Bob feeds the elephant

You’re afraid of Bill Johnson.

            You’re afraid, Pittsford, that Bill
Johnson wants to put city kids in your schools.

            You’re afraid, Fairport, that Bill
Johnson wants to steal your wallet and give its contents to the city.

            You’re afraid, Chili, that a city
mayor can’t possibly have the interests of the suburbs at heart.

            Bill Johnson is black. And you’re
afraid.

            Right?

            “In general, I think everybody
believes the community-at-large is better than that,” says Travis Heider,
spokesperson for Johnson. “It would be ignorant to say it’s not an issue for
some.”

            The Monroe County executive race is
the single most important local election in recent memory. It comes at a
crossroads in the county’s history. Faced with large deficits, high taxes,
youth flight, and a dearth of jobs and opportunity, the county has hit a fork
in the road. Down one path lies prosperity and rebirth. Down the other, failure
and ruin. Our next county executive will either pilot the Spirit of St. Louis
or the Edmond Fitzgerald.

            The race is historic in another way
that has gone largely unmentioned. That is, until a former local radio host
opened his big mouth and out popped the elephant everybody pretended wasn’t
there.

            I
think we all know what Bob did, but his irreverence and cutting-edge humor are
part of his appeal. I hope this turns out OK for him, but somehow, I feel like
things have changed forever. [letter to www.boblonsberry.com, Bob Lonsberry’s
website]

Some say race
is a major factor in the county executive race. Others think race is one of
many factors, but certainly not the primary one. Still others say race doesn’t
matter at all.

            “It’s not like it’s new news that
Bill Johnson is black,” says county Democratic leader Molly Clifford. “It’s not
something we hide.”

            The color of Johnson’s skin may not
influence the campaign, Clifford adds, but it might effect how people vote.

            Monroe County’s population,
according to census figures, is almost 80 percent white. The suburbs are more
than 90 percent white. Whites are the single largest race in the city, but
Rochester is a majority nonwhite city.

            What does that mean?

            “Given the stark segregation in
residential patterns in the county and other indicators, race without question
has some effect on politics and the behavior of whites in Monroe County,” says
Christian Grose, professor of political science at Lawrence University in
Appleton, Wisconsin.

            Grose earned his Ph.D. in political
science from the University of Rochester. He is a specialist in the study of
race and politics and has been following the race for county executive. Grose
is co-author of “Black Mayors, White Cities,” a paper analyzing the extent of
racial polarization in voting in the 1993 Rochester mayoral primary.

            Johnson, Grose concludes, has proven
crossover appeal. In the 1993 Democratic primary, Johnson won a plurality of
non-black votes, nearly 29 percent. At the time, Rochester was a majority white
city. Overall, Johnson won 32.4 percent of the vote.

            Ruth Scott, another African-American
in the race, won nearly 22 percent of the total vote. Nancy Padilla, a Latina,
won 5.3 percent.

            “Here was a city that was able to
look beyond race and cast a significant majority of its votes for nonwhite
candidates,” Johnson says. “To me, that shows what kind of community this is.”

            “Johnson can win the county
executive race if he can draw support from non-black voters, as he did in his
first mayoral primary, and also count on black voter support,” Grose says. “The
question is, are white voters in the city of Rochester the same as white voters
in the suburbs? I would say no.”

            The fact that the suburbs have seen
Johnson in a public leadership role helps him, Grose says. But suburbanites’
lack of exposure and interaction with minorities allows underlying racial
animosity some suburbanites might harbor to surface.

            “The bottom line is, the
conservative white constituency is running someone [Republican candidate Maggie
Brooks] who is popular and white,” Grose says. “Any Democrat [in Monroe County]
has an uphill battle. A black candidate has a particularly difficult battle.”

            It’s
getting to the point that we cannot look at a black person cross-eyed without
being labeled. [letter to www.boblonsberry.com]

It’s all about
fear, and
county Republicans are fanning the flames, Johnson says.

            “I believe that neither Maggie
Brooks nor I attempted to capitalize on either our race or gender,” he says.
“You never heard me going around campaigning, ‘I wanna become the first
African-American county executive in Monroe County.’ I haven’t heard her say
she’ll be the first female. It’d just be obvious.”

            That being said, however,
Republicans are purposefully distorting his position, Johnson says. By
repeatedly linking Johnson with metro government, the GOP is playing on
people’s fears of the city, he says.

            “The race issue has morphed into the
consolidation issue,” Johnson says. “Maybe, early on, they recognized that this
generally evoked so much fear, they saw it as an effective campaign strategy.”

