Alexander “Sandy” Cutler
Chairman and CEO, Eaton Corp.
The Cuyahoga County reform effort was struggling to gain momentum last May. The lonely suburban mayors pushing for a new charter held a meeting to seek support from business leaders and civic groups, and only about 40 people showed up.
But in the crowd was Alexander “Sandy” Cutler, CEO and chairman of Eaton Corp., Cleveland’s largest Fortune 500 business.
Cutler was sick of waiting for reform. He was ready to lead.
He approached co-host Judy Rawson, the former Shaker Heights mayor, afterward.
“I will help you do this,” he told her. “This is so important for the county.”
He’d been warming up to the idea for months, delivering an argumentative call-to-arms for reform to the Cleveland Professional 20/30 Club at its annual Movers and Shakers Awards dinner last January.
“I have worked and lived in this region for more than 20 years,” Cutler said in an e-mail, reprising part of his speech, “and have been surprised how voters consistently express their dissatisfaction with the status quo but consistently re-elect the same leaders.”
This fall, Cutler chaired the fundraising committee for the county’s charter initiative. Like the CEOs who teamed up in 1979 to lift George Voinovich to the mayor’s office after the city’s default, Cutler stepped in to help alter Cleveland’s political landscape in a moment of crisis.
“He made personal phone calls to raise money for Issue 6,” says one insider. “He raised the whole thing, personally.” The effort gathered $800,000, which funded an advertising blitz on TV and billboards that helped the issue pass by a surprising 2-to-1 margin.
“He set high standards for us all,” Rawson says. “That is what made the difference.”
Cutler, courageously, didn’t care who he upset, says David Abbott, executive director of the Gund Foundation. “He was willing to get involved with an issue he knew was going to risk antagonizing a set of public officials and people some of the public officials could mobilize,” Abbott says.
That boldness is especially striking when many other top executives have retreated from community involvement to focus on corporate survival. Yet Issue 6 was only one of Cutler’s many civic efforts. He has also chaired the Greater Cleveland Partnership and helped found the Partnership on Economic Inclusion.
“I think even in the day when CEOs were involved, he still would have been a standout,” says Rawson.
As Cutler raised money for Issue 6, he was working on the plans to move Eaton’s headquarters to the Chagrin Highlands complex in Beachwood. The company, which has outgrown its downtown high-rise, had initially expressed interest in land near the Flats. Since its decision, critics have debated whether Cleveland and port authority officials could’ve done more to keep Eaton downtown or whether the move made inevitable business sense.
Joe Roman, CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, hints at the latter.
“[Cutler] is a marketplace person,” Roman says. “He understands that boundaries that were established 150 years ago don’t have much place in today’s world. He pursued a strategy to find the right location for his company to continue to grow.”
And, Roman says, he was successful. As usual.