In the city for which this website is named, a potentially historic election is about to take place in only one week. Next Tuesday, four-term incumbent Jerry Jennings will face his toughest primary challenge in first-term councilman Corey Ellis.
But the story here is bigger than that, and in the next week, I hope to aid in keeping that bigger picture in mind. Things tend to get caught up in too many specifics and whatever is most attention-grabbing in the final days. Below, I'll compile the best of what's been reported on the race thus far.
For starters, Metroland has just printed the premier piece of journalism on the subject. Chet Hardin's cover story this week is appropriately titled The Contender, avaible here to be read in its entirety. Here is where the story reveals itself to be a true story, told in all it's context and subtext, a never-ending tale of rising and falling powers and spirits, the vicious cycle that must be tamed in order to make progress in American politics.
Below the fold, I hope to synopsize this and other recent pieces on the race, compiling them in one place for ease of information gathering as this potentially historic primary fast approaches....
Like a movie, we're introduced early to the tragic hero-turned-villain, Mayor Jerry Jennings as the out-of-touch, super-powered incumbent who would rather do photo-ops in ice cream shops instead of do an interview with the independent media. We then find out, as we often do in cinema flashbacks Citizen Kane-style, that Jennings came from the inner-city himself, and got to where he is by fighting off one of the most notoriously powerful and longest-lasting political machines in the nation: the Albany Democratic Machine. He wins in the early 90's. The New York Times itself declares the Corning-O'Connel Machine dead.
As the movie continues, though, Jerry starts to change like all the great dynamic antiheroes. He starts rubbing elbows with money, his sleeves themselves growing in value. He moves into the big house, away from his roots, and hangs out in the halls of power, not necessarily city hall. We find that instead of having broken the Machine, the Machine itself has broken Jerry
Flash forward a few terms and some token challenges, and suddenly everything is falling apart. After 16 years, the number of vacant buildings have increased, the city is worse off than it was before, crime is spiking, and along comes a young firebrand Councilman to challenge him, just like he did before.
We're at just about this major turning point in the movie, only this is real life. Corey Ellis is playing his own role as the underdog hero in this story with flying colors. His ground organization has been gearing up for this since the Obama for America organizer got on the Council in his own surprising upset. Put quite simply, Albany is as Democratic as a town can get, it's political machine history not quite yet dead. By winning his seat in the general election on a third-party line after losing the primary, Ellis proved he was something else, something truly promising.
In Ellis, the timeless story of the politicians rising and falling in a never-ending cycle gains timeliness for the present. His run for the city's chief executive post doesn't seek only to represent the people of Albany. Whether they realize it or not, the race is a microcosm for how Obama's politics is changing things from under the radar. By focusing on the voters themselves instead of a massive war chest and big money connections, Ellis is implementing the Obama playbook on the most local of levels.
Now, with exposition out of the way, the build-up to the climax in this story is happening now, and just like we felt that Obama "just might make it" in the days before Iowa, 2008, there is a feeling in the air that Ellis just might make it here in Albany, 2009. All this becomes crystal clear in Chet Hardin's article.
I will note that the excellent city-based blog Democracy In Albany has already pointed all of this out and more. There is no better commentary on the race than that which has been being posted with a valiant persistence then that by DIA. He was the first to point out the brilliance of Hardin's piece, as well as to post this excellent snapshot of the two candidates, side by side: video highlights of the most recent candidate's forum.
This video is also available on the Corey Ellis blog through Metroland's website. Jerry has a blog there too, at least in theory. In fact, these two websites might be a better compare/contrast destination for Albany voters than any other source. Please take a look at both and the difference will be crystal clear, prima facie.
For those interested in more about Corey Ellis, this link gives all the results of a search for "Corey Ellis" on timesunion.com, the site of the areas largest Hearst-owned paper. There, the day-to-day focus on police department centered scandals involving the recent resignation of the police chief and the longtime issuance of "ghost" parking tickets to select citizens becomes much more apparent. Jordan Carleo-Evangelist has the report on the most recent forum highlighted in the video embedded above.
The recent resignation of Police Chief James Tuffey is really the second big twist here. By now the early history of the race when two progressive Council members were challenging Jennings at once is nearly irrelevant, save for a few hold-overs who used to support Councilwoman Shawn Morris's run. But after that first break for Ellis, this one comes at the perfect time with perfectly terrible repercussions. It doesn't look good when a chief has to resign two weeks before a primary challenge period; it looks really bad when the resignation is forced amidst serious allegations of racism and the Mayor's challenger is an African-American inner-city community organizer whose campaign has to point out the way the administration has failed that community because of a disguised yet blatant indifference.
For more background, The Capitol ran a great article on the race in late August by Sal Gentile, available here, which gives still more historical insight into the race but in terms of present day Presidential politics. Corey Ellis was the chief organizer of Albany for Obama during that primary, and Ellis is not the only member of that class of '08 seeking to change city government. More than a couple council seats are being contested in primaries, and Metroland has those stories as well if you are interested. These will make it clear that Ellis is no fluke: he is truly the leader of a growing movement in Albany.
In this sense, the upcoming Albany Mayoral Primary is a close-up version of how Obama's approach to politics is being taken up by more than just national office seekers. Regardless of whether or not he becomes Mayor Ellis, Candidate Ellis is proving that the President's impact on politics is a major force on every street corner and in the deepeset, darkest corners of power, waiting to shine a light.
In another article worth reading on the race, even the Huffington Post gave the race a nod last month with Sheryl McCarthy telling it like it is:
