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Hull takes aim at minor party lines
Schenectady challenger planning write-in primary
By LAUREN STANFORTH Staff writer
Published 12:01 a.m., Monday, August 1, 2011

SCHENECTADY -- Former Union College president and mayoral candidate Roger Hull has decided to challenge acting Mayor Democrat Gary McCarthy in a September primary by forcing a write-in candidacy on three minor party lines.

Hull knows the move will likely end in defeat -- after all, McCarthy, who is also City Council president, is already endorsed and on the ballot in November on the Conservative, Working Families and Independency Party lines.

But Hull said he sees it as an opportunity to campaign more before the general election and prove that he's serious in his quest to overthrow Schenectady's dominant party.

"We are clearly the underdog," said Hull, who is running on the Republican line in November and is gathering signatures to run under a third party of his own creation, the Alliance Party. Hull is not enrolled in a political party. "You want to have as much exposure as you can and ring as many doorbells as you can."

The Alliance Party has filed what are called opportunity to ballot petitions that allow write-in candidates on the Conservative, Working Families and Independence party lines for mayor and City Council races on primary day Sept. 13. The Alliance Party is also running four City Council candidates in the general election. Hull's group also got a primary write-in spot for the Green Party, but it's unclear if he'll be able to use it considering there is no apparent Green Party in Schenectady County.

Hull recognizes it's not only hard to go against a party's endorsed candidate, but to do so against political groups that are so strongly allied with one faction. In Schenectady, Conservatives generally are police union members and Independence Party members are firefighters unions that have already thrown their support to the candidate who is running the city. McCarthy, a Schenectady County district attorney's office investigator, stepped in to lead the city after former Mayor Brian U. Stratton left to become head of the state Canal Corp. in April.

"Not only does one go against the unions, but one has to be a write-in," Hull said. "But the important thing is getting the opportunity to go out and meet more people and publicize what we're doing."

McCarthy said that it's odd that Hull is attempting to gather as many party lines as possible, considering that the retired college president first touted himself as not wedded to any party. "I would call it an odd progression from an inexperienced candidate," McCarthy said.

Hull has shown muscle in the race in the form of campaign dollars. Hull had $57,522 in the bank when campaign filings were due July 15, compared with McCarthy's $26,843.

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Hull’s Alliance Party meets filing deadline
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
By Michael Lamendola (Contact)
Gazette Reporter

SCHENECTADY — Roger Hull’s mayoral campaign submitted twice the number of required signatures by Tuesday’s filing deadline to create his independent Alliance Party with the Schenectady County Board of Elections. Hull’s campaign filed 1,489 signatures by the 5 p.m. deadline — the campaign needed 631.
Hull’s campaign manager, Brian Young, said the campaign filed more than the required signatures to fend off any challenge by supporters of Gary McCarthy.
McCarthy is the Democratic candidate for mayor.
He is serving as acting mayor until the November election, following the resignation this spring of Brian Stratton, who took a job with the administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Unless the petitions are invalidated, Hull will have two lines in November’s election: Republican Party and Alliance Party.............................>>>>..................>>>>..................http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2011/aug/24/0824_alliance/

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SCHENECTADY
2 men, 2 viewpoints, 1 goal
Mayoral hopefuls see city’s present, future differently
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

