Hoping For An Obama-Style Win, Ellis Chases Jennings In Albany Mayor’s Race
Outspent 20–1 and against odds, up-and-comer puts promising career on the line
Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:58:00
Corey Ellis first heard the phrase in the fires of last year’s presidential primary: “You could run for mayor someday.”
At first blush, the idea seemed far-fetched.
Jerry Jennings has been mayor for 16 years. He has amassed a campaign war chest unmatched by any in Albany’s history. He has trounced even the most credible challengers, such as Assembly Member Jack McEneny, who ran against him in 1997 and won just 39 percent of the vote.
“He hired everything that moved and paid everything that didn’t,” McEneny said of his race against Jennings.
But the buzz among local Obama organizers continued to build. They were hungry for the next ‘inevitable’ race, a way to demonstrate that the Obama formula could be repeated on a local level.
The speculation reached a peak at the Democratic National Convention in August. Patrick Gaspard, the Obama campaign’s political director and a former colleague of Ellis’ from their days as organizers at the healthcare workers’ union 1199/SEIU, found Ellis at the Pepsi Center in Denver and grilled him: “I heard you were thinking about running for mayor.”
And so the idea started to gain momentum.
Ellis, a black, 38-year-old first-term Albany Common Council member and former union organizer, began discussing the possibility of a run against Jennings with local activists and veterans of the organizing world. In addition to working for 1199 in New York City, he had been the political director for David Soares’ upset victory in the 2004 Albany district attorney’s race after moving back home to the city where he spent his childhood.
That campaign was the Working Families Party’s (WFP) first serious entrée into capital district politics. The next year, the labor-backed party turned around and catapulted Ellis into the Council. He was one of three candidates backed by the WFP in 2005, but the only one to win on the WFP line in the general election, defeating the Democratic nominee.
“His approach to the campaign really comes out of that,” said Karen Scharff, the director of the Working Families Party’s capital district chapter.
Now, Ellis finds himself the last insurgent standing in a field that once included as many as half a dozen challengers to Jennings, including the president of the Common Council, Shawn Morris. All sensed an opportunity, but have since begged off challenging the Jennings machine and its massive fund-raising advantage.
Ellis himself is being outspent 20–1. Aside from some help from the public relations firm Berlin Rosen, he is handling the politics himself, scrawling out electoral strategy on piles of print-outs in a dusty campaign office on Central Avenue, just beyond the Capitol building, squeezed in between two vacant buildings.
Even his campaign manager, Justin Mikulka, is a political novice, an engineer and small-business owner who was drawn to Ellis’ message.
“We couldn’t afford to hire somebody in February,” Mikulka said, explaining the decision to install him in the job full-time. “By process of elimination, someone needed to do the work, so I just stepped into the role.”
By all accounts, Ellis is likely forfeiting what might otherwise have been a bright future in politics. He is seen as one of a new generation of “post-racial” black candidates, who can appeal to Albany’s historically disenfranchised minority precincts while also reaching into the wealthy upper wards. He is giving up his Council seat to run, but even if he were not, people expect Jennings to seek retribution if and when a political opportunity arises.
“There are consequences,” McEneny said of running against the Jennings Machine.
The year after McEneny lost his primary against Jennings, 40 elected officials in the area backed a primary challenger for his Assembly seat. Popular in his district, with several terms in the Assembly under his belt, McEneny kept his opponent at bay.
Jennings, in an interview, dismissed the notion of a machine ruling imperiously over Albany politics.
“I don’t want to hear about a machine,” he said, brushing off the idea. “We don’t have a machine here.”
Jennings added that while criticizing his base of support may be easy, Ellis’ own motivations in running for mayor after less than a full term in the Council had received little scrutiny.
“You might want to ask him who is advising him and pushing him to run,” he said, calling Ellis a political novice. “Corey doesn’t remember when the projects, as they were called, in north Albany—which are now beautiful condos and homes up there—existed, I don’t think.”
There is underlying resentment, the out-migration of the city’s middle class, the erosion of Albany’s tax base and the deterioration of the city’s housing stock (there are more than 600 vacant buildings). Despite all this, allegiances to Jennings and his administration run strong.
