Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. Today we're bringing you the second of our series of interviews with the mayoral candidates for the city of Syracuse. My guest is Tim Rudd, the former Syracuse City budget director and city councilor-at-large, who's running as an independent on a line named Transparency and Accountability. I'd like our listeners to note that we made an effort to invite Alfonso Davis, the other independent candidate, to join this conversation, but he declined to be interviewed in a joint fashion. I do plan to conduct an interview with the Democratic nominee, Sharon Owens, in the coming months. But today, it's Mr. Rudd's turn, welcome to the program.
Tim Rudd: Thank you for having me.
GR: Well, thanks for making the time, we do appreciate it. So let me just start with kind of what may have been the start of your campaign. You've been in the media, you were in the media with some pretty deep criticisms of the Walsh administration. Just, if you could, I know you could speak the entire time about this, but in a nutshell, what are your main criticisms of the way the Walsh administration has used the past eight years?
TR: Well, I think there's, the Walsh administration prioritizes their narrative over telling the truth, over acknowledging things that are problems and trying to improve them. And I think there's a steep cost for that. And I think we see it in many ways.
GR: So give me some of the most important ways in which they've not told the truth.
TR: Well, I mean, I think it's, we're getting to the point where enough time has passed where it's starting to be interesting to look at my announcement and all this. Like just the other day, the Walsh administration went before the city council, I was the budget director, but I also got elected citywide to the city council eight years ago, so I was the finance chair on the council for the first three years of the Walsh administration before I became his budget director, and just this week, the council brought an item for $900,000 to buy and get a new consultant and a new software company for an IT project for payroll modernization, which, ironically, was initially funded through a grant that I helped write the request to the Financial Review Board as the finance chair on the council. And one of the options was to have a new timekeeping system because we use paper time sheets. And that project, over many years, that got delayed at first because of COVID and just slow state funding and then it had a consultant, they spent $2.5 million of New York State money and got nothing for it. They had a launch, a product launch that failed. This is a few years back. And then instead of acknowledging the problems with the implementation, the problems with the product, the problems with which they went about it, they really, like, doubled down, said nothing wrong here, misrepresented a bunch of things to the council, in my opinion, in order to secure additional money. They eventually spent like $8 million on this project. This is really what led to my separation with the Walsh administration, primarily because in November of last year, a whistleblower showed up with a 200 page document that I read, and it corroborated a lot of what I had already thought about the project and made me understand it in many new ways. And that snowballed into me resigning, declaring for mayor, and then the Walsh administration, in my opinion, needing to discredit me and doing so in a racial way that I also feel was inaccurate. But the irony of them going to the council after $900,000 for a new product with a new consultant, to my eyes it shows that their 8 million literally bought nothing, right? Which is basically what I was saying, which was a very controversial statement at that time and nobody wanted me to say. And time passes and truth kind of becomes more evident, but it's still a complex story. And I think that applies to a lot of things in Syracuse. So I just think there is a desire to say all is well with, like the way in which crime is reported, crime is down, right? They celebrate crime being down. They don't discuss the people who call 911, who don't get the response they need for what they perceive to be a very serious thing. They don't talk about the criminality that exists in the corner stores that caused drug stores to, like, ride out leases and leave. Such that like intersections of the city and private business corridors are totally vacant, right? Because there's no crime? No. It's because there's been normalized criminality where the stores just get pilfered all the time and don't want to deal with trying to stop it. So in my perception, there is a problem where they have a narrative that tells a story of rising above all kinds of stuff, but they don't actually engage with the reality on Syracuse. And in many ways, I feel like I'm connected to the reality in a way different than Walsh in particular, mainly because I grew up in Syracuse my whole life. My dad still lives in the house I grew up in. That's where I launched my campaign, was on my dad's steps with my wife. Ironically, they will crop my wife out of the pictures when they want to insinuate that I'm somehow racist, which my wife laughs at and I cringe. And then I went to Syracuse University through the Syracuse Challenge. I went to the Maxwell School eventually. I lived in New York City for seven years, where I really got to see an urban space and imagine how Syracuse could be different. I even bought my