Chris Maj wants Rochester
to form its own militia. He wants us to stop paying state and federal taxes. He
wants Rochester to become the
capital of a new 51st state. He wants to annex the suburbs. And he’s running
for mayor.
To run for mayor in Rochester,
all you have to do is get 1000 city voters to sign your petition. (That would
be 1000 city Democrats, if you want to run in the Democratic primary.) Maj (his
name is pronounced “May”) got 1500 signatures, so he’ll be on the Democratic
primary ballot in September, along with Wade Norwood, Tim Mains, and Bob Duffy.
To say that Maj is not your ordinary candidate is to put it
mildly. He’s 26 years old. He came to City’s
offices wearing a hat with marijuana-leaf medallions (emphasizing his
support for legalizing marijuana) and a red, white, and blue tie that lights
up. He was thrown out of RIT for demonstrating against the school’s association
with the military. (Thrown out for exercising his right to free speech? “Yeah,
I may have been a little bit loud, I guess. I was considered a little bit
aggressive, you know. There may have been an F-bomb that was dropped; maybe
two.”)
He now runs his own computer-programming business out of his
home. And he insists that he is serious about running for mayor. “Quite
simply,” he said in his City interview,
“I have better ideas for moving the city forward.”
He has little money for his campaign, and he doesn’t have
the name recognition of the other candidates. “I don’t think you should have to
be rich and famous to run for office,” he said.
He’s getting help in the name-recognition area; some local
media are treating him as a serious candidate. The Democrat and Chronicle, for instance, dutifully includes him when
its reporters question the candidates.
And as you talk to Maj, there are times when he does seem
serious. He argues that relying on the property tax is a poor way to finance
schools. Suburban sprawl, he says, “is destroying the city.” He wants
public-works projects for the unemployed. He’s passionate about the advantages
of city living.
But there are other moments when he just seems to be having
a good time, maybe even having a good time pulling everyone’s leg. A little
suppressed smile here, a seemingly deadpan look there.
If he’sserious,
he’s naïve. And stunningly uninformed about government. He frequently
criticizes City Hall for things that county government is in charge of. He
seems convinced that the City of Rochester
itself pays taxes to state and federal governments.
And then there’s his platform.
He wants to confiscate all city property owned by suburban
residents and give it to city residents. He wants to charge suburban residents
to drive into the city. He wants city and suburban schools integrated, “if
necessary” by having the city drive half of its students out to suburban
schools and letting them knock on the door and ask to be let in.
To solve the city’s fiscal problems, he would legalize and
tax marijuana sales — and he would order city police to “actively oppose
federal or state interference.”
He believes that city residents are superior to suburban
ones, whom he characterizes as “sitting in their suburban castles behind
moats.”
Here’s a snapshot of May, in (heavily) edited excerpts from
our candidate interview.
City: Why are you running for mayor?
Maj: Quite simply
I have better ideas for moving the city forward.
Are you serious about
it? We’ve known candidates who ran for office knowing they couldn’t get elected,
that they couldn’t raise the money the other candidates had. But they ran
because they were committed to raising certain issues.
I don’t think you should have to be rich and famous to run
for office. I think we should have more citizens running for office. It’s our
government. We’ve allowed ourselves to be run by professionals — into the
ground, in my opinion.
Do you think you’re
qualified to be mayor?
I’m keeping my clients happy while running a campaign. I
didn’t have to quit my job to run for office, so I think I can multi-task and
juggle a lot of things.
Given the fact that
you haven’t had a lot of management experience, do you think you could handle
the job?
Well, I did serve on the RIT student government as a
programmer. I developed the first on-line voting system there. So I think I’ve
proved — you know, it was 15,000 students we were supposedly representing. And
not being a professional who’s taken a ton of campaign contributions, I don’t
owe a lot of people favors.
Let me ask you some
questions about your platform. You say you want to take city property away from
people who live in the suburbs and give it to people who live in the city and to
people under 21. Isn’t that illegal?
Conservative application of eminent domain would be the idea
there.
You want to charge
non-residents to drive into the city. Don’t you think they would just stop
coming in? We have a hard enough time getting them to come.
The city’s great. It has so much to offer. I mean they work
here, they like to play here. I think that would help make it a more profitable
city.
You want to annex the
suburbs. But that’s not possible under state law.
Well, building a casino in the HighFalls or wherever you want is
impossible under state law. There’s tons of things that are impossible under
state law. It doesn’t make them wrong, I suppose. I think the suburbs would
benefit.
How would you do it?
One idea is to create a 51st state with Rochester
as the capital. You know, some have advocated the lower Hudson
and Long Island staying as New
York, but I would increase that up to Albany,
because that’s just a waste of space, too. We need to form our own state and
take these matters under our control. I think Rochester
would be a great capital.
