Staying Local at the Statehouse with Tristan Rader

Danny Caine

We all know the national story that has emerged from the November, 2024 election, If we look beyond the widely accepted narrative of what happened, can we find other stories to tell? I have a feeling that we can. If we look close enough, zooming in to state and local races from that election, I bet there are folks with interesting ideas, backgrounds, and stories who found a way to reach elected office in 2024 determined to build local power in the communities they serve. Where are the newly elected politicians who are focused on fighting corporate power, empowering local communities, and finding ways to positively change their cities, districts, and states? On this season of Building Local Power, we’re hunting for those stories and bringing them to you. Welcome to The New Class. I live in Cleveland and I have for most of my life.

You may or may not know that Cleveland and its vast collection of suburbs are split into East and West sides by the Cuyahoga River. The divide is geographical, but perhaps it’s more strongly psychological. Eastsiders are typically Eastsiders for life, and Westsiders tend to stay Westsiders. The differences between an Eastsider and a Westsider are too numerous, subtle, and entrenched to go into here, but the point is, what I did in summer 2012 was fairly blasphemous: I moved from the East side to the West side. My destination was Lakewood, Ohio, a part of Cleveland I had fallen in love with for its density, walkability, bikeability, and collection of wonderful small businesses. My love for this place was enough to make me do the unthinkable and convert from the East side to the West side. The conversion stuck. I still live here today.

In fact, I’m recording this in my home office right here in Lakewood. Just a few months ago, the yards on this very street were dotted with signs urging us Lakewood folks to elect Tristan Rader to the Ohio When Rader was a Lakewood City Council member, he advocated for public transit, parks, urban density and sustainability. He also has a history of advocating for labor rights and fighting climate change. His understanding of the concerns and strengths of Lakewood and Cleveland’s near West Side helped him win his first election to state office. And he now represents Lakewood as part of Ohio’s District 13. Representative Rader is my first guest on The New Class season of Building Local Power.

Representative Tristan Rader, thank you so much for being on Building Local Power. Of course, I think my first question generally with our guests, we ask them a little bit about their story and how they got here. So tell me about your journey into politics. What made you want to go into public service and what was your path to arriving at this new office that you’re just starting?

Tristan Rader

My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Originally I ran a lot of campaigns, just worked and volunteered. really what got me involved like full-time in the politics was the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign. You know, he just presented a vision of the future that like was so radically different and seemed almost attainable, right? Where people could actually like not go into debt, not have crippling debt because of their healthcare and, you know, we could catch up with the rest of developing world and their education system and, free tuition to public universities, like most, again, the developing world had. So I saw this vision and I said, this is something I really want to throw my life into, right?

So I ended up working for Bernie, my job at the food bank. I worked for the Cleveland Food Bank at the time, where I saw like an astonishing level of poverty that like, I don’t think you’d get to see until you’re really down into the trenches, particularly like on the east side of Cleveland and actually the food bank in Cleveland serves Ashland and Richland counties too, so I saw like rural poverty that in my estimation is pretty close to absolute poverty. People living on just about nothing and relying on food banks to come and you know stock their fridges and it was really something really helped me along the path towards wanting to just make a difference and whatever time I had sort of on this planet I wanted to devote towards building the society that I know we can have if we all decide collectively we want it, right?

So I got involved with Bernie and then from there I ended up running my own campaign in 2017 for city council. Again, I just took him at his word. You go be the change that you want to see in this world. I thought I could make a difference there. And I thought my city council wasn’t making all the best decisions. We’re a progressive city. We just gave away our public hospital for nothing, basically. And I thought that like I could make better decisions than some of these folks.

So I won. This opportunity came up to run for state representative. I jumped on it because again, I’m not somebody that likes sitting on the sidelines. And for the last couple of years, our state house has been pretty regressive in its policy. It’s pretty bad, especially around LGBTQ issues, around union issues, around just any number of issues. Energy too, my background is actually in renewable energy and environment. We’re one of the worst states, one of the biggest emitters of carbon in entire country. And our state policy has a lot to do with that. So anyway, that’s it in nutshell.

Danny Caine

So I know your district quite well. I’m calling into you from your district at this moment, but most of our listeners probably don’t. So tell us about the West side of Cleveland and Lakewood for someone who’s never been here.

Tristan Rader 

Sure.