The two men running for mayor this year have very different concepts of what is wrong with the city’s neighborhoods.
Gary McCarthy, the Democrat serving as acting mayor, sees a breakdown in society caused by a lack of community. Getting to the root of that loss by bringing in owner-occupants will, he believes, stabilize the neighborhoods.
    Roger Hull, the founder of the Alliance Party who has also been endorsed by Republicans, sees hundreds of boarded-up, abandoned buildings that bring down property values, encourage crime and discourage neighbors from maintaining their own houses. Reducing the housing stock to fi t Schenectady’s much smaller population will, he believes, give the neighborhoods new life.
    Residents interviewed over the course of the past three months for the Gazette’s series on city neighborhoods agree with both. Many mourn a community they say no longer exists and complain about the blight that can now be found in every neighborhood.
    But both situations have existed for decades; the real question is whether the candidates can solve either problem.
    Hull, the former president of Union College, plans to tackle it from an academic perspective.
    “This may be politically incorrect, but I don’t have all the answers,” he said.
    He’s researching policies from other cities to find proven solutions. Nine months since he started running for office, he’s still searching for the best answers.
    “Don’t reinvent the wheel,” he said. “You seek out best practices. While I don’t have all the answers, I’ll get the answers.”
DOING MORE
    So far, his answers rely heavily on the Metroplex Development Authority, which Hull indirectly helped to create. Hull and Price Chopper CEO Neil Golub created Schenectady 2000, an organization devoted to rebuilding the downtown, and that initiative led to Metroplex.
    Hull says it is now time for Metroplex to do more for Schenectady. He wants the agency to spend $1.5 million to demolish about 75 buildings, as well as fund a graffiti-removal team, a police grant writer and a monitor for the city’s poorlyadvertised crime tips line. Hull wants to advertise it heavily and offer rewards.
    The graffiti-removal team is also critical to fighting crime, he said.
    “When you allow graffiti, when you allow the broken window to stay … you affect attitudes and approaches,” he said, citing the “broken window theory” which suggests that criminals are more likely to target areas that appear unkempt.
    Metroplex chairman Ray Gillen has said his economic development agency will stay out of police matters, and he’s questioned the wisdom of demolition.
    Legally, Metroplex is allowed to demolish commercial buildings, and can take down residential buildings in commercial corridors for economic development purposes, including the creation of a parking lot.
    But demolition would reduce the tax base. To avoid that, Metroplex only approves demolitions when a new developer has agreed to build there.
    Hull said the buildings must come down now.
    “Stop waiting,” he said. “You’ve got boarded-up buildings that are eyesores. The first thing I think you should do is take down buildings that are beyond repair.”
    He’s frustrated that it hasn’t happened already, arguing that the Democrats made “dumb decisions” on spending when the money could have gone to demolition.
    He’s particularly disgusted by the $20.4 million Bureau of General Services complex on Foster Avenue.
    “There’s no question you needed a building,” he said, but argued that if the city had approved a far smaller project, there would have been enough money left over to demolish the 700 worst buildings in the city.
    “By making that decision, you preclude other options. There needs to be a plan and there needs to be a listing of priorities,” he said.
    Knocking down buildings won’t be enough to reduce the city’s housing. Hull also wants to find ways to turn many twofamily houses into single-family houses.
    Many of the two-families have been turned into rental property in recent decades. They were built as homes for two or more generations, with elderly parents living downstairs while their children started families upstairs. Now some renters don’t even know who lives on the other floor.
    Other houses simply haven’t sold, and sit vacant and abandoned for years. On some streets, neighbors said vagrants, prostitutes and drug addicts are squatting in the vacant houses. Other buildings stay vacant — but neighbors say they’re tormented by pests that they believe are multiplying amid garbage, backed-up sewage and water leaks in the abandoned houses. It’s a big problem: according to the 2010 Census, there are 3,462 vacant units in the city.
    “We’re still a city built for 90,000 [people] and we have 66,135,” Hull said. “You have to deal with the fact that we have excess housing. It leads to crime.” ................>>>>..................>>>>.....................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00100&AppName=1

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Hull wasn’t such a hot
leader for Union College

    The springing up of yard signs heralds the beginning of the serious political season. The red signs of Roger Hull reveal the reality of his run as “Republican lite.”
    They also include a slogan: “A Proven Leader.” I think we should examine this a bit, to assess its truth value. Fortunately, there is a record. A few years after his arrival as president of Union College (leave out the first few because they might be due to residual effects from his predecessor), Union’s ranking among small liberal arts colleges was 31 in an analysis by U.S. News and World Report. By the time Roger departed, after 15 years, the ranking had fallen to 39-40. This is probably not the kind of proven leadership Schenectady needs.
    Schenectady has made great strides in the past several years, with competent, proven leadership. It would be a mistake to exchange that for questionable leadership for the next several years.

    GEORGE H. SHAW
    Schenectady
The writer is a Union professor emeritus.

Quoted from GrahamBonnet

The halcyon days of the 1970s-80s had come to end for Schenectady and Union College when Hull showed up. His vibrant leadership and sometimes brash/CEO style was sometimes at loggerheads with some of the more staid and elderly faculty who had gotten accustomed to the laconic style of President Morris. I am being polite. Nonetheless, Shaw wrote a nice "payback" letter to hurt Roger with. I can tell you that if Union College's and Skidmore College's positions were geographically reversed, Union would probably rank above number 10. The tremendous challenge of attracting undergrads to SCHENECTADY in this day and age is monumental to say the least. Harvard and Princeton would struggle in that area if they were located in the City proper. And that you can bank on.