            Despite the fact that he has
repeatedly said that he has no consolidation plans and couldn’t combine city
and county schools and governments even if he wanted to, it is still the first
question he’s asked at every public appearance, Johnson says.

            Republicans are pushing their
message, he adds, through WHAM 1180. Former host Bob Lonsberry was a
particularly effective tool, Johnson says, until his firing earlier this week.

            You
can call me a Ho if you want. I’m not a Ho, so I’ll laugh it off and get on
with my life. Call someone a monkey, however, and the city goes to pieces. If
the one offended didn’t relate to being a monkey, the comment wouldn’t upset
him. [letter to www.boblonsberry.com]

Racism,
Johnson says, had not been a factor in his political career until last
week, when it was reported that former WHAM 1180 host Bob Lonsberry said over
the air that a monkey was running for county executive.

            “Orangutan escapes from zoo, runs
for county executive,” were Lonsberry’s now infamous words.

            What followed was a firestorm of
press conferences. Politicians on both sides of the aisle, members of the local
clergy, and other organizations expressed shock. Some, including some local
Republicans, called for Lonsberry’s dismissal or resignation. Lonsberry was
suspended. He apologized and agreed to undergo diversity training. But public
pressure mounted and WHAM finally agreed dump Lonsberry on Monday.

            “After Mr. Lonsberry made
inappropriate comments on the air, he convinced us that he was willing to face
his mistakes and learn from his behavior,” reads a press release from the
station. “Although Mr. Lonsberry expressed willingness to change, it became
obvious to us that he is not embracing diversity or the beliefs of the
station.”

            The city and the station, Johnson
says, have been suffering from a bad case of myopia. People were distracted by
Lonsberry’s words, he says, and not paying attention to his strategy: to work
with Republicans to defeat Johnson any way they can. Johnson cites appearances
by Brooks and other prominent Republicans on Lonsberry’s show as proof.

            “Bob Lonsberry has essentially been
pushing their agenda through his show,” Johnson says. “He has been blistering
in his views about consolidation and they have essentially, through that
mechanism, been able to transform consolidation into a code word; a word that
instinctively engenders fear. It’s been a powerful, powerful tool.”

            “It’s not out-and-out,” Johnson
adds. “He’s not on there using the ‘N’ word. He’s not on there raving racial
issues. But they have, I believe, very cleverly developed this issue in such a
way that, if nothing more, calls up very primitive fears of the thing we call
the city and all that’s associated with it.”

            Simply put, according to Johnson,
the Republicans’ message to the suburbs is this: “Vote for Bill Johnson and all
the city’s perceived problems will darken your doorstep.”

            Brooks reacts with incredulity to
this.

            “That’s absolutely ludicrous,” she
says. “That’s not the case. The metro government issue threatens people because
it threatens their choice of where they can live and where they can send their
kids to school. It has nothing to do with racial undertones. I have to question
why the Democratic Party would politicize race. It’s too important of an issue
to be injecting it into a political campaign or suggesting that one party is
doing these subtle racist things. There’s no place for that in this campaign.”

            Neither race nor gender are factors
in the campaign, Brooks adds.

            “I think this is clearly a race
about leadership and about the future of the community and about change,” she
says. “[People] are looking for someone who is going to talk about issues that
matter, like economic development and jobs and stable taxes. And I think we
have the right message and the right vision for Monroe County, and we’re
getting a great response.”

            You
all hide behind a mask of debunking political correctness because you want to
be free to say what’s in your hearts because you want to be cruel. [letter to
www.boblonsberry.com]

The Lonsberry
episode probably
doesn’t help Johnson much in the long run, experts say, because the election is
still more than a month away. But it could raise his profile in the suburbs.

            “In some ways, it does make Johnson
more visible. Johnson’s campaign has not been as loud or as strong as I think a
lot of people expected it to be,” says Timothy Kneeland, history and political
science professor at Nazareth College. “What that does to motivate voters in
the suburbs, I don’t know. It could electrify some of the Democratic voters in
the city who might feel strongly he’s being victimized.”

            Indeed, Johnson says, he’s already
seen a little of that borne out.

            “I’ve had people call me up and say,
‘Bring me a lawn sign. I wasn’t gonna vote for you before, but bring it out
here,'” he says. “I’m human like everybody else. I’ll take whatever gifts are
given to me.”

            Race is a factor in the campaign,
Kneeland says, but it’s not the only one. Race aside, he says, there’s always a
question of competition between urban and suburban areas.

            To ease fears suburbanites may have,
Johnson needs to get out into the suburbs and to “saturate the county” with ads
touting his leadership accomplishments, Kneeland says.

            “He needs to make himself the
visible candidate, so people can say, ‘I can see him leading the county,'” he
says. “There’s no clear message from his campaign. He’s got to get suburban
people to start paying attention.”

