From Sky news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

This hour we bring you part of our series of conversations with the candidates for Rochester Mayor.

There is a Democratic primary next month not that far away.

Last week we sat down with Shashi Sinha.

Today we welcome a member of Rochester City Council.

Mary Lupine was first elected to council six years ago.

She has served in the past as vice president of city council.

She's worked on issues related to climate change with Mothers Out Front and other organizations.

She's worked as a political organizer.

She's worked on housing in Rochester.

She's a teacher in the Rochester City School District.

And now she is outlining her campaign for mayor.

Mary Lupine, candidate for Rochester mayor, member of city council.

Welcome back to the program.

Thank you for being here.

Thanks, Evan.

I'm glad to be back.

When did you decide you wanted to run for mayor?

I said, well, I'd been thinking about it for a while, you know, when when lovely was, running her last campaign.

You know, people reached out to me trying to get me to run for mayor, but I wasn't really prepared.

I know that we needed different, but that wasn't the time for me.

And I started to think about it again.

And over the summer, knowing, actually, I couldn't have known quite where we'd be right now.

I did not anticipate another Trump presidency.

I did not see, even when he won, how quickly, and how horrible it would be.

But I knew that our city needed different.

I knew that the current administration was not going to was just going to keep doing what we've always done.

And that the true power lies in the executive.

You know, I've been on council for five years now, really pushing hard for change, and I've been able to get some things done.

but it is extremely difficult as a member of a nine, person legislative body to push change through against, really strong system that values the status quo.

Mary Lou become the website for the audience to learn more.

Is that correct?

That's true.

I also have Mary for mayor.com.

Oh, how is there no Mary in the entire world that ever ran for mayor?

That was if Mary from there I didn't.

Okay, Mary Lou I got Mary from echo.com.

Thank you for correcting the host on that.

And we always share the information of the websites and the resources with the candidates when they are on this program.

And, so, you know, as you say, you've served for five years on council, but in your view, this is a mayor that is dedicated to the status quo.

Why do you feel that way?

I don't think that Mayor Evans would say that.

But why are you here saying that in his entire state of the city speech, as your station counted momentum 52 times?

Momentum is not a new vision.

A vision momentum is.

We are continuing the policies of the past, and we are going to keep doing what we're doing.

He's trying to convince us that that's enough.

That crime is down, that our city is safe.

Look at everything he's done.

He touts the Buy the Block program, which is a I have been pushing back on that program forever because it is really descriptive of the really failed economic development policy that we have been doing in this city and other cities for decades, and it is not unique to this administration.

It is saying we're going to dump tons of money into trying to attract new residents, new businesses, outside investment, thinking that they are going to save us.

We don't need saving.

We need support.

The buy the block program, $13 million of Covid recovery money that was extremely flexible and could have been used.

And in fact, our city said, please use it on our people.

$13 million to build 37 houses, $500,000 a piece.

we obviously need more housing, but that is not a cost effective way to do it.

And so why would we spend $30 million to benefit 37 families one time?

Because as soon as those families sell those houses, they are not affordable anymore.

Is because that $30 million goes directly into the pockets of the construction companies and the developers, who in turn contribute to campaigns.

And the cycle keeps going.

$27 million to expand the convention center, which if you drive down Main Street right now, it's under construction.

That was Covid money meant for our people to recover.

Why would we invest in the convention center?

Because if we have bigger conventions and then, you know, they spend their money in Rochester and then the businesses downtown who aren't owned by the city residents get more money and then they create more jobs.

And then at the end of the day, maybe some money trickles down to us.

We don't have time to wait for money to trickle down.

And in fact, check with an economist doesn't work.

So I don't know why we keep trying to do it.

Well, yes, I do, because IT people are benefiting from the way it is now.

And I'm saying our city deserves better.

Our city will thrive when we invest in our people, and that looks like guaranteed basic income.

We have a pilot in Rochester that was extremely successful, but it was only 175 families.

There are 100 pilots across the country that are.

They all show the same results.

They're successful when families have an expected amount of extra money each month, they use it to pay bills.

They use it to get transportation, to get to work, to get better jobs, to get better housing, to buy the basics for their kids.

So why don't we scale it for a relatively low amount of money per family?

We can have an incredible, impact.

And I use this as an example because of course, I get the question how are we going to pay for it?

So the the city and county ask the state for money every year.

And they put together a package of package of projects that they would like funded.

One of these projects was $33 million to build 75 houses over three years.

That same $33 million of applied to guarantee basic income would get every family in the CSD $125 per child per month for a year.

We know that works.

We have the evidence.

No one has been able to show me that 75 houses makes a dent in poverty.

The housing crisis.

Okay, so there's a lot there.

And you're making the case that you view what needs to happen very differently than the mayor, very differently.

Okay.

And so let me take some of those issues point by point.

First of all, on housing.

No.

Let's start with GBA because I want to I want to use this to get to housing.

