|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
November’s election is only days away! All hail the conquering Democrats!
Okay, that might be a bit premature. But it is, of course, the predictable sentiment in our ocean blue county as Primary Day draws near.
On June 24th the Democrats and Republicans will hold their primaries, and the winners of the various Democratic nominations are largely expected to go on to win their races in November, races that may not even be contested by Republicans. In the city of Rochester that means we can look forward to many more years of the quality leadership that has put a panhandler on every street corner, a Naloxone kit outside every library. Vote with pride, citizens!
A continuation of that status quo is probably in store for us if the Malik Evans-favored slate of contestants for Rochester’s five open at-large City Council seats prevails in the primary. Most of these candidates work for non-profits which naturally profit greatly from having city resources at their disposal (not the least important being a corporate-friendly mayor).
But there is another avenue Rochester can travel, and I don’t mean the skid row that Monroe Avenue has turned into. That future would come from voting for the Working Families Party slate of Democratic contestants for City Council, most of whom come with no special interest baggage.
Years ago, I made my political suicide pact with the Green Party, so I get no vote in the primary that will likely determine November’s winners. However, my interest has been piqued by Kelly Cheatle, an artist and crafter of balloon displays who, ironically, has less balloon juice in her than your average Democrat. An outsider candidate, Cheatle’s major contribution to the public thus far has been her role in defeating the RDDC’s plan to install a Business Improvement District (BID) downtown, which would have gerrymandered a zone for Rochester’s most powerful landlords to privatize tax revenue and run a commercial fiefdom governed by a highly undemocratic board of directors. And while the BID has been put into hibernation, it has not been killed. Having Cheatle on the City Council will help ensure that the BID remains dormant.
Cheatle has a lovely personality and is determined to make transparency, accessibility, and accountability the hallmarks of her work for the city. She also looks askance at Mayor Evans’ notion to bring back Rochester’s red light “tax camera” program, which will be another boon for the city’s not-so-well-off.
Having no stake in the primary, I haven’t researched Cheatle’s Working Families-endorsed companions too deeply. (What can I say? Balloon sculptures just make a candidate seem more fun!) However, though some of those candidates may not survive the winnowing of the Democrats’ primary, I am sure that come November I will be voting for them on the WFP line over any of Evans’ buddies to refresh the City Council with politicians who aren’t executives looking for a public/private handout.
In this one-horse town of Rochester, the Working Families Party can at least provide you with the satisfaction of voting against the Democrats even when you are really voting for them. But what about going a step further?
Most nominal Democrats are appalled at what they have been witnessing day after day in our country since January as the Republican Party (although, can we be honest? The MAGA Party) has sewn fear and anxiety, arrested students for writing op-eds and Senators for trying to speak to Kristi Noem, gutted social services and incubated yet another major war in the Middle East. And through all this the broken Democratic establishment has cowered in its snail shell, their only priorities being to expel threats to their gerontocracy coming from young radicals like David Hogg and trying to sell an anti-populist “Abundance Agenda” narrative cooked up by upper-middle-class brunchers like Ezra Klein. I don’t care how progressive you are: doesn’t it just make you want to punch the Democratic Party in the schnoz?
If so, the time is right to roll the dice on Rochester’s perennial workhorse candidate David Sutliff-Atias.
David comes with the almost insurmountable burden of being a Green… insurmountable in years past, but perhaps not so much in this cycle now that the public has come to realize how moth-eaten the Democratic brand has become.
A tireless activist and environmentalist who has run for the Council in the past, Dave’s agenda pairs very well with those of Cheatle and the Working Families slate. He supports the long overdue goal of replacing the vampiric RG&E with a public utility, has a focused and aggressive agenda regarding public housing, and puts our vulnerable public first ahead of the Locust Club. When you consider the abuses that ICE commits daily (abuses that have been helped by Rochester’s own local police), I think we can all appreciate the need for more of the change that Dave is offering.
A wise man (I think it was Yoda) once said,“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.” Watch the news: see what an out-of-control right wing unfettered by a credible, activated Democratic Party is doing to us. Now look at our town: poverty and despair are creeping in at the edges from all directions. New government is needed at every level in our country, a government made up of people with dirt under their fingernails, who haven’t sold out yet. This year there is fresh blood available for us to vote for, people of both competence and character. Help is on the way, but only if we welcome it.
Jason Yungbluth
The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].
In cases like the upcoming city elections, third-party candidates are an excellent way for newcomers to test the waters of elected office. This is still a democracy, and if people with new, revolutionary ideas can get the votes, then more power to them. The only place I have a level of anxiety is in national elections with thin margins, and citizens vote for a third-party candidate to make a point. They take votes away from a sane candidate with some flaws, allowing an insane person to win. I don’t think that was the case in this last presidential election. In that one, apathy and the message of racist grievance won the day. In a more perfect world, the Democratic Party would invite folks supporting the Green agenda and with new ideas into the fold to truly become the “Big Tent” party.
Hopefully we have at last come to the point where we realize that fewer choices at a national level, not more, are what has led to the death spiral of the Democrats.
Thanks for the compliment, Frank. As for Green candidates, you have to be willing to experiment with them at some point or they will never get the foothold in even minor government roles that they need to prove their mettle. We have elections for just this reason: to try out new possibilities. And short elected terms make these experiments safe and worthwhile.
However, when we get too caught up in loyalty to political brands like the centuries old Republicans and Democrats, the result is the Soviet-style ossification we are seeing right now that is destroying our faith in government. Elections should be revolutions!
I’ll give Jason this: he’s a great writer. While I agree in principle with much of what he says, the reality is that the political parties control who runs for office. Party leaders and powerful incumbents are comfortable putting forward the people they know—folks who worked on their campaigns or their staff. There is also this perverse predilection to championing diversity over competency. I’m in no way opposed to DEI, but you can’t tell me that if party leaders want to, they couldn’t find both highly qualified, diverse candidates. One of his points, and I’m paraphrasing Yoda here, is “that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.” We’ve had a merry-go-round of diverse but incompetent school superintendents and school commissioners (with a few exceptions) for more than fifty years, and we’ve a budget that our shrinking population can no longer sustain. Why?
Our current City Council members, while okay, don’t have any outstanding stars. But here’s the rub: Starry-eyed, optimistic, and naïve Green Party supporters, while well-intentioned, lack the credentials that would gain enough voter confidence to vote for them. The mantra of “better the devil you know than the one you don’t” is the theme of our progressive, yet risk-averse citizenry.