Tribunal Response

Well, Bob Duffy is a Tribune.

Rochester's mayor graduated more than 30 years ago as a Monroe Community College Tribune (the name of the school's sports teams.) But just as a Roman magistrate from the plebian order would do, Duffy is also protecting the people who put him in City Hall from arbitrary actions.

Like the travesty that was the search for his alma mater's next president.

Duffy fumed before the media about Monroe Community College's clunker of an effort to choose the college's next leader, one that collapsed under what the mayor calls "exactly the type of infighting that makes me sick."

The stalemate involving MCC's one Conservative and nine Republican trustees exposed a sloppiness in the execution of what, for the GOP, was expected to be an otherwise routine patronage assignment. Even amid the protests of students and faculty who saw the late addition of two "hometown favorites" as a corruption of the process, Monroe County still gets to make the call. Monroe is still being run by a Republican majority.

Instead, the board split on former legislature majority leader Bill Smith and restauranteur and Republican stalwart Dennis Kessler. We're still waiting to learn exactly why. Business (GOP) leaders in the community demanded Kessler get the job in a revote. County Executive Maggie Brooks called for the resignation of any MCC trustee "who couldn't commit to a non-political, thorough search for a new president."

And then the Tribune sounded.

Duffy had heard Kessler could not swing a majority on the board because he's too closely linked.... to Duffy, who once upon a time before the prospect of the mayor's job moved him to switch party's in Democrat-dominated Rochester was... a Republican.

"This is the kind of politics that has strangled Rochester and Monroe County and prevents it from growing," said the mayor.

Strangulation by stalemate. It has made Duffy mad enough to threaten to pull his support from the local GOP's prized (Trojan horse?) Renaissance Square. The mayor plans to get Governor Paterson involved in moving their party (the one that runs New York State) to ensure a cleaner presidential search at MCC.

"If Renaissance Square is in any way going to erode into a partisan project, then people know very quickly what my position will be on that one."

The Tribune has spoken; against "personal and political manipulation," and in favor of openness for the community's sake. It comes at a time when his party has political stature to affect the matter.

Yet those who served under him in Rochester's police department will tell you Bob Duffy has long been a fan of the stalemate.

In overseeing the administration of the city's largest department, he would frequently draw out investigations and research into subject matter and incidents until an "appropriate" outcome arrived. These are things spoken to me by people who identified the delays as Duffy's way of controlling the situation and moving the answers to the questions before him in his favor. It is a transparent management style that rarely sees the light of day; the sort the record shows to be thorough and even. What some would call brilliantly political.

It fulfills the definition of tribune and elevates that person in the eye of those he serves as sacrosanct. It allows Duffy to make the sort of political threat he made Thursday and receive head-nodding approval. What is expected from leadership.

Then again, anyone who attacked the tribune could also be put to death.