UPDATE#2, Wednesday, April 24, 9:30 a.m.: Monroe County Democratic Committee chair Joe Morelle sent out a press release last night, responding to the statement from Warren’s camp. His statement follows Warren’s at the end of this blog.
UPDATE, Tuesday, April 23, 4:15 p.m.:
Lovely Warren’s campaign has responded to the MCDC’s endorsement of Tom Richards. The statement appears at the end of this blog.
ORIGINAL STORY:
Tom Richards has won the endorsement of the Monroe County Democratic Party in his quest to serve a second term as Rochester mayor. The county’s Democratic Committee sent out a press release this afternoon, making the announcement.
- FILE PHOTO
- Tom Richards
- FILE PHOTO
- Lovely Warren
Richards was challenged for the endorsement by City Council President Lovely Warren, who will now have to petition to force a primary in September.
Richards clinched the endorsement last night by winning the support of the 28th and 7th city legislative district committees. The committees represent the ground level of Democratic politics in the City of Rochester and have been meeting over the last several weeks to make their endorsements.
Richards has won 72 percent of committee members’ votes so far, says the press release. Three committees have yet to meet.
Richards’ designation will be made official at the Monroe County Democratic convention next month.
Warren’s loss in the committee process probably isn’t much of a problem. Rochester’s last two mayors before Tom Richards: Bob Duffy and Bill Johnson, weren’t the party’s “chosen” candidates and both forced — and won — primaries to become the Democratic candidate in the November general election.
The loss might even work to Warren’s advantage by reinforcing her “outsider” status: the candidate of the people versus the candidate of the city’s business interests.
STATEMENT FROM WARREN’S CAMP:
“I am astonished by this statement released today by [Democratic leader] Joe Morelle, and frankly surprised that Mayor Richards would sign on to it. What the release does not reveal is that the three committees left to cast their designating votes are the 22nd, 25th and 27th LDs. These committees represent the city’s largest and predominantly African American neighborhoods, and in fact, the 27th LD represents the largest Democratic voting population in the City. In effect, what Joe Morelle and Tom Richards are essentially saying is that the votes and voices of the people in these neighborhoods don’t matter in this process. The diversity of our great party that Mayor Richards referred to is not even close to being reflected in the vote taken thus far.
African-American voters are very aware and very sensitive to that fact that in many places throughout this nation — historically and right up to today — there are those who have worked to discourage black voters from participating in the democratic process; and in many places, people have worked to affirmatively suppress the vote. This lack of understanding, this disconnect, is permeating our city and clearly, our party. Many of the people in our neighborhoods have reported this to be so, as evidenced by the Democrat and Chronicle’s UNITE poll and the ACT Rochester Report. This disconnect, this lack of understanding — this tone-deafness — is among the reasons why many members of the Democratic Committee whose votes have not yet been cast, as well as people in the city of Rochester have embraced Lovely Warren’s campaign.”
MORELLE RESPONSE TO WARREN STATEMENT:
“We made our statement to announce Mayor Tom Richards had attained the requisite total amount of weighted committee votes to clinch the designation. He has so far received 72 percent of the total votes and has ensured no matter what the result of the remaining committee designation meetings he will end up with at least 52 percent of the total weighted vote. It was a simple statistical fact.
“The committees set their own schedule for when these designation votes occur. The three committees in question chose to go last, leaving the door open to the possibility that the designation would be clinched before they had the opportunity to vote. I would hope Ms. Warren will understand this was procedural and resist the urge to be divisive.”
This article appears in Apr 17-23, 2013.
So the Warren camp is playing the race card early. Will it also be often? I’d say so, with Chris Christopher on board.
Whether intentional or not, Morelle’s statement has elicited just what kind of campaign the Gantt/Christopher/Warren camp intends to run.
Lovely Warren strongly supported Tom Richards, even posing for a photo with him for campaign literature, in his first attempt at the office of Mayor. So when it benefited her to support Tom Richards and Joe Morelle’s decision to support Tom Richards it was fine, but now it is some sort of knife in the back to city blacks for Joe Morelle to support Tom Richards this time? Tom Richards had a black opponent last time with Bill Johnson as he does this time with Lovely Warren. Seems as though Lovely will say anything to get elected. How unfortunate for this city to have this type of dialogue starting and not a focus on what really matters.
