Takeaways from Rochester's Primary
Low turnout, missed chances for progressives, and what it will take to change the game
With fewer than 15,000 voters participating, Rochester just experienced its lowest turnout in a mayoral primary since the city began electing mayors in the 1980s.
Here’s how this year compares to past primaries:
1993: 22,000+ voted1
2005: 35.5% turnout (21,581 voted)
2011 (Special): 27.9% turnout (25,726 voted — all parties could vote)
2013: 22.6% turnout (15,044 voted)
2017: 30.6% turnout (20,632 voted)
2021: 28.4% turnout (20,496 voted)
2025: 20% turnout (13,437 voted)2
Let’s be clear—it wasn’t just the heat.
Yes, extreme heat likely deterred some voters on primary day. But we knew turnout would be low well before anyone checked the forecast.
Campaigns rely on what's called a “prime universe”—a list of likely voters based on past primary participation. These are the people most likely to show up. Campaigns usually don’t spend significant resources chasing “nonprimes,” or low-propensity voters, because the return on investment is low.3
I helped two candidates build a 2025 prime universe, and it became obvious there weren’t enough high-frequency voters left to match 2021’s turnout. Roughly 4,000 people who voted in the last mayoral primary were gone from the Democratic rolls. They may have moved, died, or switched parties—but the key is they weren’t replaced with new consistent voters. Turnout in recent elections just hasn’t produced enough new “primes.”
We saw this trend continue through early voting. By the end of that period, early and mail ballots were down 20% compared to 2021. That signaled a final turnout of around 15,000—or less.
Progressives Maintained the Status Quo
The good news for progressives: despite a strong challenge from the “Mayor’s Slate,” they held onto two of five at-large City Council seats. Stanley Martin not only won re-election—she received the most votes of any candidate, a clear sign that many city voters value her voice and her consistent stance on the issues. Chiara “Kee Kee” Smith also won a seat, making her the second progressive elected. (She effectively replaces Kim Smith, who declined to seek reelection.)
The bad news: progressives made no gains.
The Working Families Party (WFP) was largely absent this primary season. The party declined to endorse Mary Lupien for mayor, despite her long-standing leadership in Rochester’s progressive movement and deep ties to the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party.4 WFP also appeared to put little effort into supporting its endorsed Council candidates, contributing to a scattered and underpowered progressive campaign.
By contrast, the People’s Slate—made up of Martin, Smith, and Kevin Stewart—ran an organized campaign with strong messaging and visible outreach. Voters saw multiple mailers, and there was a ground game. Their effort paid off: two of the three won seats, and Stewart came in sixth place.
It raises a fair question: what if progressives had united behind Lupien and run a full, coordinated slate of five Council candidates?
Would it have changed the outcome? Maybe not enough to win the mayor’s race—but the unified message and shared resources could have given Lupien a stronger showing and potentially blocked a third seat for the Mayor’s Slate.
A Predictable Establishment Victory
Though I supported Mary Lupien—and was the only elected official to do so openly—there was never much doubt she faced an uphill battle.
Malik Evans is a status quo mayor. I find that approach uninspiring and even harmful, but for many voters, the basics are covered: the garbage gets picked up, the streets get plowed, and he doesn’t rock the boat. In that context, it’s hard to convince people to take a risk on change.
Evans – backed by many entities and people with business before the city – also outspent Lupien three to one, yet she still pulled in a third of the vote. That’s not nothing. (For comparison: have you ever seen someone spend $100,000 and get fewer than 1,500 votes? Looking at you, Shashi Sinha…)
Going into the race, Lupien also faced the possibility that Evans had consolidated the Black vote —a powerful base in a Democratic primary. The city is roughly evenly split between Black and white residents (40% Black, 40% white, 20% Hispanic), but Black voters make up a larger share of registered Democrats, while white voters tend to turn out at higher rates. That dynamic helped Evans in 2021, when he and Lovely Warren split the Black vote and the white vote pushed him to victory. We don’t have precinct-level results yet, but Evans likely decisively won the Black vote, and got a big share of white voters, too.
This doesn’t mean racial polarization is a factor in every race or can’t be overcome – but citywide candidates ignore these dynamics at their peril.
