Rochester lost a mayor today. It wasn't tragic or riddled with scandal. It wasn't a huge surprise, either, but it took the wind out of my sales just the same. Losing Mayor Duffy to the statewide political machine which continually ignores the needs of Upstate and Western New York is not something that is going to completely set in until I start seeing "Cuomo/Duffy" placards popping up on lawns around my neighborhood. As a city, we have lost a mayor with limitless potential with a vision for change that was sorely needed after the previous administration nearly set Rochester back a few decades in every conceivable area imaginable. This can't happen again.
As a card carrying independent, I have little to no patience for the pomp and circumstance that surrounds modern day politics. I'd like to think I make my decisions based on logic and rationale, but even when President Obama was running his "game changing" campaign I found myself feeling a little disgusted by the rock star-esque methods being used to make him seem like he was more than a politician, but I bought into the hype and hoped for change and reform and whatever else was on the posters at the time. After 8 years of being miserable I would've voted Democrat if they had run an actual donkey. Now I find myself in a similar situation in the state of New York and my city as well.
In my highly uneducated opinion, politics are cyclical. When one party has had 4-8 years to try and get things right and, as usual, fails miserably or only does a "sort of good" job it becomes time for the next party to step in and give it a shot. It happens at every level from villages to towns to cities to states to nations; it's just the way it is and it's so predictable and boring I'm pretty sure we could eliminate voting and just say, "Okay, what year is this? 2010? That's a Republican year, bring in the G.O.P" and no one would really notice. It's what happens now anyway. Sure, you'll have your fervent advocates on the one side and your beleaguered pioneers on the other clashing over "issues," but if you're level headed and looking on from a distance it's pretty plain to see that it's just a big show.
Politicians do not listen to the people, they listen to politicians.
I still do not perceive Mayor Duffy to be a part of this, and I could have told you he was going to be elected for a first and second term the minute his name was thrown into the hat because the prior administration brought us the spectacular failure that was the fast ferry and a school system so unbelievably terrible that it makes me mad to even think about. I'm not positive about the graduation rates, but I know at one point it was about 30% and since Mayor Duffy has been in office it's gone up to just under 50%; which is a big, gigantic improvement, but still pathetic and a failure in my eyes. It seems that Mayor Duffy understands this as the most pressing issue on his incomplete agenda, as he has for quite a while championed the idea of "mayoral control" of the schools since the school board is doing the children of the city of Rochester such an awful disservice by merely existing and letting things continue on the way they have been. Duffy still wants to make that change, but it's going to be a hell of a lot more difficult to do so in Albany, though you'd think it would be easier, that's really not the case. Albany has a history of catering to downstate and, because of the money involved, that just won't change any time soon, but... one can dream.
On a more positive note, what the city of Rochester should take away from this is the fact that it is responsible for the development and rise of one of the most promising figures in politics the state and, possibly, the country has seen in quite some time. Hey, Rochester, we did this. Mayor Duffy is largely a product of our lovely city; which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are capable of producing leaders and intelligent people of the highest quality. That, my fellow citizens, is a remarkable accomplishment to think about. Our current mayor could one day be governor of this entire state, or a senator, or a congressman or who knows what? It all started here, in Rochester.
Think about it: a graduate of The Aquinas Institute (my McQuaid allegiance distresses writing that, but I digress), member of the police force since 1976, graduate of Monroe Community College and the Rochester Institute of Technology, Police Chief of the Rochester Police Department from 1998 to 2005 and, currently, our Mayor and the state-wide candidate for Lieutenant Governor. That is pretty awesome, and, begrudgingly, something to be very proud of.
My biggest concern is that the progress that has been made in my hometown will, somehow, someway unravel and we'll be back to making bad business deals about huge boats that nobody wants to ride on and our school system will fall even deeper into the abyss than it already has. These things just cannot happen. There are little pockets within communities that have worked tirelessly to cut down on all the negative aspects that once plagued them and that largely has to do with Mayor Duffy's progressive attitude and his natural charisma which almost forced people to follow him. Now, he'll be leaving us should he and Attorney General Cuomo be elected, and the idea that things could revert to their old, bad habits, well,that scares the hell out of me.
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