Other Democrats who have declared they’re running are: Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, state Sen. Joe Schiavoni of Boardman, former state representative Connie Pillich of Cincinnati and former U.S. representative Betty Sutton of the Akron area.
Democrats are set to have a debate Monday night in Cleveland.
Cordray previously served as state treasurer.
He has been out of elected office since losing his bid for re-election as attorney general to Mike DeWine in 2010.
Latest on leadership of CFPB
President Donald Trump scored a victory Tuesday when a federal judge refused to block the president’s choice to temporarily run the nation’s top consumer financial watchdog and, for the moment, ended a two-way battle for leadership of the agency.
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Judge Timothy Kelly declined to stop the Republican president from putting Mick Mulvaney in place as the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In doing so, Kelly ruled against Leandra English, the bureau’s deputy director, who had requested an emergency restraining order to stop Mulvaney from becoming the acting director.
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Mulvaney and English had claimed to be the rightful acting director, each citing different federal laws. The leadership crisis developed over the weekend after the bureau’s permanent director, Richard Cordray, resigned and appointed English as his successor. Shortly afterward, the White House announced that Mulvaney, currently budget director, would take over the bureau on an interim basis.
The judge’s ruling Tuesday is not the final decision in the case. But in making his decision, the judge said that English had not shown a substantial likelihood that she eventually would succeed on the merits of her case. The judge’s decision is not immediately appealable.
The Associated Press contributed to this report