Audio Interview, Paul Haney, August 7, 2013

EVELYN BAILEY: Well, today is August 7,

and I'm sitting at the Gay Alliance Library

with Paul Haney, asking him to kind of look back

to his youth and early years in Rochester, because he

has been a major player in the political scene for the past--

well, I'm not going to mention how many years.

PAUL HANEY: Oh, long time.

EVELYN BAILEY: Long time.

But you were born in Rochester?

PAUL HANEY: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: Whereabouts?

PAUL HANEY: 1941, northwest part of the city.

EVELYN BAILEY: And you went to school here.

PAUL HANEY: Yeah, I went all through Catholic school,

went to a holy rosary grammar school, Aquinas,

then I went to St. John Fisher, and then I

got a master's degree at Syracuse.

EVELYN BAILEY: So did you leave Rochester to do that?

PAUL HANEY: Yes, when I left Rochester to go to Syracuse,

it was a one year MBA.

That was the first time I left Rochester.

Then when I finished at Syracuse I went to New York,

and I live in New York for four years.

EVELYN BAILEY: And that would be around '64?

PAUL HANEY: From September of '64 to May of '68.

EVELYN BAILEY: So that was pre-Stonewall?

PAUL HANEY: Oh, yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: And when you were growing up in Rochester,

did you hear, or was there any conversation

about homosexuality, about--

PAUL HANEY: Not in the least.

I mean, there wasn't--

didn't even know it existed.

EVELYN BAILEY: Um-hm.

PAUL HANEY: I knew I had my own personal inclinations,

but thought I was totally unique in that regard.

EVELYN BAILEY: Do you have any recollection of what

or where people would go in the sixties or--

PAUL HANEY: None.

EVELYN BAILEY: And in New York, I'm sure it was--

PAUL HANEY: In New York it was somewhat more obvious,

and especially down in the village, of course.

And I lived in Brooklyn Heights.

There was a bar in Brooklyn Heights that was a gay bar.

But this was still in an era when the police in New York

used to periodically raid the bars.

I know there was a bar across the street from the St. George

Hotel on Clark Street that--

I never thought of it as a gay bar,

but nonetheless, in the time that I was in New York,

it was raided a couple of times by the police.

I suspect there was something more to the rationale for it--

that raid, I mean.

But that was the ostensible reason

why that place was raided.

But in Rochester, when I left in '64,

I had no knowledge of anything.

Rochester changed tremendously during the four years

that I was gone from the scene.

There was a-- in fact, when I came back in '68,

I really was very surprised how different

Rochester was than it was when I left in the fall of '63.

Between Syracuse and New York I was gone nearly five years.

And during that period, what drove

the change was that there was a tremendous influx

of people from out of town who moved to Rochester.

This was the heyday.

Kodak was still going strong.

Kodak-- I mean, it's hard for people to imagine now,

and I say this to out of towners and I know they don't believe

me--

but Kodak peaked at about sixty-four thousand employees

in Monroe County.

And that's just a staggering number of people.

And the Rochester that I left in '63 was one in which you just

weren't--

especially growing up in the northwest part of the city--

everybody worked at Kodak.

The neighbor on the right worked at Kodak.

The neighbor on the left worked at Kodak.

The neighbor in the house behind this worked at Kodak.

The neighbor in the house kitty-corner

to the northeast across the street worked at Kodak.

The neighbor in the house kitty-corner to the southeast

worked at Kodak.

And in Irish Catholic families, the joke

was that they were expected to give one son to Kodak

and one son to the church.

And my brother fulfilled the first obligation,

and I failed the family with the second obligation.

But then, right at this time, suddenly, overnight, Xerox

began to grow by leaps and bounds.

And Xerox, or Haloid, as it was still called at that time--

Haloid was an old Rochester company located over

on Hollenbeck Street.

But they were a small, family owned company.

The Wilson family owned it.

And I don't know how many people they employed,

but I would guess one hundred and fifty or two hundred

people or something.

And all of a sudden--

well, it wasn't all of a sudden.

It was a torturous process that went on for many years.

There's a fascinating biography of Joe Wilson that

sort of lays it all out, a fascinating process.