So guaranteed basic income is a program.

As you note that the city has deployed, the mayor's office has said it has been successful.

They feel good about the results you are talking about.

Making it permanent is permanent the right word?

I'm talking about making the program permanent.

I'm not saying families would be on guaranteed basic income for permanently because they do improve their situation, but who's eligible?

Then?

How do you get on an under the looping GBA program?

Who's eligible?

I would love to explore all of the models that are out there, because every city does it slightly differently.

And I think that the most important part of G-b-i is that there are no strings attached.

And people have a real problem with this because they're like, well, aren't you supposed to teach a man to fish instead of, you know, this assumes that when they're not already working and that they're poor on purpose and not victims of a system that was set up for them to fail.

So families use this money there.

It's it's they don't become dependent on it because they use it to, to improve their lives.

And that's what the data shows.

And sure, there might be a few that, that isn't the outcome, but the amount of work and barriers that making people prove their poor puts into play, take the benefit of the program away.

So I am, you know, I use the city school district families as a benchmark of, you know, what we currently spend the money on and what we could spend it on.

But I'm very open to what the actually looks like and what the qualifications are.

what do you expect an annual budget to cost on a typical basis for GBA?

I think it's the same answer, right?

It's not going to be overnight.

And whatever we start with, I would like to scale it up.

And so this is you know, I talk again, I talk about 33 million.

That is just a benchmark.

But the funds are there because we're spending them in ways that don't actually benefit our residents now.

So all of the funding for GBA, you're claiming can come from a current existing spending moving around.

Yes.

Okay.

Or you know, other because we like I said, we asked the state there's other sources of funding, but I do believe that we can find the money in our current budget.

You know, the mayor had the guarantee basic income program.

Ruby Rochester, you know, your first universal basic income is sort of started out as under lovely Warren.

you know, a year into office, it finally got, implemented.

It's no longer in the city budget.

He offloaded it to philanthropists, which sounds, you know, theoretically like a good idea.

But once you give the power to philanthropists, they can just stop the program.

I think it's very important to have it be in the city budget, because it is such a critical way to help our families.

in an ideal situation, what I want to ask you what the standards, what the what the cut off is, who gets on it?

you're very focused on the specifics.

Well, I think people should.

People want.

This is a big idea, right?

So the reason people want to know about the specifics is they want to know if this is actually viable.

Of course it's viable because all of the data for all of the programs which are done in every city a little bit differently.

So the same result, the bottom line is that families get an expected amount of extra cash every month without strings attached.

But who those people are doesn't matter as much.

Am I wrong in thinking this though?

When you say look at all these other cities, it's worked.

So of course it works.

Rochester had this program with money that came from where was the money coming from?

From the federal government, right.

They came from Covid recovery money, Covid recovery.

Right.

So I'm not aware of cities that are doing it in perpetuity through their own plan budgeting.

A lot of it's one shots that come from the from the fed, Covid recovery, things like that.

And we're going to pilot this.

We're going to try it.

The pilots look good.

But creating a long term model that is sustainable is a different thing.

Tell me why our program cost $2 million.

How is that not sustainable?

I'm not saying a city can't find $2 million a year.

They could.

And why would the results be different if it was done once versus ongoing?

But again, I'm not saying a city can't find $2 million.

Sure, you're saying you want more Rochester to be able to act?

Absolutely.

So then it's not a $2 million program.

It might be ten and it might be 50 in the question, whatever it is, can it be sustained?

And then who gets in and who is not?

So the most important part of any program is evaluation, because I think whatever we do, it can always be improved upon.

We can always learn from what we've done to make it better.

And so this is something that I want to start as soon as possible on a smaller scale and scale it up because we know it works.

And so much of what we do, I think, is a waste of money that goes into the pockets of people that already have enough money, but are very powerful in this community, and we just need to shift things around.

Tom sends a note on ECS.

He says, if universal basic income or jeebies, general, it's very different.

Yeah, guaranteed.

He says, if it's a or I'm sorry, guaranteed basic income.

Thank you.

He says if it's a top priority and this is the primary service identifiable by Oakland, California based nonprofit Up Together, of which, your colleague in county government, Rachel Barnhart, works with, he says, is that a conflict of interest for you and for her?

I'm not sure why it would be a conflict of interest.

I think he's saying, because I know someone that works for a guaranteed basic income, nonprofit that doesn't actually financially benefit from me.

His implication is that she would financially benefit.

Yeah.

That's ridiculous.

Okay, so you're saying no, no conflict there?

No.

Okay.

and then the other thing before we move on from jeebies, is there momentum on I there's that word again.

Momentum.

Sorry.

You put in momentum.

You put it in my my brain Mary loopy and your colleagues on council.

Yes.

How do they feel about this kind of a plan?

They were very supportive of our guarantee basic income program.

we had several council members that were on the committee.

It is recommended by the res.

the Rochester.

What was it?

Race and structural equity.