Ellis represents the city’s most depressed ward, which includes neighborhoods like Arbor Hill, where vacant homes are as frequent as convenience stores or public housing projects.
“It’s been a transition for a lot of people in my ward, because they were used to going to their Council member and saying, ‘Hey, I need a job,’” he said. “So with a new Council member challenging that system, and not being able to pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey, Joe or Mary needs a job, can you find them a place to work?’ … It’s been difficult.”
As Ellis has discovered, Jennings’ campaign runs as strongly on personal promises as it does on mountains of campaign cash and labor endorsements.
Ellis encounters them everywhere—even among voters who want him to win.
One, Louis Wood, lives in a walk-up on Washington Avenue, right across from the park at the heart of the city, where a sizeable portion of the city’s young professionals and college-educated middle class live. Ellis is targeting them as prime potential supporters.
On a warm Thursday night in Albany, Ellis knocked on Wood’s door.
Most people were out enjoying the 80-degree weather, and even those who were home seemed otherwise disposed. (As Ellis, banging on the window of one such apartment, put it: “They’re that drunk? They can’t be that drunk. It’s six o’clock.”)
Wood answered, and began by complaining that he had tried unsuccessfully to volunteer for Ellis’ campaign, rattling off the names of groups that have endorsed him.
“I talked to Working Families, I talked to Citizen Action, I talked to you directly,” he said. “Nobody ever got back to me.”
Ellis tried to put out the fire, offering Wood the chance to enlist.
But it was too late.
“I’ve already told Jerry I’m supporting him for one more term,” Wood said, urging Ellis to move on to undecided households. “You need to work on that.”
Ellis descended the walkway. The canvasser accompanying him, also a former Obama organizer, marked Wood as a “no,” so that other volunteers would not mistakenly call the house or drop off literature. Resources are precious in this homestretch before the primary.
The canvasser, Karla, sighed.
“There’s a lot of people in bed with Jerry,” she said, crossing off names with a pencil, “so to speak.”
--
ABOVE: First-term Albany councilman and former Obama organizer Corey Ellis is challenging four-term incumbent Jerry Jennings in the Albany mayoral primary. (left) Jerry Jennings’ political operation is the stuff of legend in the state capital. (right)
At first blush, the idea seemed far-fetched.
Jerry Jennings has been mayor for 16 years. He has amassed a campaign war chest unmatched by any in Albany’s history. He has trounced even the most credible challengers, such as Assembly Member Jack McEneny, who ran against him in 1997 and won just 39 percent of the vote.“He hired everything that moved and paid everything that didn’t,” McEneny said of his race against Jennings.
But the buzz among local Obama organizers continued to build. They were hungry for the next ‘inevitable’ race, a way to demonstrate that the Obama formula could be repeated on a local level.
The speculation reached a peak at the Democratic National Convention in August. Patrick Gaspard, the Obama campaign’s political director and a former colleague of Ellis’ from their days as organizers at the healthcare workers’ union 1199/SEIU, found Ellis at the Pepsi Center in Denver and grilled him: “I heard you were thinking about running for mayor.”
And so the idea started to gain momentum.
Ellis, a black, 38-year-old first-term Albany Common Council member and former union organizer, began discussing the possibility of a run against Jennings with local activists and veterans of the organizing world. In addition to working for 1199 in New York City, he had been the political director for David Soares’ upset victory in the 2004 Albany district attorney’s race after moving back home to the city where he spent his childhood.
That campaign was the Working Families Party’s (WFP) first serious entrée into capital district politics. The next year, the labor-backed party turned around and catapulted Ellis into the Council. He was one of three candidates backed by the WFP in 2005, but the only one to win on the WFP line in the general election, defeating the Democratic nominee.
“His approach to the campaign really comes out of that,” said Karen Scharff, the director of the Working Families Party’s capital district chapter.
Now, Ellis finds himself the last insurgent standing in a field that once included as many as half a dozen challengers to Jennings, including the president of the Common Council, Shawn Morris. All sensed an opportunity, but have since begged off challenging the Jennings machine and its massive fund-raising advantage.