But finally, after years and years

of research and development et cetera,

they perfected Chester Carlson's idea.

And the world just couldn't get its hands

on enough Xerox machines.

I mean, it was incredible.

Xerox had little tiny facilities every place, all over town.

If you had a building with--

this was before the Webster Facility.

It was before Xerox tower downtown.

And if you had a facility, I know

on the corner of the street where I grew up

at the corner of Ravine and Lake Avenues,

there was a store maybe--

oh, maybe two thousand square feet.

It had been a hobby store for years and years and years.

And that went out of business, and the next thing we knew,

Xerox rented it.

It was an era in which if you had

one thousand square feet of vacant space, Xerox rented it.

And the result was they were every place.

And Rochester wasn't big enough to feed both Kodak and Xerox.

So there was a sudden, dramatic influx of people, primarily

young people--

well, young in their twenties and thirties--

to work for Xerox.

And these people, they came from every place, but very

well educated people, cosmopolitan people, at least

by Rochester's standards, cosmopolitan.

And they came to Rochester and they weren't about to live--

I mean, in the fifties, Rochester

was a place where I don't know if there

was a single decent restaurant.

People just didn't go out to dinner.

Life was very much centered on the home,

the family, et cetera.

And the influx of these several thousand people

who came to primarily feed Xerox,

but now that Kodak had a competitor for employment

also continued to feed Kodak, really changed the face

of Rochester, so that when I came back in '68

I was quite surprised at how much Rochester had changed.

There were decent restaurants in Rochester.

People were going out to dinner, younger people.

People of my parents' generation still

couldn't convince my father that he

ought to go out and buy a meal.

But people of, say, my generation were going out.

And it was a very different town.

And the people who stayed here-- it's

like everything else-- people who

stayed here, I don't think they realized how much it changed.

Because of course, it didn't change overnight.

EVELYN BAILEY: No.

It changed gradually.

PAUL HANEY: It was a gradual process over five years.

But for someone who left and then

came back to visit, the degree of change was highly--

I mean, I can remember just being amazed

when I came back to Rochester.

EVELYN BAILEY: Now, the influx of workers, shall we say,

these weren't students.

PAUL HANEY: No.

EVELYN BAILEY: Because-- correct me if I'm wrong, Paul--

between 1850 and 1900, you had the growth of RIT--

PAUL HANEY: You mean 1900 and 1950?

EVELYN BAILEY: Well University of Rochester

was founded in the late 1800s--

PAUL HANEY: 1800s.

Right.

EVELYN BAILEY: --And Mechanics' Institute was also founded

in the late 1800s.

And that changed and grew and eventually established itself

as RIT, right?

PAUL HANEY: Yeah, Mechanics' Institute, or RIT,

their real growth has been a much more recent factor.

It's really fascinating how RIT has grown and changed.

And I don't think most long time Rochesterians,

it's older Rochesterians, I don't think they still

understand how RIT changed.

RIT was-- calling it Mechanics' Institute

was a very apt name for it.

Because they did not grant for it.

They didn't have any four year diploma programs.

Even when I was young they didn't have any four year

diploma programs.

It was a trade school.

And for example, Rochester had a very large printing industry.

The stuff that was printed in Rochester was really amazing.

And so they had a very well recognized printing program.

The tool and die industry was always big in Rochester,

so they had programs and everything related to the tool

and die industry.

But even going into the 1950s and 1960s,

they were still a place where people went and got two year

associate degrees.

Remember, this is before the community college existed.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

PAUL HANEY: And so at RIT was, to my knowledge,

almost exclusively a two year associate school.

And of course they were located downtown, right downtown,

and very landlocked.

And it wasn't until they moved to Henrietta

which, I think that was in the late sixties, 1970s.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

PAUL HANEY: I don't know exactly when.

It wasn't until they moved to Henrietta that they even

began to grant four year degrees, so that the RIT

or Mechanics' Institute that existed up

until the mid-sixties or so really bears

almost no comparison to the RIT that exists today.

The university, on the other hand,

the university was always sort of a stodgy, stuffy place.

It was stuck up there on the river which, at that time,

was sort of the edge of civilization as we knew it.

And there was very little, if any interface.

Very few Rochesterians went to the university

because it was always very expensive.