When Lovely Warren and a majority of African American leaders supported Tom Richards for Mayor in 2011, it was with the understanding that Richards would finish out Bob Duffy’s term and step aside.
When Lovely Warren and a majority of African American leaders supported Tom Richards for Mayor in 2011, Bill Johnson had not yet entered the race. After Johnson entered the race, they KEPT THEIR WORD and continued to support Richards.
Richards and Joe Morelle have not kept their word. It is they who are holding the knives. Morelle has been playing the race card from the beginning.
The idiotic and unnecessary press release they issued today illustrates the incompetence of Joe Morelle as Monroe County Democratic Chair. It also demonstrates that Tom Richards is unfit to serve all of the residents of Rochester. That the two of them would get together and issue a press release giving the false impression that Richards is backed by 75% of the City when they know that to be untrue reveals this to be both a blatant attempt to dismiss the wishes of a large portion of the City’s population and a desperate attempt to energize a campaign and a candidate who have no vision for the future of the City of Rochester.
BTW, everyone knows that RaChaCha is Gary Walker, the Communications Director for the City of Rochester. I hope he wasn’t on City time when he posted here on behalf of his boss.
Morelle is getting pretty big for his britches. Just another example of how he serves his own interests and not those of the public—especially not the public in the 22nd, 25th and 27th LDs. Really disappointing that Richards went along with this. I used to think he was an honorable man, even if he was more than a bit out of touch with his constituents.
I second Yeshua’s point about Gary Walker—aka RaChaCha. Maybe CityNews should FOIL his computer logs. I’m sure I’m not the only taxpayer unhappy about him spending public dollars trashing city council president.
@YeashuaAD :Thanks for the enlightenment. I always though Gary Walkers stage name was “Good Gov”…..so obviously he has more than one. The point is he is now accusing others of playing the “race card” when in fact his boss and Joe Morelle in particular did so with their premature announcement that all but suggested the 3 committees not counted were a non factor since they represent the majority of minorities in the City of Rochester. The gloves will definitely be OFF from here on out. I hope smart voters are paying attention.
“The loss might even work to Warren’s advantage by reinforcing her “outsider” status: the candidate of the people versus the candidate of the city’s business interests.”
Will somebody please explain how Warren, who has been city council president for three years, and a council member prior to that , can run as an “outsider”?
MJN, I should’ve been clearer. What I meant is that Richards is clearly the choice of the party machine, and the narrative Warren’s campaign is using is that of someone who will represent people who feel disenfranchised: like they don’t have a voice in city government.
Chris Fien
City news editor
Interesting change of messaging. From Morelle’s original press statement:
“The OVERWHELMING support for Mayor Richards expressed by the City Democratic Committee is an indication that the people of Rochester STRONGLY APPROVE of his leadership these past two years,” (emphasis added)
GARY WALKER?! LOL. Does that mean I get to share his salary now? Actually, I campaigned for Bill Johnson 2 years ago — not something Gary Walker would have done (at least not if he wanted to keep his job).
Ms. Fien – Thank you for the clarification. But I see that you didn’t update the article itself and so unless someone reads your comment here they will receive an inaccurate view of the event.
Shouldn’t the statement now read,…
“The loss might even work to Warren’s advantage by reinforcing her campaign narrative of being an “outsider”: the candidate of the people versus the candidate of the city’s business interests.”?
By the way, the Warren campaign’s charges are bunk. Last time I looked, the process for selecting a political party’s nominess, whether by a caucus for mayor or via voters participating in a state’s presidential primary, was designed to award the nomination to whoever obtained a majority of the votes. Naturally this meant that, should one candidate obtain that majority before all caucuses had met or before all states had held their primates, then unavoidably the votes of the later groups would be rendered superfluous.
So when a candidate wraps up their win early is this the result of racism or some other evil attempt at disenfranchisement or to discourage voter participation? Of course not. It’s simply a matter of timing. You want your vote to count? Then work to ensure that your caucus or your state primary is held early enough to have an impact. As Ben Franklin said, “You may delay, but time will not.”
“..narrative Warren’s campaign is using is that of someone who will represent people who feel disenfranchised: like they don’t have a voice in city government.”
Like city residents who are Republicans