It’s
the battle that almost wasn’t.
After
failing to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for a school-board seat last
year (he finished fifth in a race for four seats), Domingo Garcia intended to
shelve his political ambitions for good. There’s little doubt now that some in
his party wish he’d stuck to that plan.
This
year, though, Garcia’s running again, challenging the party’s chosen candidate,
Cynthia Elliott, in the September 14 primary. The race is revealing a party
divided along the lines of political allegiance, race, and, of course, funding
for the school district.
In
last year’s bid, Garcia did well in eight of the city’s 11 districts. But he
failed to earn a nomination because, under party rules, each district’s vote is
weighted by its turnout in the last gubernatorial election. The three districts
Garcia lost — the 22nd, 25th, and 27th — are in the heart of Rochester’s
black community, which voted in “insurmountable numbers” in 2002 to support
former State Comptroller H. Carl McCall, Garcia says. Among the candidates who
did get nominated was David Perez, who eventually won a seat.
“I
figured, well, you know, at least they got a Hispanic,” recalls Garcia. “So I
didn’t run a primary against them then because I thought it doesn’t make any
sense.”
That
changed when Perez — the school board’s only Hispanic — stepped down after
just a few months’ service because he’d moved outside the city. And Garcia says
that’s when board members Rob Brown and Jim Bowers approached him about filling
the seat Perez vacated.
“They
wanted to keep Hispanic representation on the school board,” Garcia says.
“Since I was the next person in line because of my votes, they decided I would
be the logical appointee to fill David Perez’s vacancy. Those were the only
bases under which they decided to appoint me; there was no other motivation.”
But
the appointment expires at the end of this year, and Garcia’s board seat is on
the ballot again this fall. And once again, the party passed him over,
nominating Elliott. Garcia says Elliott won the nomination because she’s backed
by State Assemblyman David Gantt, who’s feuding with the board, and wields
increased power among Rochester Democrats.
Gantt has been the focus of
media attention, and school board anger, for holding up $20 million in state
aid for the Rochester School District. He has also been organizing petition
drives, and in some cases primary challenges, for committee slots in three city
districts — the 21st, 28th, and 29th, chaired by Maurice Verillo and County
Legislators Carla Palumbo and Jose Cruz, respectively. Palumbo is managing
Garcia’s campaign, and Cruz supports his bid.
The
challenges are meant to send a message, Gantt says, about defying party
protocol and not supporting its chosen candidate. He’s also called for Garcia
to step down from his position of party vice chairman.
“If
his job is to support the party and its candidates, how can you support the
party and its candidates when Cynthia’s the nominee and you’re running a
primary against her?” Gantt asks. “Ethically, he should have stepped down. It’s
a real conflict as far as I’m concerned.”
Individual
committee primaries also carry undertones of the school-board feud. Ronnie
Thomas (a county legislator and Cynthia Elliott’s boss at the Baden Street
Settlement) personally gathered petitions for candidates challenging board
member Darryl Porter. Meanwhile, board member James Bowers collected signatures
for a slate of candidates opposing the Gantt-backed candidates in the 21st
legislative district committee.
Race
and ethnicity are also factors. “There are all these stresses and strains in
the party, and some of it seems to break down along racial lines,” says one
party leader who asked not to be identified. “No doubt there are some people
among the competing cliques who do think racially, whether they even realize it
or not.”
Gantt
says that last year, a group of black residents was barred from committee
participation in the 21st district. “They put a rope up and they put those
black people behind the rope,” says Gantt. “I came out of the segregated South;
that doesn’t set well with me, neither is it something that we do here in
Rochester.”
And
Gantt says he only sought to fill vacant committee seats. “We felt we should
make sure those people were represented in the political process,” he says. He
also thinks it’s unfair that he’s being criticized for a routine political
practice. “If you go back and look at the rosters, there’s nobody in those
districts,” he says. “Whose fault is it but theirs that they didn’t organize
their district?”
But
despite running candidates in the city’s most heavily Hispanic districts, Gantt
disputes the notion of a black-Hispanic divide in the city. “Every Hispanic
who’s gotten elected to office in this city since 1981, I played a major role
in their election, both putting people on the street and also raising money for
them. Every one,” he says. “It has nothing to do with race. That’s their
excuse.”
The
primaries were forced later, and not by him, he says: “The person who’s behind
this is Jim Bowers,” Gantt says. Some party insiders say Bowers, who recently
announced he doesn’t plan to seek reelection to the school board, is
considering a bid for the 21st district’s county legislature seat now held by
Chris Wilmot, who’s term-limited. Bowers won’t say whether he’s thinking of
that seat. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he says. He also hints that he
might consider a bid for city council or an even higher office.
But
despite collecting signatures after Gantt’s candidates had, Bowers says,
Gantt’s actions constitute a “hostile takeover.” Bowers says Gantt never
approached the district’s leadership before launching the petition drives. That
prompted Bowers to take action. “I wanted to keep this [legislative district]
independent and out of that orbit,” he says. “What we’re trying to do in 21 is
prevent bossism.”
Another
explanation could be that Gantt simply wants to solidify support in a bid for Rochester
mayor by City Councilman Wade Norwood in November, 2005. Many in the party
believe Norwood could face a primary challenge, perhaps from one of the
half-dozen term-limited Democratic county legislators. And the three district
committees with primaries this fall could be those least certain to support
Norwood next fall.
Gantt
doesn’t deny that he has an eye to the future when it comes to Norwood’s
candidacy: “That’s the democratic process,” he says. Then there are the seats
of those term-limited legislators themselves, though Gantt denies he’s eyeing
any of them. Some in the party expect to see Palumbo and Cruz face primaries in
their own bids for reelection.
Whoever
wins the primary for school board, party observers say this race is just the
opening salvo in a showdown between Democratic factions that’s only going to
get bigger and uglier.
“I
don’t think there’ll be a cease-fire until the at least the 2006 election,”
says one party insider.
Primary info
Registered Democrats living in the Rochester City School
District can vote in the school board seat primary election between Garcia and
Elliott at their usual polling places between noon and 9 p.m. September 14.
Info: Monroe County Board of Elections, 428-4550.
A profile of Domingo Garcia here!
A profile of Cynthia Elliott here!
This article appears in Sep 1-7, 2004.
