Democratic Bloodbath in Fight to Face Robach?

What is it that would cause not one, but two local public figures with political smarts to announce important candidacies for office at the worst possible time from a public-relations perspective?   At the very moment when media domination by Super Bowl afterglow is overtaken by media domination with news anticipating Super Tuesday primaries?

Because one was worried the other would announce first, and therefore couldn't wait.   Thus forcing the other to announce right away, too.

We think this explains back-to-back announcements, on Monday evening by Rick Dollinger that he's quitting as Brighton Justice "to consider" running for State Senate against incumbent Joe Robach, and on Tuesday afternoon by Brighton Supervisor Sandy Frankel that she's running for the same seat.

Both Dollinger and Frankel have well-deserved reputations as people of good character and spotless ethical conduct in office.  That alone will make the race for this nomination one of the most interesting of the year.   It's a curiosity of human nature that political contests between sleazy hacks often attain but an echo of the full-blooded savagery of races between honest candidates of high character and noble intent.   (Hence the remorseless brutality of ecclesiastical politics).

Supervisor Frankel told the Messenger-Post papers that she was "disappointed with the short-term notice" of Dollinger's resignation and that "He's been a good judge but I wish he had filled out his full term."   In context, some might find these comments rather arch.   Together with the back-to-back announcement flurry, they may offer a mild foretaste of what is to come.

As Monroe Rising was first to report, within hours of Frankel's announcement, she and Dollinger were joined in battle for the Democratic senate nod by the irrepressable Willa Powell, the Dennis Kucinich of Rochester politics, minus the shagadelic English wife.

Let the games begin.