Equity?

Yeah.

The race.

Yeah.

yeah.

So it is recommended the race commission.

It's a a recommendation of the children's agenda.

All of these organizations are recommending guaranteed basic income.

I don't think anybody doubts that.

I, I think that, you know, they might challenge me on the, validity of spending on trying to attract people here.

And that's a fundamental difference I have with many of the folks in leadership right now, is I just, I that's a failed way to spend our money.

It doesn't benefit our city.

It hasn't benefited our city in the decades that we've been employing the strategy that we need to spend our money on our people when we nobody gets a cut, when we give money to people and I think a lot of people have a problem with that, because many are used to getting a cut of our public funds.

So I think how they feel about it personally might differ from how they might feel about it politically, because, you know, when you take a stand on something in this town and probably it's like this other places you can get punished for going against the grain.

Talking to Mary Lupine, who is running for mayor as part of our series of conversations with the candidates, Mary for Macom Mary Loopy Incom.

She's a member of Rochester City Council.

And, the primary is next month.

Three candidates on the ballot Mallik Evans, Mary Lupi and Shashi Sinha.

Shashi Sinha was on this program last week, and he was also critical by the block, by the way.

Oh yeah.

And he pointed to that as one of the chief examples that he would immediately offer as a kind of waste and mistake in priority.

Yeah.

And it's not like I haven't brought this up.

Right.

They are well aware of of how inefficient this money is.

And they've admitted that it is cheaper to renovate.

But the idea is if we stick a house in a Disinvested neighborhood, that it will somehow create more investment.

But they could also just look at the many hurdles that are in play for local developers.

Local developers are trying to build very, you know, economically viable housing for our community.

And I know one person who was building over on Broadway.

It took them three years just to be able to break ground, and it shouldn't be that hard.

So there are other ways, that doesn't cost that much money.

Why?

We can equity in our city.

Why is it so hard to build new housing in Rochester?

I don't understand, you know, I have a list of things that they've given me that they've given feedback from zoning to permitting to, you know, just efficiency of government operations.

But you've been on council for five years, and you say you don't understand why it's hard to build in Rochester.

Well, I just told you, I don't understand why we continue.

You understand why we continue to do it that way.

So okay, so if you're mayor, what changes then?

Yeah.

Well, we have to look at there are ways that we can get rid of red tape.

We can make things that you can build as a right instead of making.

You have to go through variance hearings and planning board.

all of that introduces time, and time is money when you're talking about building, allowing things that are a little bit more, nonstandard.

So there's, a little street off of Goodman where, just a homeowner wanted to build.

He built his home, and right next door he built a rental, and they gave him some a hard time because the houses in that little tiny street, like, maybe, maybe there's ten houses on the street.

They were built as worker housing on the Erie Canal as, like, one story little boxy houses.

And they were saying because it didn't look like the other houses, they gave him a very hard time on how to and and building his and his is very modern, modern and contemporary, but also like, you know, built to energy efficiency standards.

And, I think they're beautiful.

So it shouldn't be that hard to invest in our community by building housing.

So, Sinha said that there are thousands of vacant lots, of which there used to be homes on those lots.

Everyone can envision those in Rochester.

And he says one of the advantages is you have a lot of infrastructure in place that you because there used to be houses, because there used to be houses.

So use those lots.

He thinks you can build houses for way under half the price of a new typical house way.

And so you think he's right.

I talked to a local developer and she's like, Mary, I think, or they are like, Mary, I think throwing $1 million in the sky would be a better use of it than building two houses.

And I think that they're right.

They're strong towns is a, organization that, you know, puts out lots of policy ideas for cities to adopt, and they're really heavy on housing.

And one of their big ideas was starter homes.

So these are homes that have a very small footprint that are very low cost to build.

You can even do it yourself.

And they're meant to be expanded on.

And this is how houses used to be built back in the day.

So you can build a small house that you can afford now.

And as you gain more wealth over the years, you add on to it.

As your family grows and you know that that is one idea of a very low cost, a way to build tiny houses, modular homes.

there's just, more ways to build a home than a 1600 square foot, three story house with a porch and a driveway.

So.

But why aren't those things happening then?

In Rochester?

No lack of vision.

But, I mean, you're part of council.

Council has a say, too.

It's not just the mayor's office, right?

That's how it's supposed to work.

Even our democracy is very broken on the local level.

Just at our last council meeting, the mayor told a member of city council, I think you're confused on the role of the mayor.

I don't answer to you, but actually, that is exactly how our system is supposed to work.

We have different branches of government to hold each other accountable, so that no one branch of government has an excess of power, and then the executive branch in the city and in the county operate this way, where if you are a member of the legislature, in order to get your initiatives moved forward, you have to have a good relationship with the executive.

And if you don't, you don't get your initiatives move forward.

You don't get access to information, you don't get invited to press conferences.

And then it makes it seem like you don't support the idea that they're announcing, it's a high cost to go against the executive and the system that we have.

