Monroe County is Blue
Let's start acting like it.
If there’s one big takeaway from Democrats’ outstanding performance on Election Night, it’s that Monroe County is not a purple county.
It hasn’t been for a while. Republicans and Conservatives combined make up only 27% of enrollment, but that hasn’t stopped Congressman Joe Morelle and County Executive Adam Bello from pandering to the right.
Morelle has voted for the Laken Riley Act, voted to thank ICE, and even voted to honor Charlie Kirk. Both Morelle and Bello carefully avoid criticizing Trump’s abuses against immigrants. Bello, while appointing a Conservative member to an influential top county post, can’t even say Trump’s name.
And together, they helped engineer the Conservative Party endorsement and ballot line for Deputy County Executive Jeff McCann in his race for Greece supervisor. Sheriff Todd Baxter, who ran unopposed and didn’t need any strategic advantage, also accepted the line, I believe to give McCann cover.
No Democrat should ever run on the pro-Trump, right wing Conservative Party line. The party is anti-reproductive rights, anti-LGBTQ rights, anti-union, anti-DEI, and anti-green jobs. You can’t support both the Democratic and Conservative parties.
McCann won handily. And he didn’t even need the 1,600+ votes he got on the Conservative Party line. The theory was that the Democratic brand wasn’t strong enough, that he needed that line to attract enough right-leaning voters to win. But despite more Republicans voting than Democrats in Greece, McCann still prevailed. A house-cleaning in Greece was long overdue, and voters there didn’t need much convincing, especially against a weak opponent tied to the old regime.
That unnecessary Conservative Party gambit came at a steep price. Democrats essentially traded a seat on the Monroe County Water Authority board so McCann could get the endorsement. For the past year, I’ve been the only one raising alarms about this backroom deal, which involved reappointing Scott Nasca—a Conservative Party official — as board chair. Then, during the Greece campaign, a letter surfaced showing that Conservative Party leader Richard Bianchi resigned in November 2024 over McCann’s endorsement. The timing makes it clear: this arrangement was in the works long before it became public. When McCann takes office, we may find out about other promises to his Conservative Party friends.
What was gained by this blatant corruption? Nothing.
What was lost? More than a board seat. Our leaders revealed themselves as craven, cynical, and unprincipled — willing to sell out their own values for the possibility of a political edge.
Will they learn anything? Probably not. They won the race that mattered most to them tonight, and winning is all that matters.
So, they’ll keep pandering to the right, even as voters make it clear they’re firmly on the left. Voters actually have no problem voting for Democrats — on the Democratic line.
Monroe County is blue.
Not because of backroom strategy or Conservative Party games — but because voters are done with extremism and ready for basic decency. Bello and Morelle can keep cozying up to the Conservatives like it’s still 1995. But the voters have moved on.
Whether our party leaders ever will is another story.
Rachel, you are the first person to make sense of what is going on in Monroe County politically- at least for me. You have shined a light on some of the dark places that needed to be called out. I consider myself to be an aware democrat voter, but I really didn’t see the true picture. I really have to thank you for speaking out with clarity about what has been going on behind the scenes, behind closed doors. I’m in my eighth decade of life, and I recognize more than ever that citizens of our county and all the way up to federal must be vigilant. Labels like Democrat and Republican can be horrifically deceiving. We have to put a magnifying glass to anyone who runs for public office.