Whereas RIT was virtually exclusively Rochesterians,

the U of R was--

well, not exclusively, but pretty close to exclusively

out of town people.

And especially after the women moved from University Avenue

to the river campus, they lived really in isolation up there.

And the general community had very little interface

with the University of Rochester.

And in fact, many would say that that continued.

I mean, I was part of a very interesting discussion just

last last week.

Joel Seligman, the current president of the U of R,

has had a dramatic impact on the U of R.

And he has almost made it a mission

to integrate the university with the broader community.

But until that time, people would pay lip service to it.

But by and large, the university was isolated out there.

I can remember in--

this would have been in probably the late seventies--

Chris Lindley was the south district councilman

from the south district being primarily the Nineteenth

Ward and those environments.

And he was championing the construction

of a pedestrian bridge across the river,

from the River Campus, basically,

to where the end of Brooks Avenue is.

And the reason for that was that there were students living

in the Nineteenth Ward, there was faculty members

living in the Nineteenth Ward, it

was as a convenience to them.

The university wanted nothing to do with that.

The university fought-- fought is the operative word--

the university fought that the construction at the foot bridge

across the river up there for years.

And it ultimately only occurred because--

and I don't know what the driving force for this

was at the university--

but hockey was becoming a popular sport,

and the university decided it wanted to have a hockey team.

And of course, the construction of hockey arenas is a fairly--

they're not only expensive to build,

they're expensive to operate because of the refrigeration

equipment that you need.

So the idea was concocted that the university and the city

would cooperate on the building of an ice rink.

The city had an ice rink at Genesee Valley Park

by the river.

And the idea was concocted that in a partnership,

the city and the university would expand that facility,

and the university would have the right

to use it at certain times for their hockey team.

And the city laid down as a quid pro

quo that the university had to drop its objections

to the pedestrian bridge.

And the pedestrian bridge only got

built because, from the university's perspective,

they wanted the hockey facility more

and they didn't want the pedestrian bridge.

But the university lived in virtual isolation out there.

There wasn't much interface with the community.

EVELYN BAILEY: My impression from talking to other people

and reading my own reading, is that early,

between 1900 and 1950, there was a tremendous growth of industry

here in Rochester.

Fourteen to fifteen major corporations

came into existence.

And what they were looking for were

creative, innovative minds.

And the corporations were really a driving force

between bringing into the city such a diverse population.

Educated, but diverse.

PAUL HANEY: People used to be amazed at how different

Rochester was from Buffalo.

But it had to do with the nature of the employment in the two

cities.

Buffalo was based on broad shoulders and muscle.

It was a big railroad town.

Bethlehem Steel-- or Lackawanna Steel--

the Lackawanna steel plant employed thousands.

Well, a steel mill is a very different facility

from someplace where they make cameras

or film or optical goods or copying machines

or something like that.

So that the industry that developed in Rochester,

it was a high class industry.

It was clean industry.

And generally, we required more education.

And so that things like the percentage

of people in Rochester with post-high school educations

was always much higher than in Buffalo.

Because you didn't need a high school education

to work in the steel mills in Buffalo,

or down on the docks moving grain from ships

to railroad cars and that like.

Whereas in Rochester, if you wanted

to get ahead at Kodak or Xerox or any of those places,

you did.

And that was primarily what Mechanics' Institute--

that was what Mechanics' Institute did with all

of its two year programs.

It provided people with additional training

and education.

But Rochester always had what we called clean industry,

whereas Buffalo had, I guess if you just use

the opposite, dirty industry.

It was brains versus brawn.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

After you came back in 1968, within a couple of years

Stonewall happened.

And the University of Rochester became a focal point

for gay liberation and activism.

Do you recall any stories from that time?

I mean, once Stonewall happened, within two years

there were over four hundred Gay Liberation Front organizations

that grew up across the country, mostly in universities, mostly

on college campuses.

PAUL HANEY: What year was Stonewall?

What year was Stonewall?

EVELYN BAILEY: 1969.

PAUL HANEY: Oh, OK.

It was right after I left New York.

Yeah, OK.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

And in 1970, the Gay Liberation Front

began at the University of Rochester.

