Mayor Lovely Warren has won the Democratic Primary and, given the party’s heavy domination
in the city, in all likelihood she’ll will begin her second term in January.
With results in from most polling places, Warren had scored an impressive win – more than 60
percent – over County Legislator and former Rochester police chief Jim Sheppard in one of the
uglier local election campaigns in recent memory. Sheppard had just over 21 percent and
former television reporter Rachel Barnhart had about 15 percent.
Monroe County Board of Elections officials estimated city Democratic turnout at 25 percent as of 8 p.m., slightly higher than the 23 percent turnout at the same point in the 2013 primary. By way of comparison, an estimated 40 percent of Monroe Democrats turned out for the 2008 presidential primary.
Overall, it seemed to be an incumbents’ night, and a night for people with strong name
recognition.
The very packed City Council race, where 13 candidates were running for five seats, turned out to be something of a mixed bag. And name recognition seems to have been a deciding factor.
Council President Loretta Scott pulled in about 15 percent of the votes, the highest amount of any candidate. School board member Malik Evans was close behind, with former County Legislator Willie Joe Lightfoot, incumbent City Council member Jackie Ortiz, and newcomer Mitch Gruber rounding the rest of the top five.
The mayor lost an ally in Dana Miller, an incumbent Council member who didn’t crack the top five. Miller was a firm “yes” vote on the proposed Morgan Management – Rochester Broadway Theatre League development on Parcel 5 at Midtown. Without him, the mayor may not have the seven votes she needs to move that project forward.
There was also a Working Families Party primary for City Council. Winning the five spots there were Jackie Ortiz, Mary Lupien, Shawn Dunwoody, Malik Evans, and Pam Davis. All five will appear on that party’s line on the ballot in the November general election.
On school board, president Van White and incumbent Cynthia Elliott – the only two incumbents
running for school board – won two of the three open seats. Newcomer Natalie Sheppard won
the third seat.
The school board will face one more change in January: current board Malik Evans won a seat
on City Council, so a new board member will have to be appointed to replace him.
This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2017.
Fantastic story. Maybe printing this story, making several copies of it, and posting it up on all the light poles though-out Gates and Greece, and maybe a few other towns would be in-order?
It would be good if everyone got on the same page and the people of 30 percent would stop calling the people of 70 percent the people causing division in the party.
Glad to see that Ms. Barnhart’s Trumpian tactics backfired. The last thing Rochester needed was a mayor who required on-the-job training. And after losing primary races for both state assembly and the mayor’s office in less than a year, she’s well on her way to becoming that most embarrassing political creature, the professional unsuccessful candidate.
Voters love incumbents and misery.
Tom Janowski – Voters do tend to love incumbents. And voters love to complain about how dysfunctional government is. Maybe some day they’ll figure out the connection.
I guess “they” only love incumbents if they are black, cause far as I know Mayor Tom Richards was an incumbent.
Then again it might not be race, but “they” means real democrat supporters and not the supporters of the Republicans that say they are Democrat to get all out local political offices? Like Tom Richards, Duffy, DA Sandy, Todd Baxtor, etc etc
AlanAnderson. The city has people of color in it. Demographics change.
Democracy is a terrible thing….when your candidate loses.
They’re not Trumpian tactics if what is being said is true.
If it’s not, be free to make that case.
Peter Maurer – Funny thing about our system of jurisprudence. It’s the obligation of the accuser to prove in court that someone is guilty of a crime, not the accused’s responsibility to prove that they’re innocent. That being the case, to use a mayoral debate to accuse someone of being a felon is the moral equivalent of Trump and his followers chanting, “Lock her up” at one of his rallies.
When does Lovely announce her run for Congress?
Tom Janowski : No joke. Both Warren and Maggie Brooks are waiting for Louise to retire so they can run for her seat.
I would guess now that with Rachel saying she’s a legitimate candidate cause she got 1% of City Residents votes, that she might decide to take on Louise Slaughter herself and while Louise is still in office. Rachel seems to like to go after all Democrats in office, to stop all the division within the party. That’s if she doesn’t hear nothing from the people at 8wroc that she spoke with last Tuesday night, cause she really needs to find a job really quick, the next water bill is just around the corner, plus it’s her first year in having to pay all these city taxes that are two times the amount that they should be.