This is a phenomenal district. It’s where I grew up when I was a little child. It comprises the near west side of Cleveland, everything from the Cuyahoga River to the Rocky River. So Lakewood, not Rock River itself. So it’s all of Lakewood. It’s Edgewater, it’s Gordon Square, little bit of Tremont, Ohio City, West 25th Street. So we have great things like the Edgewater Park, fantastic. One of the best premier parks, I think, in all of Lake Erie, let alone in the Great Lakes. And we also have everything along the river there, the Towpath Trail, West Side you know, just a great mix of housing stock, still this is really a bedroom community district. It’s the densest district in the entire state. It has the highest LGBTQ population of the whole state and one of the highest Hispanic populations of the whole state live within this district. So there’s a lot here, think, growing too. Lakewood’s population and the population of these particular suburbs population-wise is going up because people wanna be sort of where the action is and it’s a really cool progressive place.

Danny Caine 

Yeah, I think that’s certainly what drew us to Lakewood. I grew up on the East side and I made the switch to West side, which Clevelanders don’t usually do. I came across the river. Okay, so let’s talk policy a little bit.

On your website, you write, am unwavering in my commitment to back the rights of Ohioans to form and join unions as every worker in our state deserves the benefits and protections that come with union representation. Talk about your connection to labor and how you’d protect the right to organize once the session starts tomorrow in the Ohio State House.

Tristan Rader

Yeah, technically the session started last week, but yeah, the real work starts tomorrow, like I was talking about. you know, my dad was a union teacher for 25, 30 years. My mom was a nurse. My grandmother was one of the first women foremen at Ford, but before that she was a line worker and part of the UAW, and she put all seven of her kids on that. Pretty much one salary. That was the only one salary coming into her home consistently throughout her life. And, you know, put a car in the driveway, the refrigerator, because it was a union job, because those jobs paid a living wage. And we’ve seen that slip. We’ve seen union participation and union membership slip. And it’s not an accident. It’s been a coordinated attack over the last 30 years, 40 years on unions by the right.

We even saw it here a number of years ago with SB 5, which was a bill to create right to work. Fortunately, it was repealed through lots of efforts from the unions. And we’re seeing that and talk again. We’re hearing about right to work. And right to work basically means that people can join unions and unions don’t have the authority to charge, to have any type of fee structure. People can be parts of unions without actually supporting the unions. They can get union protection without actually the structure of the union, which really just totally erodes power unions to be able to organize and defend their workforces. So, or even organize at the bargaining table. It totally undermines all of that. And states that have right to work have seen dramatic union declines.

And from that declines in the working class generally and declines in working conditions and all kinds of things. So again, we’re hearing that talk now and it’s really scary, especially with our Republican supermajority here. And that’s something that, you know, we’ll have to continue to be at the drum about and help to organize on the outside, making sure that unions stick together. And we’re going to be the ones on the inside that have to really carry that banner here and fight to make sure that our colleagues know that this is the number one issue that we cannot compromise on.

Danny Caine

You know, you and I, think know it well and like we both have family history with unions, but for people who maybe aren’t familiar with Cleveland and Lakewood, can you just talk about the importance of unionized blue collar jobs to like the fabric of this city?

Tristan Rader 

Oh yeah. Going back to the 19, probably 50s really, with the steel mills and with auto manufacturing really being the core of our industry here and the whole region. When Cleveland used to be a million people, right? We used to be called the sixth city, maybe even the fifth city at one point, largest city in the country. And that was really on the backs of the workers who built this city and then organized in the 19, for the 1930s to the 1950s.

But from there we’ve seen a huge decline in just the number of folks working in these plants to begin with. And a lot of those manufacturing jobs have been sort of exported through horrible trade agreements like NAFTA and things that have really hollowed out the Midwest and created the Rust Belt. lately we’ve seen some resurgence, especially in the service sector. We’ve seen the Starbucks workers are one example. We’ve seen other examples around the country of Amazon facilities being organized. So we’ve seen a slight, you know, resurgence of union jobs. UAW is still very strong and very much part of our fabric of Northeast Ohio. And they were able to get some fantastic wins in this last labor negotiation they had because they held the line, right? So we’re seeing, I think, at least some of the younger generation and some of the older generation too who remember what it used to be like to be in a union is really standing up and kind of fighting for better conditions and better pay.

I’m hoping that we can kind use that as a springboard going forward to say, look, here’s what unions can provide. They’ve been able to provide, and they’ve really built what Cleveland is today, even though it looks a little bit different than it did 30 years ago.

Danny Caine 

Yeah, well said. A couple episodes ago, we had an amazing conversation with Amazon organizers in North Carolina. It was really a galvanizing conversation. And for the listeners, I encourage you to go back into the archives if you haven’t heard it yet.

I think we’re kind of orbiting around the question of corporate power, which is my next question for you. And again, it’s a big interest here at ILSR. You say also on your website, Ohio’s economy favors the affluent and large corporations often overlooking the needs of our working class. How did Ohio get to the point where large corporations hold so much power and what do you envision as the solution to empowering working class folks in the face of that power?

