to extend a 0.25% county sales tax for 40 years to build a $750 million jail campus in Garfield Heights, arguing the extension should have gone to voters rather than being approved by council alone, a dispute detailed by Signal Cleveland.
That same fiscal skepticism resurfaced this summer. Hoodline previously reported that Gallagher countered Ronayne's draft legislation for a 0.15 percentage point sales tax hike meant to fund repairs at Progressive Field and Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, instead proposing to reallocate existing sales tax revenue across the county's major sports venues rather than raise rates.
Gallagher also cast the lone dissenting vote when the council passed the CROWN Act in October 2025, a measure banning discrimination based on natural hair textures or styles that made Cuyahoga the first Ohio county to adopt such a ban. The vote passed 10-1, and Gallagher's objection centered on concerns that the law could open the door to broader mandates on personal attire, according to footage reported by WKYC.
Scheff's Pitch: Military Discipline and Prosecutorial Experience
Scheff, a 14-year North Royalton resident, served in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps and worked as an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney in the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office before moving into private legal practice, per the same Angry Ohioan profile. She is endorsed by Prosecutor Michael O'Malley and supports the downtown safety patrol, a unit of sheriff's deputies who patrol downtown Cleveland and assist local police departments, according to Cleveland.com's report.
Scheff has accused Gallagher of failing to communicate with constituents and breaking their trust, telling Cleveland.com that residents in Strongsville, Berea, North Royalton, Olmsted Falls and Olmsted Township do not know who Gallagher is. She said she wants to research issues independently and work collaboratively with officials, adding that she will fight for the people rather than the powerful. On the county's sheriff structure, Scheff said she wants to explore both appointed and elected sheriff models as part of the upcoming Charter Review Commission process.
That question has deep roots. Under the county's 2009 charter, the sheriff became an appointed position under executive oversight rather than an independently elected office, a structure Gallagher has previously voted to defend during council debates over restoring an elected sheriff, according to a News 5 Cleveland report.
Gallagher Pushes Back
Gallagher has said Ronayne is trying to remove him from council specifically because he has opposed the administration's policies and spending, and he insists he remains a good candidate and councilman. He said he plans to formally respond to Scheff's and Ronayne's attacks on his campaign website, and predicted that a campaign video he's preparing would be more compelling to voters than the criticisms and would end the matter in voters' minds, per Cleveland.com's reporting.
Financially, the two campaigns remain fairly close. Gallagher reported $48,000 on hand compared with Scheff's $25,000, according to the same account.
What an 11-0 Council Would Mean
The stakes extend beyond one district. The council has shifted steadily toward Democrats in recent cycles: Democrat Patrick Kelly unseated Republican Nan Baker in November 2022, dropping Republicans from three seats to two, and the council became a 10-1 Democratic supermajority after Republican Jack Schron lost his seat in 2024, according to Signal Cleveland. Gallagher's seat is now the last Republican-held position on the body, and Ronayne has said electing Scheff would flip it to Democratic control.
Cuyahoga County Council President Dale Miller has not endorsed a candidate in the Gallagher-Scheff race, per Cleveland.com. Council currently includes three women and 10 Democrats among its 11 members; District 6 is represented by Robert Schleper Jr. Roughly one-third of Cuyahoga County residents are Republican, according to the same report, a figure that underscores why Gallagher's seat has proven durable even as the rest of the council has trended blue.
Cuyahoga County is one of just two Ohio counties, along with Summit County, operating under a home-rule charter with an elected executive and council rather than a traditional board of commissioners, according to background compiled from the county's charter history. Voters adopted that charter by a 66% to 33% margin in November 2009 following a major federal corruption scandal, replacing a 200-year-old three-commissioner system with the current executive-council structure designed to build in checks and balances between the two branches. Gallagher has also chaired council's Public Safety and Justice Affairs Committee, forming a special committee in December 2023 to review juvenile justice system reforms and funding needs across the juvenile court and public defender's office, according to a separate Signal Cleveland report.
Whether that record of legislative pushback wins Gallagher a seventh term or gives southwestern Cuyahoga voters reason to side with Ronayne's preferred challenger will be decided in November, when District 5 residents settle a race that both sides are treating as a referendum on whether the county council needs an opposition voice at all.
