There’s
less than a month left in the Democratic primary campaign for mayor. If you’ve
been following the race, it may seem like every conceivable issue’s been
bludgeoned to death. But actually things are just about to heat up, with a
blitz of candidate TV ads.

And
yes, we have another installment in our own campaign coverage. Suck it up; your
city’s future is at stake.

For
starters, there’s the perennial puzzle that is the CitySchool
District. Then there are the city’s own fiscal
constraints, which may get worse. In the next three pages, we give you the
three major Dem candidates’ answers to questions we asked about those issues
— and about how they’d run City Hall.

You’ll
find more extended discussions — and a stronger sense of how the candidates
express themselves — at our website, www.rochester-citynews.com. Click the
Election 2005 tab.

Where’s
Maj?

Most
of our campaign coverage is focusing on the three major Democratic candidates
for mayor: Bob Duffy, Tim Mains, and Wade Norwood. We covered the fourth candidate, Chris Maj, in our
August 3 issue (“Inspiration Hits: the Dems’ Long
Shot”).

Why
treat him separately? Two reasons:

1)
We asked Maj the same basic questions we asked the
other three candidates. Their discussions have been longer and more substantive
and deserve more space.

2)
Anybody who gets 1000 people to sign a petition can run for mayor; Maj did so. That guarantees him a place on the ballot. It
doesn’t guarantee him media coverage. Newspaper space is limited. For 34 years,
we’ve been providing extensive coverage of political campaigns. Each year, we
select a handful of races and candidates, providing deep coverage there rather
than diluting our efforts by covering every candidate.

Maj lacks basic
knowledge about how government works. Providing more extensive coverage of him
would reduce our coverage of the other candidates. An extended version of our
interview with Maj will remain on our website until
the election. And you can find his platform at www.rochestermayor.com.

This article appears in Aug 17-23, 2005.