Dwindling Primes
The low turnout wasn’t just about a mayoral race many assumed was a foregone conclusion. It also reflects a deeper issue: the shrinking pool of “prime” voters. Roughly 4,000 people who voted in the 2021 mayoral primary were not on the rolls in 2025—and they weren’t replaced by new, high-frequency voters.
Turning someone into a prime voter isn’t easy. It takes sustained organizing, intentional outreach, and a commitment to voter registration—not just during election season, but year-round.
The late Assemblyman David Gantt understood this better than anyone. On random Saturdays, he’d send canvassers out just to register voters. His turnout machine was legendary. He didn’t just rely on the existing electorate—he built his own. He had lists of people he could reliably turn out for himself and his slate. That’s how he built power. No one gave it to him. He earned it.
Today’s Black elected officials in Rochester don’t have that kind of operation—because they don’t need it. Evans and Assemblymember Demond Meeks are part of the mainline Democratic machine. And as long as they can keep winning with the existing, dwindling prime universe, there’s no incentive to expand it. Progressives deserve fault for not doing this work, as well.
That leads to two observations. First: someone could organize new prime voters—and shock the system at the ballot box. That could look like the multi-racial coalition we saw in Zohran Mamdani’s New York City campaign or the Gantt-style organization of the Black electorate. Second: Rochester’s low-turnout primaries underscore the need for more inclusive models of democracy. When the electorate is this narrow, representative outcomes are far from guaranteed.5
The Zohran Effect
I’m worried the Rochester Establishment will brush off Mamdani’s epic victory in New York City. But they shouldn’t. Mamdani sent a former governor—who once led by 40 points in the polls—packing. It was a political earthquake, and the tremors should be felt well beyond his district.
Winning is everything—and in Rochester, the Establishment won. They overwhelmed challengers with money and leaned heavily on the power of incumbency (the mayor’s communications office might as well have been a campaign shop). They also stuck to a familiar playbook: positioning themselves as the only ones qualified to govern. Mary Lupien struggled to convince enough voters that her vision was both bold and workable. That task became even harder as Mayor Evans—backed by Councilmember Mitch Gruber—worked to frame her as naive and unfit to manage city government.
I call this the “adults in the room” tactic: dismissing transformational ideas as unrealistic and branding the people who propose them as unserious, simply because they challenge entrenched power. These “adults in the room” love to say we can’t afford bold policies—unless the spending benefits their friends and pet projects.
Voters in New York City rejected that frame. They embraced Mamdani and his vision. That result should unsettle Democratic establishments everywhere, which have long assumed voters share their cynicism.
Could a Mamdani-style campaign succeed in Rochester? Absolutely—but it would require building coalitions that don’t currently exist, and doing the extraordinarily hard, unglamorous work of engaging an electorate that’s been ignored or written off. This primary season offered real lessons on how to start that work—and I have no doubt someone will eventually try.
A Final Thought
I want to close by thanking Mary Lupien for giving Rochester voters a choice. Running against the machine is incredibly hard, and she did it with courage and conviction. She inspired a grassroots campaign fueled by volunteers and small donors. She spoke clearly and passionately about the ways our city’s policies are failing too many people.
I loved her message: that we need to invest in us. That simple phrase captured so much about what’s possible when we prioritize people over politics as usual. I’m grateful her voice will remain on City Council—because we still need it.
The Monroe County BOE website does not have results or enrollment statistics going back that far. I looked up old newspaper articles to find out how many people voted in 1993.
These are unofficial results from election night, and don’t include all mail ballots. The final tally will still be under 15,000 votes.
Data from my previous elections shows a 70% of prime voters I identified as favorable to me ended up voting in the primary, while only 15% of nonprime voters did. That 15% is still higher than the nonprime electorate as a whole, but it’s awfully low considering that they received mail, calls and other GOTV efforts. This is why candidates, especially those with limited resources tend to only focus on primes.
Meanwhile, the WFP endorsed in Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany and New York City.
I co-authored this piece following the 2021 election about reforms that could be implemented to increase voter participation.
Last thing: I want to challenge the line about how “today’s black elected officials” lack operation. While I agree that Evans and Meeks lack much, I don’t think it’s fair to make such a generalization about all “black elected officials.” It’s not a race divide, it’s about class, status, and their campaign donor bases above all. After all, it is Black candidates who gave us progressive victories, too! This generalized statement about Black politicians feels unfair :(
Also seems we had a big incumbency advantage here! Re: some voters must have supported both Malik and Stanley