However, that was a combination of university students

and community people.

And at that time, there were no communication avenues other

than the bars, other than--

there wasn't even-- well, the empty closet began in 1971,

but that was a year or so later.

And that became a major vehicle of communicating

with the community what was happening.

But what has always fascinated me about that development was

the gay brotherhood eventually became political.

And it became the political caucus of the alliance,

versus having the alliance be a political advocacy group

because of its 501(c)(3) status, the political caucus became

very active, and many of the people who were involved

in leadership positions in the Gay Liberation Front in the Gay

Alliance, all of a sudden were catapulted into political life,

Tim Mains being the first, but Sue Cowell, Bill Pritchard.

And I know--

PAUL HANEY: Bill Pritchard's a kid.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

I know there was a gay life in Rochester,

separate from the bars.

PAUL HANEY: I really don't know anything

about the development of that.

I wasn't part of it or anything.

I mean, when I came back to Rochester,

there were a couple of gay bars in town where you socialized,

et cetera.

But aside from that, I really don't know anything

about the formal development of the community

or the political action.

Remember, I was a--

well, I still am, obviously--

a CPA.

And I worked for one of the National Public Accounting

firms.

And I mean, it was still very much

an era in which I don't remember consciously thinking

about this, but it was just understood that if you intended

to have any kind of a future in the profession or with one of--

in those days, we used to talk about the big eight.

Now there's only four of them left.

But if you intended, you lived a very straight life.

It just-- it was never said, but you just knew

that that's the way it was.

And that's what I was--

I mean, I was part of the profession.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

PAUL HANEY: I was, at that time, foolishly,

you know, looking at a career in public accounting.

So I--

EVELYN BAILEY: When did you become involved in politics?

PAUL HANEY: Oh, Lord.

See, my mother and father were involved in politics.

They were committee people down in the old Tenth Ward.

Oh god, my mother became involved in politics in 1928

in the Al Smith election.

And she used to tell brutal stories about the Al Smith

election which, of course, was rife with the worst

kinds of bigotry and discrimination, et cetera.

Because Al Smith, of course, was an Irish Catholic.

In fact, my grandmother became an election inspector

up in the old Twentieth ward the first year

that women had had the vote.

And she was an election inspector up there.

Even when I was a little kid I can remember my sister

taking me up and visiting her at the voting

booth on Silver Street in the old Twentieth Ward up there.

So I was sort of born into it.

And I always found it very interesting.

I had no interest in sports whatsoever.

And I just always found it very interesting.

I mean, the joke I'd tell--

and it's not a joke, it's absolutely real--

my first involvement in real politics occurred in 1950.

I would have been nine years old.

And there was a man by the name--

I still remember his name.

His name was Walter Lynch, who was running

for governor against Tom Dewey.

And in the fall, I can remember my mother

loading up my little red wagon with campaign literature

for Walter Lynch and sending me out to go door to door,

stuffing pieces of campaign literature

under people's doors.

And this was still an era in which,

I mean, today, to send a nine-year-old out going door

to door, a parent would probably be arrested for child

abuse or neglect or something.

But I mean, my mother knew everybody in the neighborhood.

Everybody in the neighborhood knew her and knew me, etc.

Those neighborhoods were very stable at that time,

and it was no big, big deal, but I jokingly

tell people that I was nine years old when

I did my first political thing.

EVELYN BAILEY: And when was your next political thing

at a much--

PAUL HANEY: Well, a very strange thing occurred.

When I came back from Rochester, of course

my mother and father were still committee people,

and I became a committeeman down in--

this was 1969, down in the old--

the wards had been changed around

and it was now the Ninth Ward.

And the Democrats were in control of city council,

yes, of city council and of the city.

Course, this was under the council form of the council

manager form of government.

And it was still very much an era of patronage,

and virtually everybody that worked in government

was connected to political parties, et cetera.

And a political battle erupted in the Ninth Ward.

And two men were vehemently battling

to be the leader of the Ninth Ward.

And to be a ward leader or, I mean,

I'll call it district leader, in those days,

was a position of substance.

You, to a certain degree, controlled access

to city employment.

It was old fashioned politics.

And they became absolutely locked

in a head-to-head battle.