Ellis himself is being outspent 20–1. Aside from some help from the public relations firm Berlin Rosen, he is handling the politics himself, scrawling out electoral strategy on piles of print-outs in a dusty campaign office on Central Avenue, just beyond the Capitol building, squeezed in between two vacant buildings.
Even his campaign manager, Justin Mikulka, is a political novice, an engineer and small-business owner who was drawn to Ellis’ message.
“We couldn’t afford to hire somebody in February,” Mikulka said, explaining the decision to install him in the job full-time. “By process of elimination, someone needed to do the work, so I just stepped into the role.”
By all accounts, Ellis is likely forfeiting what might otherwise have been a bright future in politics. He is seen as one of a new generation of “post-racial” black candidates, who can appeal to Albany’s historically disenfranchised minority precincts while also reaching into the wealthy upper wards. He is giving up his Council seat to run, but even if he were not, people expect Jennings to seek retribution if and when a political opportunity arises.
“There are consequences,” McEneny said of running against the Jennings Machine.
The year after McEneny lost his primary against Jennings, 40 elected officials in the area backed a primary challenger for his Assembly seat. Popular in his district, with several terms in the Assembly under his belt, McEneny kept his opponent at bay.
Jennings, in an interview, dismissed the notion of a machine ruling imperiously over Albany politics.
“I don’t want to hear about a machine,” he said, brushing off the idea. “We don’t have a machine here.”
Jennings added that while criticizing his base of support may be easy, Ellis’ own motivations in running for mayor after less than a full term in the Council had received little scrutiny.
“You might want to ask him who is advising him and pushing him to run,” he said, calling Ellis a political novice. “Corey doesn’t remember when the projects, as they were called, in north Albany—which are now beautiful condos and homes up there—existed, I don’t think.”
There is underlying resentment, the out-migration of the city’s middle class, the erosion of Albany’s tax base and the deterioration of the city’s housing stock (there are more than 600 vacant buildings). Despite all this, allegiances to Jennings and his administration run strong.
Ellis represents the city’s most depressed ward, which includes neighborhoods like Arbor Hill, where vacant homes are as frequent as convenience stores or public housing projects.
“It’s been a transition for a lot of people in my ward, because they were used to going to their Council member and saying, ‘Hey, I need a job,’” he said. “So with a new Council member challenging that system, and not being able to pick up the phone and say, ‘Hey, Joe or Mary needs a job, can you find them a place to work?’ … It’s been difficult.”
As Ellis has discovered, Jennings’ campaign runs as strongly on personal promises as it does on mountains of campaign cash and labor endorsements.
Ellis encounters them everywhere—even among voters who want him to win.
One, Louis Wood, lives in a walk-up on Washington Avenue, right across from the park at the heart of the city, where a sizeable portion of the city’s young professionals and college-educated middle class live. Ellis is targeting them as prime potential supporters.
On a warm Thursday night in Albany, Ellis knocked on Wood’s door.
Most people were out enjoying the 80-degree weather, and even those who were home seemed otherwise disposed. (As Ellis, banging on the window of one such apartment, put it: “They’re that drunk? They can’t be that drunk. It’s six o’clock.”)
Wood answered, and began by complaining that he had tried unsuccessfully to volunteer for Ellis’ campaign, rattling off the names of groups that have endorsed him.
“I talked to Working Families, I talked to Citizen Action, I talked to you directly,” he said. “Nobody ever got back to me.”
Ellis tried to put out the fire, offering Wood the chance to enlist.
But it was too late.
“I’ve already told Jerry I’m supporting him for one more term,” Wood said, urging Ellis to move on to undecided households. “You need to work on that.”
Ellis descended the walkway. The canvasser accompanying him, also a former Obama organizer, marked Wood as a “no,” so that other volunteers would not mistakenly call the house or drop off literature. Resources are precious in this homestretch before the primary.
The canvasser, Karla, sighed.
“There’s a lot of people in bed with Jerry,” she said, crossing off names with a pencil, “so to speak.”
--
ABOVE: First-term Albany councilman and former Obama organizer Corey Ellis is challenging four-term incumbent Jerry Jennings in the Albany mayoral primary. (left) Jerry Jennings’ political operation is the stuff of legend in the state capital. (right)