You want to take50 percent of the city’s students and drive
them out to the suburbs…
I think we need to integrate the schools. We’ve had
segregation for 40 years. We’ve had court cases that said we should no longer
have segregated schools, but they’re segregated. I think that would be a tactic.
You want to terminate
all collection of county, state, and federal taxes not approved by the city.
I think we just need to stop sending them the money.
Are you gonna tell me
not to pay my federal taxes?
I just think the value we’re getting for the services is
horrific. I think what we could do is offer some sort of network to provide defense
for companies who refuse to do that. I think we could provide an opportunity
with legal resources or some consortium, perhaps organizing collective
lawsuits, class-action suits. I think that’s a good approach, because I think
we can say realistically that many of the plans of the federal government have
way exceeded the authority stipulated by the constitution.
You’ve talked about
organizing a militia, so when Rochester residents refused to pay taxes and the IRS or the federal government
came, you’d have a citizen’s militia….
That’s right. I mean without local law enforcement, a lot of
these federal and state laws would fall flat on their faces. I completely
support the right to bear arms. “Militia” is listed twice in the Bill of Rights.
It’s how we got our freedom in the first place. I stress non-violence as a
solution. I think that’s the way to go, but, you know, we need to say….
If push came to shove,
you’d support an armed militia?
I support a non-professional army to, yes, actively oppose
state and federal influence. I would, push come to shove, if somebody invaded
my home, I’m an armed citizen, you’d better believe they’re not going to get
two steps in that front door, if their coming to rob me. I mean, I have no
qualms whatsoever about that. I’m a sportsman.
Let’s get to some of
the issues that we’re asking all of the candidates. Would you favor more city
funding for the RochesterSchool District?
I would always advocate for increasing money for education.
I’d much rather see another dollar spent on education than building a new
prison, that’s for sure. Or arresting someone. That’s just a waste.
Should the superintendent
report to the mayor?
I advocate a student-run school board, elected by the
students. Giving the students the responsibility of managing their affairs will
engender respect and hopefully create an attitude of respect in the school
system, and we’ll have better schools overall. Yeah, I think there should be
more control over the schools in the mayor’s office, and there should be more
control over the schools by the parents as well.
Let’s talk about economic
development. Should the city provide tax incentives to encourage development?
I think we need to stop handing out money to corporations to
create jobs. We don’t have a safe environment here for businesses, so we need
to address that. If people don’t feel safe living in a number of areas, then
you’re certainly not going to feel safe running a business there.
I am in favor of having more people work for a check versus
just getting one, so I would like to encourage, perhaps, public works projects paying
double what you would get if you just sat and collected a check. Offer a
financial incentive, I guess.
Who would pay for
that?
I think we could get more self-sufficient and create a more
business-friendly environment. What I advocate is vertical farms, turning some
of these abandoned buildings into farms. Make a hydroponic garden, grow some
chickens or hogs, teach people how to farm and grow their own food. And sell the
produce and use the money for a number of programs.
We have a School of the Arts; I’d like to see a School of
the Agriculture — perhaps turn that prison into a farm. Grow food in there.
Teach kids a lifelong skill by planting these abandoned lots we have in the
city or even in their own backyards.
What would you do to
get more development in downtown Rochester?
I think we should turn that old power plant [in HighFalls] into a hydrogen fuel-cell
production facility. I’ve also advocated vertical farms in abandoned buildings.
I’ve supported green roofs to make downtown more attractive. I think it would
be nice to look at the skyline and see trees on tops of the buildings. I think
filling in the Inner Loop with dirt is a good idea, planting trees in it, maybe
a bike path around it, or a water park.
What would you do to
reduce the level of violence in Rochester, in addition to your plan to legalize drugs?
This policy we have on drugs is really the problem. And I
think we need better police training in certain areas.
What’s your opinion
on the reorganization of the police department?
I think the question should be why we are arresting so many
people to begin with. Where you build the next police station has little to do
with it. I think if anything, building more police stations escalates the
violence, because we have armed warriors patrolling the streets with submachine
guns. Is that the right message to children? Is this is the kind of police
state we live in?Do we need more police officers?
No, we need more teachers, not more police officers.
Thirty seconds to
talk about anything you want:
I completely think we should end the war on drugs. We tried
it for 67 years, and I think this is what’s been dragging the city down, you
know, by arresting all these people. We’ve created this culture of lack of
respect for law enforcement, and that’s not right. So overall, a more
self-sufficient city, we stop arresting all these people, start making them pay
taxes: I think we’d be golden. I don’t see what’s stopping us. This city has a
history of somewhat revolutionary ideas, I suppose you could call them. It
needs leadership, and these professionals who are in there doing nothing can’t
provide that.
This article appears in Aug 3-9, 2005.