Tristan Rader

Yeah, I mean, budget after budget we’ve created and we’ve lowered the corporate tax here in Ohio. We have created loopholes for folks that make over $250,000 and that just keeps growing. We got rid of the estate tax. You know, we have just been giving billions of dollars away to companies, you know, in the hopes they’ll come and create jobs and there’ll be some kind of trickle down effect, which hasn’t materialized, right?

Trickle down economics has failed. So, you know, part of why I want to be here and part of the thing, something I’m going to advocate for, again, we’re in the super minority, but still I think it’s worth advocating that we first protect what we have, right? We have a group of lawmakers coming into this particular General Assembly that want to get rid of the income tax, which is one of the more progressive taxes in the best way, one of the best ways we can levy resources for services here in Ohio.

And they want to push that burden onto local sales tax, which is a super regressive tax. It affects poor folks more than rich folks. they also want overlook this issue of, again, a regressive property tax scheme that hasn’t really benefited, or it’s only benefiting the rich who don’t have huge increases in their property values when the poor have a much larger increase in their property values. That mean they’re shouldering more of the burden of paying for our school system.

Which, again, the state government isn’t doing its full part in funding, which it should or absolutely could. So, you know, the rich and the corporations, everything that’s been done in terms of structuring our tax system in the state has been done in the name of the rich to this point. And it continues to only benefit a handful of extremely rich people.

Danny Caine

I think that’s kind of a perfect segue into my next question. And I think this question of the supermajority is pretty essential to understanding Ohio politics. So these like many years of conservative supermajorities have really moved the state away from the issues you seem to champion, like public school funding, LGBTQ rights, climate justice, public and alternative transportation. I think like a quick fact for people outside of Ohio might not know this, John Kasich, Republican governor, refused $400 million to build high-speed passenger rail from Cleveland to Cincinnati. Just said no thanks to the federal government. So as a member of a minority party facing the supermajority, what is your strategy for affecting change statewide?

Tristan Rader

Yeah, I think it’s important to sort of remember, realize, understand, like just because we’re in the minority doesn’t mean like we don’t have a voice. And I think it’s incredibly important that we stand up to this. One of the, again, another reason I ran is reading in the paper what the majority is doing and reading in these different publications and seeing things online without having a really stark rebuttal, without somebody else on other side, you know, painting a better vision for where we should be or at least antagonizing kind of the direction we’re going.

And so, to kind of elevate those ideas, I think is incredibly important. Even though we are the opposition party, we should really start acting more like an opposition party. And again, putting that, what did Bernie call it? A poster up a future to believe in. We should really like paint a better picture of where we need to be. We’re not in the majority now and we probably won’t be for the next near future, but we did pick up two seats. And I think part of what we’re trying to do here too is smartly build power. We failed at this issue one campaign last year. And for those that don’t know,

That was another redistricting reform which would have really helped shape the statehouse maps in a way that was much more fair so that our actual statehouse could reflect better the population. Instead, we got stuck with bad maps. Even in this atmosphere, even with Trump winning the White House and Sherrod Brown losing,

We were able to pick up two seats. our, for the first time in a decade, the Democratic caucus is up to 34 members. we anticipate if we work really hard, we can pick up a couple of more. And that gets us a little bit closer to our voice being taken seriously, but even closer to a majority where we can actually rule, right? We can actually implement some of these ideas and veto things from executives that aren’t helpful.

So there’s both this map, more power, and there’s this idea that we can be this opposition party that can at least paint a vision and paint a picture of where we need to go and start laying that road map so that we can build a better tomorrow for Ohio in a lot of ways. Can I add one more thing? There is power also in relationships and really just working to mute and to dull some of these bad things that are coming out.

And I think that this particular last General Assembly and this General Assembly should have some success. And I’m wanting to be part of that team that’s actually really trying hard behind the scenes to work to dull some of these initiatives and to make them less bad as they move forward. So, you know, at the same time that we’re pounding the desk and we’re really trying to lay out that vision and we’re antagonizing, also behind the scenes working to make sure that, you know, there’s going to be a big energy build up moves. I’m an energy guy, that maybe it includes some solar and wind, you know, and other things. Maybe it has some limits and regulation on some of the things that they want to do that are really bad. So there’s things we can add to this discussion, actually implement and get done, even though we’re in the position we’re in.

Danny Caine 

The podcast is called Building Local Power. We think a lot about local power here. So I’m wondering as someone who was both a city counselor and now a state rep, what you think about the relationship between your role now and city and county governments. I think you mentioned what could be construed as a negative example with kind of forcing fundraising onto property taxes as opposed to a state income tax. But what are some, I guess some some positive ways the state can work with local and county governments in order to help build these communities’ abilities to build power for themselves.