And so then you are left with a legislature.

Our legislature doesn't legislate every now and then we put something forward.

But that's only been in the last 2 or 3 years.

And that's been a big part of my pushing to get our body to do more of its own work.

We hired more staff.

We altered the committee structure, to support doing more work.

But still, we don't really legislate and we don't really hold the mayor accountable.

Talking to Mary Lucien, who's running for mayor.

And, I want to turn our attention to some of the the developments that have put Rochester in national headlines recently, including, the executive director of Ice, Tom Homan.

you know, the idea that the director of Ice is going to come to Rochester, the Locust Club, inviting him, and home and making comments about some of the detention efforts that Ice has been undergoing with the assistance of local law enforcement.

There were, questions about whether city leadership should they meet with Tom Homan, should they not?

What happens would you, if you were the mayor, would you say, I'm going to meet?

If he's coming, I'm going to meet with Tom Homan.

Absolutely not.

You're not going to meet with the director of Ice.

What is to be solved?

Is Tom Homan going to change his mind?

You're not going to try?

No.

That's a waste of breath.

Okay.

No.

So it legitimizes what he's trying to do.

I don't think it would bear any fruit.

And it's important that we stand strong against his agenda, against the Trump agenda that is disappearing our neighbors.

It's it's not okay in any way, shape or form.

I don't see how diplomatic dialog will change any of that.

We need to stand strong.

We need to send a strong message.

This is not okay.

This is not acceptable.

So I want to come back to what Ice is doing and what you think city government should do in just a second.

But I want to understand your mindset a little bit more.

You say, I'm not going to change Tom Homans.

Mind if I'm the mayor of Rochester and he's coming?

I'm not sitting down.

I'm not going to legitimize him.

You did go two months ago to the Congressional Cities Conference in Washington, DC.

And again, you're in some national headlines.

Yeah.

You were in the audience when JD Vance was making some remarks and you interrupted him.

You stood up.

you kind of chatted him down.

You said that to I think some of what you were saying was we're competing against corporations, not immigrants.

Give us back our funding.

Vance eventually basically says, I can't even hear what you're saying.

There's a place to disagree.

This is not it.

I don't know, I can't even hear you.

And the thing ends.

And but what you said afterwards was, I stood up to JD Vance.

But your point about Tom Homan is the.

Well, nothing's going to change his mind.

Do you think that change JD Vance is mind?

No, that wasn't the point of it.

So, a meeting with Homan would be behind closed doors.

Yeah, in the National League of Cities conference where JD Vance was speaking, and it was a surprise.

It came as the night before, and I think a lot of Democrats off selected and didn't go hear him.

And I was curious as to why I went, he I don't know what I expected.

I didn't expect 45 minutes of straight lies to a room of thousands of elected officials who are standing up and giving him a standing ovation.

My interrupting wasn't for him.

It was for them because someone had to say something.

And I had, you know, the National League of Cities is for learning about, you know, what are other cities doing and different solutions.

And I focused on housing and the track that I was on and workshop after workshop, they were like, yeah, we don't really know what to tell you.

We could tell you what worked before.

But the worst thing for housing is instability.

And every day there's something new and, you know, they just need to stop and they can't take our funding away.

They're talking about defunding, you know, HUD, and all of these other workshops that are like how to secure federal funding for transportation.

And I'm like, why are we pretending there's no federal funding to secure?

And we just saw Trump's, budget proposals, 75% of it on the military and policing.

we're kidding ourselves.

And so it was coming from that frustration of, I don't know where our people are going to live.

And here we are trying to find solutions to housing and, you know, really, they're the obstacle.

So when he got up there and said that we're the reason that housing prices are skyrocketing is because we're competing against immigrants, it just came out and I said the truth.

We're competing against corporations, not immigrants.

And to get respect our funding because we need that.

And he did respond to me.

He said that, you know, well, here's a nice representative that wants to flood our community with immigrants.

And then there was booing.

And I think a lot of people thought that they were booing him.

They were blowing me.

The only other people in the audience that weren't standing up and clapping were two people in front of me who were representing Canada, who thanked me for standing up.

People needed to hear that there's someone that isn't going along with it, and there is not enough going on in the Democratic Party to push back ten Democrats voted for the funding bill, and two of them were from New York.

What are we doing?

This, this we are descending into fascism quickly.

And if all were if at the very minimum, we have to speak out and say that it's not okay.

So what's not happening from the mayoral level right now that you would want to change?

Well, first of all, I've and I've tried to introduce a ordinance that would strengthen our sanctuary city protections, that would have real teeth, that would include LGBTQ, community in these protections because they are also under threat and the law department is sitting on it.

I sent the email on March 31st asking for the legislation to be introduced, which under city council rules, I get to do.

And I heard nothing.

And a week ago I heard they were having conversations about the legislation without including me in it.

And then I challenged them again and heard nothing.

