Let's Make a Deal: Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren to Resign December 1!

And lo, there shall be an ending!

Yesterday (October 4, 2021), in a courtroom in Rochester, New York, Mayor Lovely Warren and the legal system played "Let's Make a Deal."

The mayor and her two fellow accused pled "Guilty" to knowingly violating the New York State election campaign finance laws. The court then dropped four criminal charges against the mayor and her fellows.

In return, the mayor announced that she would resign on December 1, thirty days prior to the end of her term.

If not an example of justice, it certainly looks like a pretty good deal and it doesn't involve jail time.

And she gets to keep her license to practice law, since she pled guilty only to a misdemeanor and the court accepted it.

She also keeps her pension. And the ability to run for public office.

That's some punishment, right? 

Not really.

As I have frequently stated, she's like a cat, and has landed once again on somebody else's feet. Despite everything laid at her door, somebody is still protecting her, and it ain't God.

Thus came an end to accusations of illegality regarding the finances of Mayor Warren's election campaign of 2017, more than four years after it was first made.

It seems ironic, though.

She keeps her license to practice law, but her reputation is a shambles by pleading that she knew she was violating the law.

Who would trust her to represent them in the future, knowing that her claims of truthfulness and honesty were tattered by her own admission of guilt?

Admittedly, there are plenty of criminals and con artists out there that prefer the ministrations of shysters in legal matters, but most people don't.

For many, it produced a sigh of relief, if not downright jubilation, that she was leaving City Hall before the end of her term. She made plenty of enemies in her eight years on the mayoral throne, especially in the police department, where her anti-cop attitude made RPD's job even more nerve wracking, more difficult, frustrating and embarrassing.

It signifies the end of eight years of lies, deceptions, incompetence, arrogance and an all too frequent playing of the race and sex cards, coupled with bread and circuses to keep certain segments of Rochester's population quiet and asking for more. It signifies and end to her rhetoric and her impossible promises that went largely unrealized.

And if no worse than her immediate predecessors on the mayoral throne, Mayor Warren was certainly no better.

Justin Roj, her current Communications Czar, will not be able to spin this in her favor.

And yet she will still be there for another two months.

Why so long? She hasn't been particularly active, effective or visible in governing Rochester for months. Perhaps she wants to make trouble for her successor. Perhaps she cannot bear to give up what she has clawed her way to the top of Rochester politics for: Power.

Mayor Warren's resignation and her final departure from City Hall is the final curtain falling on the act of Team Gantt, of which she is the last survivor, or nearly so.

Still, her departure from City Hall cannot be likened to a breath of fresh air blowing away the musty, neurotic atmosphere she and her team created there: Her fourth deputy mayor, James Smith, will act as mayor for the remaining twenty-nine days of her term before handing over the keys to Mayor-elect presumptive Malik Evans.

He certainly won't attempt anything funny at City Hall, good or bad.

Smith was previously an operative for the Republican Party in Monroe County and then Mayor Warren's second Communications Czar after the rather mysterious and unceremonious departure of her first.

Smith is no stranger to controversy. More than a decade ago, Smith was arrested for his part in the ROBUTRAD scandal. He beat the rap and was acquitted for lack of evidence.

Perhaps that's why she hired him...for luck.

Some people keep a rabbit's foot as a luck token, and rub it frequently.

And it will be Smith's job to deal with the falling debris of the Warren administration for a whopping twenty-nine days, at Christmas-time, where nobody at City Hall is concerned with much more than the seasonal parties they will be going to.

Well, Smith will make one helluva Santa Claus.

And thus will be coming to an end an administration begun in hope and promise for the first Black female mayor of Rochester, not because of racism and sexism but because of the mayor's own hubris.

But it was coming to an end, anyway, since she lost the Democratic primary.

This ending would have had more significance if it had occurred years earlier, when the accusations first came to light. Dragging on for more than four years, the result was an anti climax that some will be dissatisfied with and most will "ho hum" it.

And what happens to outgoing Mayor Warren now?

Perhaps she can negotiate a lucrative "Movie of the Week" deal about her administration, of its rise and dramatic fall.

Now THAT would be interesting! And the Duchess of Suffolk IS always on the look out for well-paying acting jobs these days.

***The photos were from the Democrat and Chronicle***