This year, the entire County Legislature – all 29 seats – is up for election, and for two of those seats (the 14th and 24th Legislative Districts), it was known long ago that they would be open. Justin Wilcox (LD14) and Josh Bauroth (LD24) were exiting the County Legislature due to the 10-year term limit. This blog post will discuss how Rajesh Barnabas’s candidacy for the 24th Legislative District affected the composition of the County Legislature before he even began campaigning.
In LD24, which intersects Brighton and part of the City of Rochester, three (3) candidates were considered by the Brighton Democratic Committee (BDC) for designation: Rajesh Barnabas, an activist and progressive; Albert Blankley, a health care executive; and J.W. Cook, who works for Assemblyman Harry Bronson. In Brighton, the designating votes were as follows:
Cook – 19
Blankley – 12
Barnabas – 6
J.W. Cook’s win did not come as a surprise. He had run for County Legislature in 2019 and, this time around, received endorsements from his boss Assemblyman Harry Bronson, former Democratic Elections Commissioner Tom Ferrarese, and others. He had created a Facebook page for his candidacy that had hundreds of “likes.” The outgoing County Legislator for this seat, Josh Bauroth, nominated him at the BDC designation meeting. But a few days after the BDC meeting, something strange happened: Cook dropped out! In a since-deleted Facebook post, he withdrew his name from consideration before the designating caucus for the City LD24 Democratic Committee, effectively conceding the designation race to Albert Blankley.
Who knows what inducements or threats were used to cause Mr. Cook to drop out? They must have been substantial, not only because had he laid the groundwork for a vigorous campaign and he was leading the designation vote, but because when he ran for County Legislature in 2019, he did so in a different district. Mr. Cook surely had more than one reason to move districts, but it would strain credulity to claim that he made this move without considering his political aspirations.
Let that sink in: JW Cook moved districts to be in a more favorable one where he knew the seat would be opening up, and was decisively winning the designation when he got told to sit down by political power brokers who didn’t want to split the “stale pale male” vote and hand the seat to a progressive.
Why would the establishment favor Blankley over Cook? Blankley is the LD24 Leader (and hence a member of the MCDC Executive Committee), but Cook was winning the designation vote! When newcomer Samra Brouk was winning designation votes in SD-55 over Jen Lunsford, who previously had run for that office in 2018, the establishment backed Brouk. The idea that 37 Democrats should get to pick who will represent more than 15,000 voters shouldn’t sit well with anyone, but it is customary and, I daresay, a well-established (dyswidt) process. So why Blankley over Cook? Subsequent events – such as endorsements and political donations – suggest that Blankley was Congressman Joe Morelle’s candidate. The establishment was teeing up for a proxy war between Morelle and Bronson – akin to the 2020 primary election between Bronson and Alex Yudelson – but those plans were disrupted when a progressive declared for the race.
Fast forward to June 22, where Rajesh Barnabas edged out Blankley on Election Day with a too-close-to-call, 22-vote margin. More than a week later, Blankley won the absentee and affidavit ballots 100-69, taking back a 9-vote lead. In purported compliance with a recent change to New York State Election Law, the Board of Elections then conducted a “manual recount” (really just feeding all the ballots cast in Monroe County through a different set of voting machines than the ones that were used to administer the election on Primary Day) and confirmed that the vote counts were identical to those previously recorded. After Monroe County Court Judge Van White filed a lawsuit alleging that the “manual recount” meant “by hand” and the State Board of Elections confirmed that they had advised the Monroe County Board of Elections to count the ballots by hand, the Board of Elections decided to administer a hand recount starting on July 14. The LD24 race will be recounted by hand on July 20.
The outcome of the primary election is not yet known, but we already know that the political establishment was correct to narrow the field – if they hadn’t, Rajesh Barnabas would be the LD24 County Legislator-Elect.