It’s
all about David Gantt. It has nothing to do with David Gantt. Or maybe it’s
about Eliot Spitzer. It depends on who you ask.
In
the Democrats’ primary campaign for Rochester mayor, there are the politics you
see, and then there are the politics you don’t see. As people take sides,
there’s a lot more at stake in this race than the issues. Specifically, the
balance of power within the party could be up for grabs. After a 12-year
hiatus, the contest for the city’s highest office — and the highest local
office easily available to a Democrat — is something of an Olympics for the
party’s factions. And it’s all but impossible for people active in the party to
stay on the sidelines.
Talk
to almost any Democratic Party insider, and the rap on outgoing Mayor Bill
Johnson is that he wouldn’t play
politics. To most of us, that might not sound like a bad thing. But when your
most prominent elected official doesn’t raise money for the party or work to
recruit candidates, the party activists say, that leaves the door open for
factions to flourish.
“If
he had exerted more control over the party, we might not be in the situation we
are now,” says outgoing School Board member and St. John Fisher political
science professor Jim Bowers.
No
matter whose side you’re on or what you think of him, the single most powerful
guy in the room is the dean of the region’s state delegation, Assembly member
David Gantt. For the past several years, Gantt and leaders viewed as loyal to
him have controlled the votes at the county Dems’ nominating convention.
Gantt
professes to have little interest in being Rochester’s kingmaker. But he’s
frequently been a polarizing figure. He ran a candidate against a sitting
School Board member and fellow Democrat, Domingo Garcia, angering Hispanic
Democrats and many non-Hispanics. He sparred with the school district over
state aid. And he has particularly turned off some of the party’s elite. Many
of them cite the prospect of Gantt’s influence over Wade Norwood, his former
legislative aide, as their biggest turn-off to Norwood’s candidacy for mayor.
“Wade
can’t separate himself from David,” says School Board member and former party
chair Rob Brown. And that, he says, leads him and others to fear “that David
will control the city’s policies.”
Even
if that’s true, would it be a bad thing? Critics say yes, but the reasons are
harder to come by and tend to be based on politics more than policy.
Among
Norwood supporters, the argument is tainted by the assumption that Norwood and
Gantt are inseparable.
“In
some respects I find it very racist that because Wade Norwood is a black man
and he’s worked for David, that they’re the same person,” says County
Legislator Bill Benet. “Lots of people who’ve battled with David are supporting
Wade,” including himself, he says.
But
if the race has nothing to do with Gantt, why does his name keep cropping up?
Benet’s
explanation: “There are some people who don’t like David who are using that to
drum up support for Duffy” [former Police Chief Bob Duffy]. And he hints that
some in the Duffy camp may be pitching a “David versus the party” narrative to
the media to harm Wade by association.
Black and white,or shades of gray?
“People
may not want to talk about it,” says Gantt, “but this race is about race.”
Gantt has been around the party longer than most, which means he has a long
memory of the party’s internal struggles over the issue of race. He points to
past incidents where African Americans were hampered in their attempt to serve
on district committees, or redistricting that he says hindered representation
in predominantly black neighborhoods.
But
a conversation about race isn’t welcome in the party, Gantt says.
“The
leadership tried to shut me down when I tried to talk about it,” he says. “If
you wonder why I give this party hell, it’s about justice and fairness.”
He
points to the slate of City Council candidates he’s backing: a gay white man, a
black man, a black woman, a white woman, and a Latina woman. “That’s a balanced
slate,” says Gantt. “Look at it. There’s real justice.”
If
he was motivated simply by race, he says, he could have assembled an all-black
slate. That didn’t happen “even though I had the votes to control it,” he says.
But
not everyone shares Gantt’s view of race politics in the party.
“Contrary
to how some would like to see it, it’s not racially motivated,” says Jim
Bowers. “People against David aren’t racially motivated.”
Instead,
he casts the conflict as purely a power struggle between two different groups
of established players within the party.
The
more powerful of the two — at least for now, by Bowers’ reckoning — is the
group around Gantt, a group that’s backing Norwood.
The
other, which recruited former Duffy to run, includes far fewer elected
officials and currently doesn’t hold much power in the party.
“They’ve
been to the table, but they’ve not been full partners at the table,” says
Bowers. But the group Bowers calls the “old establishment” — by which he
means Norwood and his supporters, including most City Council members and Gantt
— aren’t eager to relinquish any power.
Since
Mayor Bill Johnson was a political loner who didn’t have the backing of either
faction when he won his primary, both have waited 12 years to control City
Hall, says Bowers.
Courting Eliot Spitzer
Other
kinds of political power at stake, too. State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is
polling well against most potential Republican opponents in next year’s race
for governor. That means Rochester’s race for mayor is also a fight to be the
person Spitzer works through locally, assuming he’s elected in 2006.
Local
real estate agent and party activist Mark Siwiec is widely known to have ties
to Spitzer and other prominent state Dems. He’s also one of the group that
recruited Duffy to run in the first place.
Meanwhile,
the party’s new chair, Assembly member Joe Morelle, needs to cement his
relationship with Spitzer. Morelle is backing Norwood. The backer of the next
mayor could be in a position to broker favors, like fundraising and
appointments, flowing to and from a Spitzer administration in Albany.
“Joe
is one of the smartest, most strategic guys around,” says Rob Brown. “Morelle
will see himself as a conduit to Spitzer.”
Who
cares?
All
this may make for entertaining reading, but why should anyone care about these
scuffles? As Brown says, “political infighting among the cognoscenti irritates”
rank-and-file Dems.
Bowers
answers the question with another question: “Which faction can be more of a
threat to the Republicans in this county?”
For
Bowers, that person is Duffy, who’s been mentioned as a candidate for county
executive down the road. (Duffy says he’s not interested.) Others say Norwood’s
ability to bring together old foes like Morelle and Gantt shows he can forge a
unified party with the ability to confront Republicans in the suburbs.
For
proof that Dems need to refocus their efforts outward rather than inward,
Bowers offers last year’s county cut of school nurses in the predominantly
Democratic city.
“The
Republican majority could do it without touching their constituents,” he says.
That, says Bowers, is why Democrats should care about the factions in their
party — and about finding one that can effectively challenge Republicans at
the county level.
This article appears in Aug 24-30, 2005.
