Jamael Tito Brown to run for Youngstown mayor

YOUNGSTOWN — Jamael Tito Brown, who narrowly lost the Democratic primary for Youngstown mayor four years ago, said today he’s running for the seat again.

Brown, a former Youngstown council president, said he will seek the Democratic nomination in the May 2 primary. He will make a formal announcement at 5 p.m.

It will set up a rematch with Mayor John A. McNally, who beat him in the 2013 primary by 142 votes.

The Vindicator reported Jan. 4 that Brown, the Mahoning County treasurer’s director of operations, began circulating nominating petitions and was “strongly considering” running again this year.

“We need leadership in the city that leads with integrity and honesty,” Brown said today.

He pointed to McNally, the incumbent mayor who’s already filed for a second four-year term, pleading guilty in February 2016 to four misdemeanors: two counts of falsification, and one count each of unlawful use of a telecommunications devise and attempted disclosure of confidential information.

McNally was given a year’s probation after being accused of being part of a criminal enterprise that conspired to illegally stop or impede the relocation of the county’s Job and Family Services Department from a building owned by a subsidiary of the Cafaro Co. to Oakhill Renaissance Place, which the county purchased in 2007.

The convictions relate to McNally, who was a county commissioner at the time of the Oakhill sale, illegally faxed the county’s confidential offer to buy Oakhill to attorneys who represented Anthony Cafaro Sr., the former president of his family-owned Cafaro Co. shopping-center business.

“We’ve never had a mayor who’s pleaded guilty to being part of a criminal enterprise,” Brown said. “That should disqualify him [from holding or running for office]. It doesn’t, so the voters will have their say. I’m giving voters an alternative.”