house on the south side while I was living in New York and renovated it on weekends. It's in a qualified census tract, so my neighborhood has more than 20% poverty, and it shows. Eight years ago I took like reporters on walks on my block and there were vacant houses, drug houses, all kinds of stuff. And it was really at that time when I left my job in New York, officially to run, to be on the city council, I cashed out my 401K and I brought the two family in front of mine, and I fixed it up. That was like my side gig while I was on the council the first six months, was fixing up the house in front of mine. And over the last eight years I've bought five other houses on my block and fixed them up. So, I think I know I have this unique set of experiences where I'm from here born, raised, educated, understand the value of the large nonprofits like Syracuse University. Had outside, professional experience in the New York City mayor's office doing public finance stuff. Then I worked for a national nonprofit, where I did cost benefit analysis of anti-poverty programs. I really wrote quite extensively in syracuse.com, probably more extensively than the mayor himself or any other public official over the last ten years. I've run for different things, I've lost, I've won, I've lost. We'll see. But I'm definitely a scrappy Syracuseon who believes that our community and who's worked to have, like, success professionally and I'm still committed to this. Everything I own is on my block. Like, I'd take, like, side yards that were, the vacant houses and make them to beautiful family garden, right? Like the people on my block know what I do, that's hard to necessarily communicate to 143,000 people all at once. And, in many ways, I've witnessed Ben Walsh and kind of his approach. So, I think that may have, I initially declared that I was going to be a RINO, so I didn't have an independent line. I actually think in many ways Ben and I learned to get along for a period of time, but we were never really like, friends to say. We were always pretty like, I would push for things, and I was rough and willing to be that guy who disagreed. And, that went the way it did. But I think he soured me on the independent approach because I was like, rise above politics, I've been this loyal, in theory, loyal Democrat, right? Like, I do the work, I carry the petitions, I help the slate. When my candidate loses, I eventually endorse the other person when they win the primary. And in other ways, I feel like the party has moved left, too far left for me. So like I do believe in home ownership, I definitely believe in free speech and all these other things. And in some ways, the Republican Party had things like Make America Healthy. That resonates with me. Like, I wake up every day to go to the gym with my wife at 4 a.m., to be there at 5 a.m., but like, and stop the wars. Like the whole time I was at Maxwell, I thought the wars were very bad and a bad thing and all of a sudden the Republicans were saying that. So I really thought there was this opportunity to, and they didn't have a candidate. So I kind of thought, I was being sincere, saying I was going to be a RINO and I was transparent about that, like, hey, I want to be a Republican in name only. Unfortunately, I think because of my political history as a Democrat, I didn't realize that RINO to me sounded like a good thing, right?
GR: (laughter)
TR: So in my experience, RINO meant like moderate or like person willing to compromise, person willing to work. But it turns out it's like a slur within the current Republican Party.
GR: Yeah, they don't see it that way.
TR: I ended up alienating myself to them, even though I really was trying to be sincere in my, like, hey, I think we have mutual agreement here. And I also think it's not really, given the numbers, the 18% enrollment for the Republican Party in the city of Syracuse, I didn't think it was feasible for any Republican to win. So I thought being a RINO was like a reasonable compromise. But I didn't do it in a way that signaled compromise to any of them. So that, ironically caused me to be literally, like, thrown out of the Republican Party. Well, at least my father and my wife got thrown out for being RINOs and I chose to re-enroll at that time as a Democrat because I was being threatened with all kinds of legal lawsuits. And I just thought, this is not the right path. So in a way, I got forced into an independent ballot line, right?
GR: I see. Let me ask you though, a question about something you mentioned earlier. Which is that, you being tagged as a racist because, you know, and I'm sure you knew I was going to ask you this question at some point, so I might as well do it now. But some of the criticisms that you were making of the Walsh administration in the past, at least as they were related in media outlets such as the Post-Standard, you know, veered into what appeared to be bizarre or or even offensive, invoking plantation's slaves to make your point. And, you know, you mentioned you resigned. I mean, there was controversy, were you fired? Did you resign? They say they fired you over those comments. So, if you can briefly, what should voters make of all that? I mean, what is the bottom line here of the reality of all that?
TR: Well, I mean, the reality is that I went through what was a very stressful period with a fraud, what I perceived as a fraud at City Hall. And I still believe it to be a fraud.
GR: And that was the example related earlier.
