You’re a sell out
Bored by all the forums, press conferences, and hollow
rhetoric? You’re in luck: Rochester’s race for mayor has become a lot more
interesting. And all it took was a T-shirt.
City Councilman Adam McFadden’s custom-made T-shirts
(modeled here at a Park Avenue café by City
Newspaper intern Katie Sauer) are extremely limited — he made only 40, he
says — and come in easy-to-match black with red-on-green lettering. The
message is succinct: “Norwood For Mayor. Don’t Sell Out.” The fit, as you can
see, is roomy.
After McFadden distributed his shirts to various MusicFest
attendees, the local media jumped all over the opportunity to report this
campaign’s first bit of juiciness: the appearance that a candidate was playing
the race card. Bob Lonsberry nearly short-circuited with glee. Black folks
wearing T-shirts supporting the race’s only black candidate with the slogan
“Don’t Sell Out”… Well, you can do the math.
Of course, “there’s nothing racial about the shirts,”
McFadden says. “It’s all about not selling out to suburban interests.” That
sounds fine. But forgive us if we can’t blame people for getting the wrong
idea.
If it’s not about race, we expect these shirts — we hear
more, from sources other than McFadden, are on the way — to start appearing
on the young, white, and affluent Park Avenue crowd as this picture suggests.
Those types are, after all, city residents.
If it’s not about race, the Sell Out shirt at least broke
the ice. In a city where crime, poverty, and low test scores all cluster around
neighborhoods of color, seems race might be a relevant topic. So, let’s talk.
— Chad Oliveiri
On your mark
The Bob Duffy camp is full of happy campers, thanks to recent polls showing their guy with a
nice lead in the race for mayor. And according to one poll, more than 50
percent of the city’s Democrats have already decided who they’ll vote for in
the September primary.
Ink is in awe.
Eight weeks before the primary, when the poll was taken, more than half of the
city’s Democrats had made up their minds? Based on what? Race? The security
blanket a former police chief seems to offer in a high-crime year? A brief
pitch at a neighborhood fundraiser? Lawn signs?
Ink has no idea
who’ll make the best mayor. There are three strong candidates. There’s lots to
talk about. And we’re looking forward to learning more.
An Ink reminder:
1) This race is pretty important to be relying on snap judgments. 2) Polls can
be troubling things. Publicity about them can sway voters. And for the
candidate out in front, they’re just lovely fund-raising tools.
Minor threat
Ever since the NBA’s Royals left Rochester and ever since
the NFL’s Bills and NHL’s Sabres arrived in Buffalo, Rochester has harbored a
major case of sports envy toward its neighbor to the west.
Rochester sports fans frequently stew over the fact that
their city doesn’t have any major-league teams — as well as the fact that
Buffalo seems to make the most of the state’s financial largesse and draw huge
amounts of aid for top-flight athletic facilities while Rochester begs for
scraps.
As a result, with the Rhinos soccer team, PAETEC Park, and
other ventures, Rochester’s testosterone-laden movers and shakers have wrung
themselves out plotting often half-baked ways to rectify that situation.
And all along, they’ve taken for granted that Rochester is
the best minor-league sports city in the country. And hopefully, now that Street and Smith’s Sports Business Journal’s
latest issue has officially given the city that title, local civic and
business leaders should stop bitching about what we don’t have and start taking
advantage of what we do.
This article appears in Aug 3-9, 2005.