Tristan Rader

Yeah, I think there’s a couple avenues, you know, just to kind of frame this. We have a couple of different budgets here at the state level. One of them is the operating budget, which we’re going to dig into like literally tomorrow as everything starts for getting the operating budget rolling. It’s a $99 billion budget that funds a lot of the state government. Incredibly important for things like jobs and family services. A lot of county services are in this budget. Medicaid is a huge part of that budget.

So protecting that, keeping that in force really is something that directly affects literally millions of Ohioans and it flows through these local county offices and making sure they have the resources to run. So you have that sort of like operational side of things. You also have the capital budget which will come up next year. And that’s where a lot of projects are funded through. And you you mentioned local governments like Lakewood, Cleveland, two places I represent. But there’s also governments like the Metro Parks that have just done a fantastic job at leveraging state dollars, capital dollars, to do great things like rebuild Edgewater Park. That was a state slash Metro Park partnership. I mean, it’s an amazing resource that was never really used when I was a kid. nobody really went to Edgewater Park back then. But now it’s an attraction for the region, right? And they’re redoing this Irish town bend. They’re doing all kinds of amazing things. And that’s a government, local government entity, really being able to leverage the relationship with legislators to get this money lined up and also with state agencies to make sure that we have beautiful parks that are protected in our region.

Danny Caine

I mean, similarly, Edgewater Park was never a destination for it. We drove all the way out to Mentor Headlands to go to the beach in order to avoid Edgewater Park. But now you’re totally right. A major attraction in the region. And good to know it was part of a state local government collaboration. And the city, Okay, I think to wrap up. One more question. I wonder if you’ve got some examples of places where you’re seeing really great work happen. What city, county, or state is doing work that inspires you?

Tristan Rader

You know, I do love Cuyahoga County. It’s my county. It’s the county I like follow most. And I’m really interested. And again, I’m an energy guy. The county went and formed a county municipal utility, essentially, where they’re going to be doing clean energy projects kind of outside of the state’s purview, which you kind of need to do right now because our power, our power siting board and our public utility commission right now isn’t super friendly to solar and wind projects. So they went and created their own authority to do this project. And also I’m really excited about Chris Ronayne’s freshwater institute that he’s implementing. I think that’s going to be really innovative and it’s going to help to sort of, I think, inform other counties in the state about what we need to do to protect both our rivers and our lake, know, bringing tons of stakeholders together to work on those things. And I’m also proud of things that we’ve done in Lakewood, like create our first climate action plan, our active transportation planning, safe routes to schools, kind of all integrating into creating a more walkable, livable city that is more energy conscious, moving towards net zero, also planting more trees. There’s a whole mess of things that we were able to accomplish over the last couple of years, really despite the state’s of lack of interest in these items. And part of what I want to do now at the state is to kind of create a little bit of interest in some of the things we’re doing, and at least give cities and counties bandwidth and not preempting them when they go in and they do things like creating goals for themselves for reducing carbon emissions. So really, I think it’s an exciting time, especially at the local level. know, as we look up towards the federal level, maybe not too exciting. But if you look at what some of these cities are doing across the state, there is hope and there’s reason to be excited.

Danny Caine

Well, if that’s not building local power, I don’t know what is. Tristan Rader, thank you so much for coming on the show and having this fascinating conversation with us. And good luck as the session ramps up.

Tristan Rader 

Well, my pleasure. Thanks Danny, appreciate it.

Danny Caine

If you’re interested in hearing more about locally controlled utilities and renewable energy, ILSR’s Energy Democracy Initiative has a ton of resources to check out. Visit ilsr.org / energy to learn more, including how to sign up for Energy Democracy’s weekly email newsletter or check out another great ILSR podcast, Local Energy Rules. Similarly, if you’re interested in the state of labor in the United States, especially in regards to blue collar warehouse jobs, make sure to listen to our two recent episodes dealing with Amazon and labor. The first, “Amazon, Labor, and Race,” features two organizers leading the drive to unionize Amazon’s RDU-1 warehouse outside of Raleigh. Its follow-up, “Pizza DMs and Solidarity: Filming the Amazon Labor Fight,” features a producer of the documentary Union, which is an intimate look at Amazon Labor Union’s successful organizing effort in Staten Island.

Here at Building Local Power, we’d love to invite you, our listeners, into the conversation. If you have thoughts about this or other episodes, ideas for future guests, or if you just want to get in touch, send me a note at [email protected]. And as always, if you like what you hear, please like, subscribe, review, and share with your friends.

This episode of Building Local Power was produced by me, Danny Caine with the help of Reggie Rucker. I edited it, with help from Tea Noelle, who composed the music. Thank you so much for listening and see you in two weeks.

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