And then I had to bring it up at the city council meeting on public record.

And then, you know, I finally got a response.

We're not willing to take any kind of risks to protect our people.

you know, maybe they're afraid of the Locust Club, which, you know, the Locust Club.

I will say this.

The Locust Club and our police force are different.

The Locust Club is out of control.

That's the police union?

Yes.

You think they're out of control?

They are inviting Tom Homan here to double down, to go against.

So at this, the RPD are city employees, right?

They are the mayor's employees.

They are the city council's employees.

We have a policy that, you know, these few officers violated.

The Locust Club called in the federal government to to tell us that we shouldn't tell our own police officers how to do their jobs.

That's dangerous.

If we lose control of our police officers at the local level, that is a scary future.

And coupled with President Trump's newest, executive order unleashing local law enforcement to protect civilians and something with criminals, basically saying that we have to accept military in our police departments, it gives police greater immunity, and any elected official that tries to stand in the way will get arrested.

And the Locust Club just sued our Police Accountability Board to strip them of their powers to investigate individual officers and one and one.

So we are in a situation where our there's there's no accountability.

You know, the police accountability boards can still take complaints and they can investigate kind of like on a larger scale, patterns and practices, but without accountability.

Any system is prone to bad actors.

But I think this mayor would say I'm not supporting ice.

I'm not walking around cheering on ice.

I think the mayor was clear he thinks people should know their rights.

He doesn't want to see, people pulled out of schools, people pulled out of churches.

He's not taken a stance on consequences should our police force continue to violate our policy.

So what should the stance be?

The stance should be if you violate the policy, your you get fired and you know, oh well, the union and collective bargaining, you can still fire an officer.

They can fight it.

They can win their hearing and get reinstated, but you can still fire them.

And there has to be some kind of consequences.

And I'm not saying I think the officers should have been fired in this, in this first instance.

Right.

Okay.

You can say they didn't get the training.

They didn't know they weren't prepared.

Fine.

Going forward.

They know I was just at a incident on Atlantic where there was a man getting, detained.

and, and our police were there and they were like, oh, no, don't worry, it's not, it's not, you know, they're like, it's not immigration related.

don't get mad at me.

You know, they were very aware of the added scrutiny.

However, it was immigration related, even though it was the FBI.

They were investigating visa fraud.

So it's it's just it's very tricky.

And I think that we have to pay very close attention because they are getting this message that they should be able to do whatever what they want.

Well, you know what the Locust Club says.

They say that, you know, you're anti-cop what what do you say?

Well, it's really unfortunate that the system is so resistant to accountability that any criticism whatsoever is portrayed as anti-cop.

I have several friends on the police force.

They know I'm nine and a cop, but I am pro accountability and it's something that's been missing in this community.

And you know, I live on parcels AV in the Beachwood neighborhood, and I have seen for myself how neighbors have been treated black.

My black neighbors have been treated very differently from my white neighbors.

And it took me 2 or 3 times in 2014 to see it for myself, to really even understand what systemic racism look like.

And then, you know, of course, I see it in every system now, but I didn't have to see it then because I'm white and I, you know, I just I wasn't exposed to it, but it was the how the, the police treated my neighbors that opened my eyes.

And they want the community to trust them, but they also don't want to be held accountable.

And you can't have trust without transparency.

And you can't have safety for neither the community nor the officers.

If you don't have that mutual trust and respect.

And I hear stories all the time about how officers get called out to scenes and they show up if they show up.

Well, you wanted to defund us, so now you're calling us or blaming me personally for a crime and murders?

It's ridiculous.

It's it shouldn't be threatening.

And I it's officers inside of the system.

They see this stuff too, but they are in danger if they sound the alarm.

You know, there's a very famous case, in Buffalo, a woman named Carol, who was an officer who intervened when her partner was beating someone who was handcuffed.

She jumped on his back and she got her pension stripped.

And so she was trying to introduce a law called Carol's law, which would be a right, duty to intervene so you would be protected.

So even on the inside, police are in danger.

So accountability helps absolutely everyone except for the bad actors.

And I don't think there are that many.

Well, you supported the Police Accountability Board.

As you note, the Locust Club sued and won in state Supreme Court last week.

We're going to see what happens on appeal.

The city of Rochester is now appealing, but if that appeal loses, will you vote to continue funding the PAB even though they don't have disciplinary power and now they wouldn't have investigatory power, the PBA still serves a role.

Again, you know, our job is oversight on city council.

We do not have the knowledge, expertise, time to investigate the police department.

They can still investigate a high level again, like, a pattern that they're seeing, or a practice or, but not specific cases.

Not specific cases.

So I say that to say we still need the Police Accountability Board, but obviously they employ a lot of investigators and people that are specific to individual investigations that, you know, we wouldn't be able to sustain.

So we would I would still want a police accountability board, but maybe scale back the funding back.

Yeah, well, we'll scale back the employees, which and you're saying that's not something that you want to do.