And the committee in the Ninth Ward

was virtually split right down the middle between them.

And it was so evenly split that neither of them

could really win.

Win-win.

And I mean, I'd only been back in Rochester for a year

and pleasantly enjoying life.

And the phone rang one day, and it was a man

by the name of Bob Quigley, who was democratic county

chairman at the time.

And I had never even met Bob Quigley.

And he asked me to come and meet him in his office, and I did.

And I couldn't figure out why he wanted to talk to me.

And when I got there, I found out

he wanted me to become Ninth Ward leader.

And I was stunned.

Why me?

And what had taken place was there

was a key city election coming up in 1969.

And he did not want to go into the election with the Ninth

Ward split down the middle in an inter-party division.

And he had been talking to the people in the Ninth Ward,

and because of my mother and father's long involvement,

people knew my parents.

They knew me.

Everybody liked my parents.

Everybody liked the kid that just moved home.

And I was acceptable as a compromise candidate.

And both of the other two men agreed to back off.

It was kind of funny.

They both thought they were going

to be able to control me is one of the reasons they both backed

off.

And so in just an absolute quirk,

I became the leader of the Ninth Ward in April of 1969.

Well, then in the November election

that year, the Democrats proceeded to lose the election.

And the Republicans elected enough people

that they took five to four control of the city council.

Well, most of the people, as I said,

it was still a patronage era.

So most of the leaders in the party,

and a big number of the members of the committee,

et cetera, had city jobs.

Well, when the Democrats lost control of the city

in November, they fled for the hills,

I mean, never to be seen again.

And all of a sudden, people--

it's a game of which you looked around the room

and there were damn few of us left in the room.

And so that all of a sudden, not only

wasn't a bizarre quirk that I became the leader of the Ninth

Ward, it was just due to what occurred in the election

that I was one of the few people still standing on their feet

after election day.

So as the party tried to reconstitute itself,

in the aftermath of that defeat, it

wasn't that my charm, good looks and intelligence

moved me forward.

It was that I was breathing.

And the fact that I was breathing and had

a decent head on my shoulders in a very diminished group

of people, all of a sudden there was a few of us

that sort of stood out.

And the party went through some pitched battles,

then, for control of the party.

They lost city hall in '69.

In 1970, a group called the Democratic Action Coalition

tried to take over the party and failed.

And then in '72, they tried again

to take over the party, this time with Larry Kerwin

as their candidate for county chairman.

And I was not part of that group.

I fought them tooth and nail.

But the DAC faction took over in '72,

and Larry Kerwin became chairman.

And I remained-- I had won the primary battle in the Ninth

Ward.

Whereas most of the rest of the city,

the DAC had won the primary.

People don't even know the position exists,

but there's positions called county committee people.

And the city is divided up into, I don't know,

four hundred election districts.

And there's committee people in every single district.

And they elect the county chair.

And now, usually, you're forced to struggle to find

somebody willing to take it.

But that was a time in which two or three people wanted it.

So there actually were election battles for who would be--

the elections around primary day--

who would be their committee people.

And I had won the primary.

I had led a group that won the primary in the Ninth Ward.

Most of the rest of the city, the DAC people,

won the primary.

Larry Kerwin was elected chairman

of the county committee.

I was very much an outsider.

Well, that was in September '72 that that battle was fought.

In the winter of '72-'73, some people in the Ninth Ward came

to me and said, "Why don't you run for city council next

year?"

And I really wanted nothing to do with it.

You know, I was busy with my public accounting

career, et cetera, et cetera.

And so I really didn't think much of it.

Then Larry Kerwin was probably one

of the smartest, cleverest politicians

that I've ever met or known.

He really was something else.

EVELYN BAILEY: He reigned for quite a while.

PAUL HANEY: Oh, yes, very much so.

And it was the glory days of the local democratic party.

And I mean, I had fought him tooth and nail

over the county chairmanship.

And sometime as we began to move into '73,

he actually contacted me and he suggested

that I run for city council.

And I was dumbfounded, because I had just finished up

a battle in which I'd been clubbing him

with a two-by-four.

I failed, but I was part of the old guard, you know?

It was very much the old guard, a very young member

of the old guard, but a member of the old guard.