TR: The whistleblower, all of that, right? So there was a period of November and December last year where I figured all this out, and it really, the process where I eventually like leak the whistleblower report to the city council and the city auditor, ruins my relationship with both the mayor and the deputy mayor, who is now the favorite to become the next mayor. So I was like, well, I'm done. I'm going to run for mayor because I don't want to work, I don't really I don't have a place here and I think I could do a better job. So at that time, I meet with a mentor and I record a conversation. And I recorded it because I didn't have the emotional capacity to have that conversation with thousands of people. And it's a 2.5 hour conversation, and I go through the whole of the fraud and like, the first half is like talking about this, like learning of the fraud. And I use all types of language, like I call all kinds of swearwords, all kinds of stuff. The mayor, I clearly don't like the mayor. I'm loyal to the people I'm loyal to. And then toward the end, when I'm talking about political strategy, the person who I'm talking to asked me a question about like, different demographics, like, I don't know, maybe the black vote or something. And when I was on the council, I was probably closest aligned to Khalid Bey, right?
GR: Okay. He's been on the program before and I know him, yes.
TR: Khalid and I vibed on many levels. Like I would often read all this stuff about math being the guiding, like, the explanation of the universe. And we would just talk about like that kind of stuff. And we got along. And Khalid is an author, so I've read all of Khalid's books. And one of Khalid's books is called, “The African American Dilemma” and in it he talks about Willie Lynch. And after the mayor got reelected, I mean, I supported, I didn't support Mayor Walsh at that time. I worked for Ben Walsh, and I told him I couldn't support him. I decided I will stay out of it, but I can't help you because Khalid is like my big brother, right?
GR: Got it.
TR: And, as a reward, not a reward, but I think in a way, when I was asking for numerous like additional responsibilities as the budget and procurement director, the deputy mayor and the mayor said, hey, we want to give you minority affairs. So they literally move minority affairs into the budget suite. And I do all this stuff to do it legally, which hardly anyone does in the Walsh administration. Like I changed the city charter, I moved it under the budget department, I renamed it Equity, Compliance and Social Impact. And then through that, I kind of had to deal with some staff that weren't great, which I think was part of the reason they were willing to give it to me because they thought I was a manager who would actually be able to handle the situation. Like they literally entrusted me with minority affairs, right?
GR: Wait a minute, let me stop there because we got to take a break. But then I want to get to the other side of that story, on the other side. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and we'll continue the conversation after a short break. Welcome back to the Campbell Conversations. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm talking with Tim Rudd. He's running for mayor of Syracuse on an independent line in this November's election. So go ahead and pick up on this story now, because I'd asked you about these comments that you had made that became quite controversial and generated a lot of media attention. So take me from where you were to that point.
TR: Long story long, I feel like I was one of the few white managers in the city who was comfortable talking about race. Like in many ways, I was always in those conversations in college. I was in that in the places I worked, I would be on the diversity council. Literally last summer I drove to Boston for racial equity in municipal finance with Sharon Owens in my car. Like, I think if anything, I became too trusting of being comfortable talking about it. And I talked about an element of this Willie Lynch concept at the end of the recording. So you'd have to listen to two hours of absolute like, if your takeaway from this two hour plus conversation is Rudd is racist, then like, I can't, I don't know what to tell you. There were many other things and at that point I decided, like when I was still, I had announced the resignation, I had announced the candidacy for mayor and then I shared the tape, I shared the majority of the tape. Like you, there are space constraints so I couldn't share 2.5 hours because nobody would listen to it, so I shared like the first 70 minutes. And then it was that that I think it was just too much of a disobedience to be tolerated. So even though I had resigned and all this other stuff, then I think they really needed to discredit me. So they decide to have me discredited through a racial lens where the headline on the syracuse.com article that really did all the damage, it said, “Rudd compares to slave breaker”, (editor's note: actual headline reads, "Rudd compares Syracuse mayoral opponent to a slave breaker: ‘I can say it with a dog whistle’" -ML) and many people don't even have a subscription and read it. And like social media spreads lies eight times faster than any other medium in history, so like, it goes crazy. But I never even used the word slave breaker. So like if you had phrased it in 19 other ways or any other point from that conversation, I don't think it would have had the same effect. But they chose to use the word slave breaker. That's Jeremy Boyer's word, or whoever wrote the headline, not mine. And from there, it just takes a life of its own. And they were probably pretty successful in discrediting me, even though I think people who had really been paying attention realized that I was poking a bear, and I basically got attacked by a bear.