That may be pragmatically what you must do if you lose this court case.

Yeah.

Okay.

We don't want to have people sitting around doing nothing.

You know, that's not what they want to do either.

But the last brief point on that is if this appeal loses, what is the function of police accountability?

I mean, the Locust Club has said for years you don't need a PAB.

In their view, the PAB is all anti-police activists.

but they said we don't want officers committing acts of misconduct.

We will investigate our own because how's that going?

It hasn't shown up.

So.

So if you don't want that to happen, what happens in a future where this appeal loses?

Is that the end of a PB?

I mean, in terms of like I said, you know, they still have a role.

Sure.

but is there going to be some reinvention of something else that could do this?

It's really hard to say.

You know, I think we need to see what all of our options are and exactly, you know, is there a different configuration or a different, you know, under a different context that we can do this?

but, you know, there's.

A we need legal advice to figure that out.

After we take our only break, we'll welcome some of your feedback.

We're talking to Mary Lou Lucien Mary for mayor.com or Mary lucien.com.

Those are the websites you learn more about.

Mary Lucien.

She is a member of Rochester City Council.

She is running for mayor, one of three candidates on the I was going to say the November ballot.

It's not a November ballot.

It's a June ballot.

She's 24, June 24th, saying that the Democratic primary is next month.

And all the candidates are invited to appear on this program.

It's our chance to talk to Mary Lucien.

We're coming right back on connections.

Coming up in our second hour, can big Tech save the world?

We sit down with Astro Teller, the captain of moonshots from the moonshot factory at alphabet.

Alphabet is the parent company of Google, and teller oversees a team that tries to solve big problems around the world, like climate change and energy grid issues, the problem of transportation safety, and a lot more.

He's in Rochester to speak at all, right?

But first, he's on connections.

Next hour, support for your public radio station comes from our members and from Excel.

Is Blue Cross Blue Shield believing that everyone deserves to be cared for and to live well through community investments, partnerships, and education.

Excel Blue Cross Blue Shield is working to address health inequities more at Excel bcbs.com.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

If you have just a side note, if you have been you know, maybe you watch conclave, maybe you've been watching all the news there.

White smoke NPR says out of the Sistine Chapel.

So NPR will have a lot more later today.

We promise.

There's still a lot to learn about who the next pope will be, but I've been asked to make sure that, you know, that NPR will be covering it all throughout the day.

Of course, on all the platforms NPR does White Smoke.

There's a Pope.

Much more to come with that now, I also I want to mention that there is a mayoral debate coming up.

All three candidates in the Democratic primary will be part of that debate on May 28th, 8 p.m. May 28th at 8 p.m.. That's a Wednesday night.

I'll be moderating that debate.

And on the various platforms, Sky news and the voice of the voter partners that we have, we invite you to, to take that debate in, if you like.

We always appreciate when the candidates will come together and do that.

Mary Lupine will be one of them.

So thank you for saying yes.

Thank you to all the candidates for saying yes.

I think it's important.

and before I get a little bit of listener feedback, there was one of the thing that I want to ask you about that really surprised me.

You have served in council for five years now, and some of your, I think closest colleagues, no surprise, are people like Stanley Martin, Kim Smith that you've worked with.

And so, I kind of went through this process of like, well, you know, there's a frame that people have in their mind where it's like, well, Mary, Mary's running to the left of the mayor, by the way.

Is that okay with you to frame it that way?

You're running to the left of the mayor.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I get an email from the Working Families party and they are not endorsing you.

And I was they're not endorsing they're not endorsing in the mayor's race.

But I want to read some of what they wrote because, you know, Kim Smith, co-chair and works with the local Working Families Party.

And here's someone who's been so close with you, and they wrote the following quote, we are in a moment of crisis as we deal with multiple threats occurring simultaneously at the national level, Trump and Musk are creating chaos and uncertainty locally.

We are forced to defend working Families, party electeds against right leaning attacks and challenges with limited time and resources.

We must move strategically and intentionally not endorse beyond our capacity to support, and we must consider candidate viability to set ourselves up for wins that will build power for working families.

End quote.

Now they go on to say that deciding not to endorse was their most challenging and contentious decision.

And they write, quote, a beloved, progressive and extremely dedicated candidate, Mary Lupine is challenging an establishment incumbent with significant financial and political support in terms of our progressive values and delivering our narrative.

Mary is incredibly aligned candidate, but in the spirit of our strategic planning chapter, leaders and many members have real concerns with Mary's campaign and our collective capacity that is necessary to defeat mayoral incumbent this year.

End quote.

They say they've got to concentrate on local priorities and stay out of the mayor's race.

End quote.

Did that surprise you?

No, no, it didn't surprise you.

Not that email.

I you know, I be very involved in the process.

Go back six months ago and I'm and I'm and I tell you they're not going to endorse you.

Would that have surprised you know why not.

