GINO FANELLI @GINOFANELLI GINO@ROCHESTER-CITYNEWS.COM
NEWS
JEREMY MOULE @JFMOULE JMOULE@ROCHESTER-CITYNEWS.COM
M
THE BRAWL FOR CITY HALL Mayor Lovely Warren is seeking a third term in office. PHOTO BY MAX SCHULTE 8 CITY
JUNE 2021
ayor Lovely Warren stood at the podium outside her office at City Hall facing what would have been a circular firing squad of reporters had she given them a chance to pull the trigger. There were plenty of questions. Her husband, Timothy Granison, had been arraigned on drug and weapons charges earlier in the day. Prosecutors alleged he was a player in a cocaine ring and police claimed to have found drugs on him and an unregistered handgun and a semi-automatic rifle in the Woodman Park house he shares with Warren and their 10-year-old daughter. But Warren did what she has done so adeptly before: defiantly played the victim and turned the tables on the media by urging them to take their questions elsewhere. She framed her husband’s arrest as politically and racially-motivated, and urged reporters to ask why law enforcement would move in on her husband just a month before the June primary. “We need to ask ourselves, if this is not about politics, why is Tim’s next court date June 21, the day before Primary Day?” she said. “Now that’s quite the coincidence. Now when you figure out those answers to those questions, come find because I’ll be working.” Then she turned around and walked through the wooden door to her office, refusing to take questions. The reporters there had the answer to her question. Her husband’s lawyer had asked for a 30-day adjournment between Granison’s arraignment and his next court date and the judge granted his request, scheduling the next appearance for June 21. Now, among the questions that reporters and political observers and countless other Rochester area residents with a stake in who helms City Hall had, was how much longer Warren may be working behind that wooden door. Just a day before police had raided her home, there was no such question. Despite her last year in office being whipsawed by crises, that she would waltz to a third term by winning the Democratic primary was a foregone conclusion to virtually everyone who follows local politics.