And here, the victor is asking me to run for city council.

Well Larry-- I didn't really grasp

what was occurring at the time, but in fact,

Larry being the very smart astute politician that he was,

knew that going into the 1973 election

he needed to try to unify the party.

And how better to unify the party

than to nominate one of the people who'd

been clubbing him with a two-by-four

to run for city council?

And it was part of the political astuteness of Larry Kerwin

that A, that he thought about that, and B,

that he could do it.

Most people in that position who had won that kind of a fight

would never have thought of bringing in somebody

from the other side.

But he was astute enough that he knew

it would serve his purpose, and his purpose

being winning the November 1973 election.

So it ended up, I mean it was just--

of course, being on this end of life,

I've decided that those young people that

think they have their life planned out for themselves,

I just laugh about it.

Because life is made up of twists and turns, and--

EVELYN BAILEY: You never know.

PAUL HANEY: You never know.

And if in February of '69 anybody had suggested to me,

or even in February of '72, if anybody had suggested

to me that I'd have been a city council candidate in November

of '73, I'd have told them they were out of their cotton

picking mind.

But it was just a series of very weird twists and turns

that led to that.

EVELYN BAILEY: And you won.

PAUL HANEY: And we won.

We were the first class of beneficiaries

from the Watergate scandal.

And the makeup of the city council going into the election

was five to four Republican.

So we knew we had to elect, and there was

five at large council members.

And we knew we had to elect three of them

to take control of the city.

We only had one incumbent running,

Frank Lamb was running for re-election.

So the other four of us were all first time candidates,

and we knew we had to elect three.

And we thought that we had a good shot at electing three.

Because there had been a series of scandals

involving the city government, the Republican city government.

We still had two very competitive daily newspapers

in town, and they both had very good--

Jay Gallagher and John, I can't remember what his name was--

who covered city government for The Democrat and The Times

Union.

Both very good reporters, wrote some very good stuff.

And so we thought we had a good chance at electing three,

maybe four.

Well, what happened was ten days before the election day in 1973

was the Saturday Night Massacre, in which President Nixon fired

Archibald Cox and--

I can't remember his name.

EVELYN BAILEY: Hinckley?

PAUL HANEY: Hm?

And the guy that was attorney general

and became famous as the Saturday Night Massacre.

And--

EVELYN BAILEY: Alderman?

PAUL HANEY: No, they were insiders in the White House.

Anyways, I think he demanded that the attorney general--

Archibald Cox was the special investigator

had been appointed to investigate Watergate.

He demanded that the attorney general fire Archibald Cox.

The attorney general refused to fire Archibald Cox.

So Nixon fired the attorney general, brought

in a new Attorney General.

The new attorney general immediately

fired Archibald Cox.

In fact, I think they went through--

I think there were three people that were dismissed.

It happened on a Saturday night, and it became known

as the Saturday Night Massacre.

It electrified the nation.

It just electrified the nation.

EVELYN BAILEY: Here in Rochester?

PAUL HANEY: Every place.

People were just-- the Watergate scandal had

been sort of percolating for some time,

but this just electrified the nation.

Course, in those days, still, the city

was very much the dominant entity in the county.

Majority of the population lived in the city.

And as part of running for city office,

you worked factory gates.

And you'd go out to the factories early

in the morning when the people were going in

and shake hands and hand out literature.

You wouldn't do it today because 80 percent of the people you'd

meet didn't live in the city.

But in those days, you could do it.

60-70 percent of them lived in the city.

And I remember the next week being

down at the old DuPont Factory on Driving Park Avenue,

about seven o'clock in the morning.

The guys are coming up the walk going in

and I look down the walk, and I saw a man coming up

the walk who was an old line Tenth Ward Republican

committeeman, and the type that really

liked to rub your face in it.

Phil (unintelligible) was his name.

And I saw him coming and I just said to myself, "Christ, I

wonder what he's going to say to me this time."

Because he was always trying to rub something in my face.

But you know, as a politician running for office,

you learn to grit your face and dig your feet in,

and that light.

So he came up to me.

He's coming up with the guys coming up the walk.