These are your closest political allies, aren't they?

They are.

Yes.

And they they support me running for mayor.

Individuals, you know, and I can't speak for.

I'm not going to speak for, you know, anyone in leadership.

But this was not about my campaign or my viability because I was never asked.

They're saying in the statement, it's all about whether they think your candidacy is viable.

They are.

But it's incredibly hard to judge viability when you haven't spoken to the candidate.

You know, I filled out the questionnaire and then I heard nothing until that email came out.

I did know what was going on behind the scenes.

And that is, you know, internal party business.

And I'm not going to air it out here.

But the response that I received after announcing blew my mind.

They did not know how much money I've raised, how many volunteers I've had, what I'm hearing from people.

So the decision was about something else other than my viability or my qualifications for mayor.

What was it about then?

If it's not about what they say it, it's about the viability.

And I'm not going to air the business.

Has this fractured your relationships with your fellow members on council?

No, no.

You know, Kim Smith is the co-chair.

Yeah.

And she remains a very good friend and ally, as does Stanley Murray.

Did did the sting did it hurt?

Yeah.

Okay.

But in your view, you are a viable candidate and that's why you run it.

I am a viable candidate, 100%.

When I talk to people at the door or on the phone.

And I say Rochester deserves better, they're there when I say we need to stop investing and trying to attract new residents, businesses outside investment and invest in our people, they're there, and no one else in this race is making that commitment.

let me read a statement that I have from county Legislator Rachel Barnhart on this.

She wanted to read.

She said, Mary Lupine is a progressive standard bearer for Rochester.

Yet the Working Families Party chose to sit this race out.

It's a decision that will come back to haunt them.

The mayor's race gets all the oxygen and the VP has no one at the top of their ticket to draw attention to their candidates and quote, you agree with Legislator Barnhart there.

I think it was a strategic misstep that was based on fear.

That's what I'll say.

Talking to Mary Lou Ann, running for mayor.

Lisa writes to say, Evan, the PAB lost a skirmish, not the war.

The city of Rochester had to appeal.

Please clarify that the state supreme court is trial level court with a judge that Maqdisi failed to defeat.

The same way MCD is picking the wrong candidates and failing to find even a write in against Sheriff Baxter.

Mary and other candidates not picked by Maqdisi will have the support of many.

I believe that's from Lisa.

Hi, Lisa.

Thank you.

do you agree with her that what's happening with the PAB is it's not the full story here.

That's the skirmish and not the war?

I think so, but it's also in the context of, you know, a country that is, again, falling into fascism.

And, they have focused on judges and getting, you know, loyalists into judge positions.

So it very much depends on who the judge is and how this case will turn out.

And so it's absolutely worth the appeal.

Ken says, I don't even live in Rochester anymore, but I've been listening to Mary on the radio today.

I love what Mary is saying, and I wish her well in the upcoming mayoral race.

That is from Ken.

in a primary like this, a big question is always who turns out what energizes people?

So when you talk to people door to door, what's the most common thing that you're hearing from people?

People are tired and scared.

You know, housing has never been less affordable.

People have never felt less safe, and they're not hearing solutions.

And it takes courage to fight against the status quo again, because people benefit from it.

And you end up, making people upset with you, which costs you something personally and politically.

But we're at a time where none of that matters, and we have to put it all on the line to go big or go home, because we are fighting for our very existence and the economic development model of attracting new businesses and residents again.

And this outside investment, how that could ever be successful is by replacing our residents.

We're already getting pushed out of our neighborhoods.

You know, I've been in Beachwood for 11 years, and I've seen neighbor after neighbor getting priced out new, you know, outside development coming in, which sounds great, but it means that my neighbors don't get to stay because they've lived in these houses that have been households by landlords who we have not held accountable.

And finally, the market improves enough for it to be worth it to them to invest in these houses.

But the people who've lived there all this time don't get the benefit.

And there are real policies and solutions that we can put in place that would slow down this displacement.

One of them is good cause eviction protection, which we have been fighting for for three years.

And finally this year we got it passed, which means that if you are a good tenant, you don't break your lease or pay your rent on time.

You get to stay.

That slows it down because tenants have been left 30 months, you know, or 30 day, leases.

So every, every moment they could be told you have to leave in 30 days.

And that's destabilizing for our families.

If you could imagine if you've got a stable home, if you like, you're turning your key in 30 days.

You have to move what falls apart in your life.

So housing stability is absolutely fundamental.

And, you know, things like, tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, for example, where if you're if you're, you know, if the landlord sells the property, tenants get the right of first refusal.

And if the city comes in with a housing trust fund to give technical and financial assistance, now that abandonment of our city, which the landlords threatened, if we want to, you know, adopt rent control, that now becomes a pathway to homeownership.

And the municipality can have the second right of 50 years or so that we can actually absorb those houses at a fraction of the cost that it costs to build one single family home, you know, and we could ban portfolio sales, which said, you know, landlords can sell these properties 100 properties at a time, which takes it out of the reach of any of our residents.