            Race is slippery and subtle,
Kneeland says, and, as previously mentioned, is tied into consolidation, taxes,
class, and other issues.

            “It’s not been an overt part of the
race, just since the Lonsberry thing,” he says. “There are very few Archie
Bunkers left.”

Bottom line: Does Monroe
County elect a black man, a Democrat nonetheless, county executive?

            “I’d be very surprised to see an
African-American get a majority of votes in the suburbs,” says Harry Murray,
sociology professor at Nazareth. “But I don’t want to say it’s impossible.
There are still a lot of subtle types of racism that people aren’t quite
conscious of. When push comes to shove, race will enter in.”

            Brooks, Murray says, doesn’t face
the same problem with minority city voters.

            “I think African-Americans are more
used to voting for whites than whites are used to voting for
African-Americans,” he says. “Historically, they haven’t had that much of a
choice.”

            Brooks poses another problem for
Johnson, Grose says:  the gender gap.
White suburban women are more likely to vote for a black man than their male
counterparts are, he says. But with Brooks in the race “white women might
identify with her and swing a few votes her way.”

            Johnson, Grose says, needs to
implement a dual strategy: increase black turnout in the city, but don’t
mention race in the suburbs.

            “It’s possible,” Grose says. “But
it’s hard to do.”

            Most suburbanites interviewed for
this article said Johnson’s record, not his race, is the determining factor.

            “I have a lot of respect for Bill
Johnson,” says Pittsford resident Chris Ramsey. “I don’t always agree with him.
I don’t agree with his politics. But it has nothing to do with race. The fact
is, he’s the Democratic candidate. [The] suburbs are heavily Republican. That’s
gonna be his hurdle.”

            Greece resident John Smith said
there’s no way whites will let Johnson win in the suburbs.

            “They want their own race,” he says.
“They think colored people are dirty and unresponsive.”

            And what does Johnson have to say
about all this? Does Monroe County elect a black man county executive?

            “It’d be the first time,” he says.
“If I didn’t think it were possible, I wouldn’t be in this race. I’m no masochist.
The test is gonna be in November. What, 90-92 percent of people, non-city
residents, are white? So I gotta win a substantial portion of those votes in
order to win.

            “I’m also perfectly prepared in the
event it doesn’t happen,” he adds. “I wouldn’t be going and blamin’ it on race,
either.”

The
truth about schools

One
of the issues that comes up repeatedly in the county executive race is schools.
Specifically, the idea of consolidating city and county schools.

            “It’s the fear of city kids coming
out into the schools districts and vice versa,” Rochester Mayor Bill Johnson
says. “This is the last beachhead they’ve got to defend. Schools, in their
opinion, is where the line has got to be drawn.”

            As previously reported in City Newspaper, merging towns or schools
districts would be a very complex, contentious, and lengthy process. Such
mergers require state legislation — in some cases amendments to the state
constitution — and public votes or referenda.

            “Cities and counties can’t be merged
without a change in state law,” Johnson says. “My words are very clear. My
intent is unambiguous. I don’t have any consolidation plans.”

            Often overlooked in this whole thing
is the fact that city kids are already in suburban schools, thanks to the
Urban-Suburban Interdistrict Transfer Program. The program’s goal is to
increase the percentage of minority students in predominantly white suburban
schools. It was started voluntarily by city schools in 1965 to combat “de
facto” segregation caused by housing patterns.

            This year, 390 city kids in grades 1
to 12 are being educated in the Brighton, Brockport, Fairport, Penfield,
Pittsford, West Irondequoit, and Wheatland-Chili school districts.

            The kids, on the whole, do very
well, says the program’s director.

            “Like any school district, you have
kids that are very successful, kids who are middle of the road, and kids who
this is not a good match for,” says Theresa Woodson. “It works for a majority
of students and families.”

            The program, Woodson says, helps
break down boundaries and misconceptions each group might have about the other.

            “It gives you the opportunity to
say, ‘This is my experience,'” she says.

            City schools spokesperson Barbara
Jarzyniecki says her schools get a bad rap.

            “Our achievement scores are lower
than our suburban counterparts, but we also have a lot more challenges,” she
says. “We have the same behavioral problems that they have in the suburbs:
fights in schools… .”

            Remember the bomb threats that
followed September 11? Jarzyniecki says that was a bigger problem in the suburbs,
not the city.

            She invites anyone who thinks
there’s a difference between city and suburban schools to visit city schools.

            What would they find?

            “The same things they find at other
schools,” Jarzyniecki says. “Teachers teaching and kids learning.”

This article appears in Oct 1-7, 2003.