GR: And just to make something clear here, from what I heard you say, the other thing is, you were using, at least as far as you understood it, a metaphor that you had gotten from Khalid Bey's book. So, you know, you were drawing on that.
TR: Oh, definitely. Like, does the Walsh administration use race as a factor in their management assignments, decisions and their general approach? And then should they or not? I don't know, those are questions that other people could ask or answer or pontificate on, but I spoke about it through a historical lens, which is really how I have learned to engage the world is you read about it, you're thoughtful about it, you're open and honest about it, and you realize that we've all passed through this collective history, and we share it to some extent, even if we're unaware of it. And you got to be open to talk about it, to not perpetuate it. And that's how I've lived. So the irony is being portrayed as a racist, and I've been on, like, I've seen enough to know that once charged with such an allegation, there's nothing I can say, do, to prove that I'm not a racist. So I have largely stuck to my, I have not apologized because I do not feel that there was any ill intent. Like, I kind of think of racism as like hatred toward a group or like really like judgment toward a group or an expression of superiority over a group. And if you listen to that tape, I'm literally expressing an affinity with the group, like a shared identity in many ways. Like, it may sound strange to people for a big white guy to identify with, quote unquote, like the slave in the master slave relationship, but in some ways I do, like that's the hero of the story in the narrative, even though they're intertwined. So like, I think it's a complex understanding that social media and so much of the narrative and much of the population isn't ready to talk about, and that's been very hard. And one of the reasons why I was like, excited to try to speak with you because you at least have a longer form and like, set up to talk. It's a very hard thing to talk about in any thirty second segment.
GR: No kidding. So let me jump to another topic, and this is one probably you already expected. So you know, your campaign lacks an organized party to help with all the components of what we normally would consider a successful campaign. My understanding is you're almost unfunded and, you know, it's kind of one man band or a one family band. So, you know, it's unlikely that you're going to win. You already said that Sharon Owens is the favorite. Sometimes campaigns that are in this category, that I just put you in, are in it to try to move the public dial or raise awareness about a particular issue and change something very specific in particular. Does that describe your campaign in a way, and if so, what is that issue? Is it the transparency and accountability in government for the next administration?
TR: Well, I think yes, I would agree with that sentiment. Like at this point, I'm fighting for principle, right? And in many ways I feel like I'm fighting to restore my name, but in the way I've been a thoughtful advocate for all things Syracuse and how we can be different over the last ten years and really the whole of my life. So I'm trying to make it that way as well. And I do think that we have cowardly leadership, in particular with Ben Walsh, and that he is not honest. I don't think he's honest with himself or his staff or anyone else. So he kind of believes the delusion. And I think we have to be honest and until we're honest, we're not going to have any kind of progress. And even if that has to do with crime or if that has to do with the trash carts, and it doesn't mean like the trash, just as an example, I think there's a need for the leadership to, you can deal to praise or celebrate an achievement while still acknowledging it may be imperfect and you need to work to improve it. So, like the trash carts I view as an improvement but they created new externalities, unintended things. So I think people stack trash on the sides, front and rear of their house, especially in qualified census tracts that have more than 20% poverty, more than they used to because they can't fit it, and they don't have the wherewithal to follow the rules to get rid of it. And it's kind of cumbersome because you only set one up. Anyways, so like, I think if we were honest about that, then we could build a solution that would get rid of the trash and we wouldn't have this problem. And I think that environment creates all type of disorderly-ness. So like in my life and in my approach to a landlord and even at work, I think details matter a lot. So, and you have to be honest about all the details. So, and you have to address them in order to get the solutions. And if you're lying about whether they work, whether there's trash on the side of the house or not, then you're not going to get rid of it.
GR: So let me ask you this then, it sounds like, and again, tell me if I've got this right or wrong, but it sounds like to me then the core nugget of the point of your campaign is not so much about policies that are wrong, but rather about the way that policies have been discussed, the way they've been evaluated, the way they have been publicly held accountable or not held accountable.
TR: Or not discussed, yeah.
GR: Yeah, and sort of the way that government is working rather than this administration has the wrong aim here or the wrong...