There's so many things that we could be doing to make housing more affordable.

and people people are on board with that.

They want to see change, and we need it at a very large scale to meet the crisis that we're in.

Three years ago, I begged the mayor, I wrote an official memo, and I begged him, stop discretionary funding.

We have a crisis we need to funnel into our kids and our families.

I teach in the city school district.

I teach social emotional learning.

I have the great honor of earning trust of our kids.

And they tell me what's going on at home.

And it is horrifying.

And many of these issues are rooted in the fact that families don't have what they need.

And all of the things that happen in lives when people are struggling to survive.

And I cannot look them in the eye and say, I didn't try everything I could do to make it better.

Let me get two more questions from listeners.

Steven says, a question for Mary.

Some people worry that the LGBTQ community has been neglected locally and doesn't have much of a voice.

Can you describe your relationship to our community?

Yeah, absolutely.

I have you know, I don't want to say like I have like I have an LGBTQ friend, but, you know, there's many, many members on my campaign, her, gay or trans or lesbian, and also on the sanctuary city legislation that I referenced earlier, we were in close partnership with the trans community, making sure that we are addressing the needs that we are putting forth, the right things that we need to be doing to keep that community safe.

And when we are talking about, you know, what's going on with the immigrants right now, you know that that quote comes to mind all of the time from Nazi Germany.

You know, like, first they came for the trade unionists.

I wasn't a trade unionist.

And then they came for our acts and then they came for Y.

And then when they came for me, there was no one left.

And I think that's why I see Rochester so united around protecting our sanctuary city status, because we know it doesn't stop with the immigrants and it isn't.

You know, the LGBTQ community is next.

And then I think political dissidents are right after that.

But what does that mean?

Lgbtiq community is next?

What are they going to what are the quote unquote, they going to do when they're targeted?

You know, we just saw, was that Philadelphia that the police came into a gay club, for a quote unquote compliance check?

You know, we saw it with Stonewall.

You know, it wasn't that long ago that it was illegal to have a same sex encounter.

we're looking at rapid rollbacks of the practices that we've made in the last decade, you know, few decades, and even women, you know, I think it people think it's so far in, in ancient history, but the 1970s, women couldn't own property without a man.

You know, bro.

V Wade, you know, we're seeing these things.

And if you look at 2025, we don't have to guess where things are going.

and let's let me wrap with this, but 90 seconds, what do you think the economic future of this city is?

I understand there's a lot of talk about the past big three, and maybe that isn't going to get easily replaced, but what's the you can ask me all the time, how are you going to attract new businesses here?

Again?

By investing in our people.

Businesses go where we have a trained workforce and we have lots of companies that are here already that are that there aren't enough employees to hire because we're missing a middle skills.

We have middle skills gap.

So throwing and investing into our people so that they are ready for the kinds of jobs that need to come here.

And if we lure companies here with tax breaks and these, you know, things they're not committed in the second they get a better deal, they're gone.

But when we have the workforce, they're going to come and they're going to stay and they're going to invest in our community.

And Mike, if we could squeeze in one and in the last minute, has the city handled all the issue with the car thefts in the last few years?

Oh my gosh, really?

Have a minute for that, I know.

No, they haven't because we're not addressing the problem.

Even the police chief says we cannot police our way out of this problem.

And if you I have a friend in the detention center and he says that the most common situation is that their parents are working three jobs and they're not home to supervise.

So we have to figure out how can we support these families, the children that are stealing these cars and breaking into them.

They're self-selecting as needing help.

We are not giving it to them.

So, you know, you can make this conversation about, well, what about just these other interventions that are the Jed's program?

That's just inflating the numbers.

I've heard that, you know, there's lots of recidivism, recidivism.

But if you look at we raised we we rose 350% and car thefts 22 to 23, highest in the nation.

If you look at Saint Paul, which is at the bottom, they lowered at 40%.

And what they did is invested in their youth.

They had Uber rides to school and to mental health appointments.

They were proactively looking at kids who might be getting involved in car thefts and giving them interventions and supporting their families.

And that is exactly what we need to do here.

And what is missing.

No youth program should go unfunded.

Mary for Macom Mary Lippincott Mary Looping is the candidate.

She'll be part of our upcoming mayoral debate on May 28th at 8 p.m. with the other candidates Malik Evans, Shashi Sinha, thank you for making time for the program.

Happy to do it.

Rochester City Council member Mary Lupino, candidate for mayor June 24th, is the Democratic primary next month.

More connections coming up in a moment.

And.

This program is a production of WXXI Public Radio.

The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of this station.

Its staff, management, or underwriters.

The broadcast is meant for the private use of our audience, any rebroadcast or use in another medium without expressed written consent of WXXI is strictly prohibited.

Connections with Evan Dawson is available as a podcast.

Just click on the connections link at WXXI news.org.

As