TR: The government rolls out a narrative, I think this is true of the Walsh administration and of probably many other layers of our current structure in government, then they want everybody to stick to the narrative. Don't think critically, don't push back. Even if you're an ally and you're on board, you're not allowed to publicly dissent. You got to be on board all the time, any dissent is total dissent. And I think that's a very unhealthy environment and it doesn't allow for you to be thoughtful and get the type of response you need. And like I would say, Syracuse does have a moment, right? The highway coming down took a lot of people pushing to get it, it's the right decision, it's a huge opportunity. The university and downtown are not properly connected. I think this administration has built a strategy that really, the energy of the highway coming down is focused around the housing authority. And I think that's not a good strategy because it requires so many public dollars that it doesn't, it's not going to be very successful. Because, one, the dollars aren't there with the current federal partners, and two, it's not using the limited dollars we have to activate private investment where it might actually go. So, like, I really do think if we maintained the housing authority and invested in that housing stock and the people who live there and make it a better place to live, which I think is a good place for affordable housing, right, because it's right next to the universities, it's right next to the downtown. There's lots of economic opportunity there, it's a good place for permanent affordable housing. So we don't need to be dedicating massive, destroy, rebuild and all that it takes to support that, right? We could be using those same monies to get denser developments along East Genesee Street, where they are happening already, to ignite it faster and to have plans with like, and even getting to the point where you could have new art at the center of Syracuse at Almond and East Genesee Street to really like connect the university to downtown, make it feel like one urban core. I think that could spark a desire for living in the inner ring neighborhoods which have the most divestment. All of that is like a nexus of money creation, right? Like money gets injected into the economy through housing and in real estate investment and through the universities, through higher ed, through students taking out loans there. So it's really this opportunity to get more money in the community. And that's the way we're going to reduce poverty. We have a poverty problem, we need more people getting higher incomes and this is a way to do it.
GR: Okay. So we've only got a couple of minutes left and I want to squeeze two questions in related to what you've just been talking about, or at least one is. So the first question is and again, just about a minute on each one. So regarding Micron, which we haven't talked about yet, obviously that's going to add to the level of opportunity that you just described, potentially. Do you have one big concern about the Micron development and what would it be? But you have to be brief.
TR: I think that the idea that Micron is a sincere opportunity, like as an employment center for the average citizen in Syracuse is not true. And I think that's almost like a, illusion that's damaging. We would be better to focus on home ownership and like, just general, security, right? Like the schools, if security, we have a poverty problem, which then creates instability, violence, a whole bunch of problems, we need to deal with the security, that's like a higher level human need. And then when we do that, people can begin to be prepared to start making better decisions about their health, about their, like, academic and professional trajectories. And there's lots of people with a regular job who could afford to own a home. And that's really the permanent, afford, like the best housing affordability in the long term is the 30 year fixed rate mortgage. I think that is clear in most of the country, and we don't have enough of that in Syracuse. And that could be true for affordable home ownership as well. And the housing authority can do a role, they would be well served to facilitate people to become more, better tenants who are eventually capable of owning a home.
GR: Okay, I get the point you're making about priorities. Finally, thirty seconds, hate to do it to you, but, if you can, thirty seconds just encapsulate, what is your view about the recent uptick in ICE raids and the aggressiveness of some of those raids? If they were to come to Syracuse, where are you going to be on that?
TR: Well, largely, I think we're seeing that ICE is run by the federal government. I'm pro following the rules until it creates the demand for a solution. I think Mayor Walsh is pro if the rules are not great, ignore the rules. I think that's arbitrary and capricious and it's a disservice. I would say enforce the rules until there's a political will to get an adjustment in the rules to like, make them reasonable. That's the way I approach like things less controversial, like the sidewalk program. There wasn't will for municipal sidewalk program. So I went around and condemned a whole bunch of sidewalks because that's how it used to work.
GR: We won't have time to get into that.
TR: And that creates the will. Sometimes you to follow the rules in order to change the rules.
GR: I see, yeah. Okay, thank you. That was Tim Rudd and again, please keep your eye out for a future conversation with the Democratic Party candidate, Sharon Owens. You can also find my previous conversation with Republican nominee Tom Babilon on the Campbell Conversations web page. Mr. Rudd, Tim, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me, I appreciate it.
TR: Thank you, appreciate it.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