And he gets up to me and he grabs me by the arm,

and he pulls me real close to him so that he was whispering

in my ear, and he says-- now here's a rock-ribbed

Republican--

and he whispers in my ear, I will never

forget it, he whispers in my ear, "Don't worry, Paul.

We're going to get those sons of bitches."

Quote, end of quote.

I mean, this was only like three or four days after the Saturday

Night Massacre.

We didn't realize it yet, and it didn't become really apparent

until election day, but the nation

was riveted by this concept.

And the outcome of the election locally

was, whereas we thought we had the chance

to elect three of the five councilmen,

we elected all five.

Betty Pine was elected to family court judge.

Bill Lombard was elected sheriff.

They were the first two Democrats

elected to county wide offices since 1948

during the Truman election.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow.

PAUL HANEY: From '48 to '73, no Democrat had ever

won a county-wide election.

And they both won election.

Betty Pine went on to be a Supreme Court judge.

And it was just electric.

And it was really Richard Nixon that did it for us.

And of course the Watergate Effect

lasted two or three years.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

PAUL HANEY: But it electrified people, and we ended up--

whereas we hoped to have a five-four city council,

we had an eight-one city council.

EVELYN BAILEY: And how long were you on city council for that?

PAUL HANEY: I took office on January 1, 1974

and left on December 31, 1985.

I was on twelve years.

EVELYN BAILEY: So you were there when CETA came through.

What were your recollections about that, if you have any?

PAUL HANEY: Yeah, the CETA thing was

what was really interesting.

We thought, of course, CETA was a federal program, lot

of money, for job creation, et cetera.

And the idea was to--

it was aimed at primarily young people and giving them jobs.

And it really was a wonderful program.

And we thought we had constructed--

because I mean, it had the potential for terrible abuse.

I mean, it could have been just--

and in many cities was a huge patronage mill.

And we didn't want that.

We wanted an honestly run program

that was going to benefit people, et cetera, et cetera.

So we thought we had done a most honorable thing

in subcontracting with the United Way to run the program.

And we retained a piece of it and hired people who

directly worked for the city.

But the biggest chunk of the CETA money

we contracted with the United Way.

And the United Way was to go out and enlist

not-for-profit organizations to create job sites

and to fund these job sites.

And the entities would hire unemployed people, usually

young people, to take these jobs.

And they did that.

And they went about it very forthrightly, et cetera.

And there were--

I don't remember.

But there had to have been thirty

or forty not-for-profits.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

PAUL HANEY: That became involved in this through the United Way.

And one of them was the Gay Alliance.

And I don't know that we even knew it,

because we turned the program over to the United Way,

and frankly, we didn't want to know.

We wanted them to go out and run a good program.

Well, somehow or other, and I don't

remember how this occurred, it came out in the public.

It became public knowledge that one

of the entities that the United Way was dealing with

was the Gay Alliance.

And there was a segment of the community

that went nuts about this.

There was a fundamentalist Protestant church

up on Brooks Avenue in the Nineteenth Ward.

And their quote "minister" end of quote

was a man by the name of Fletcher Brothers, who

was probably one of the most disgusting individuals I ever

came across in my life.

His background was that he was a failed used car

dealer from Watertown.

And he came to Rochester.

I don't know how he ever got in the religion business,

but he did.

He founded this church up there.

And he attracted, well, what I call the nut cases.

But he attracted a big following.

And he was a very flamboyant individual.

He had a big booming baritone voice and everything,

and he was somewhat charismatic, charismatic in the sense

that Adolf Hitler was charismatic, but nonetheless

charismatic.

And he needed a cause, and he made this his cause.

And of course it became a great rallying cry, et cetera.

Well, unfortunately, the United Way lost its guts.

And when they realized that there was going to be--

not going to be, that there was controversy about this--

they backed away.

And I can't remember whether they first

said that they were going to drop the Gay Alliance

or whether they just went right to the mat and said,

we want out, period.

I can't remember how that worked.

But at any rate, they ended up out of the picture,

and the program came back to being a city program.

Because up till this point, the city took that position

when people ranted and raved at the city about allowing

the government money to go to the Gay Alliance,

our position had been, it's not our decision.

You know, we gave the money to the United Way,

and they did whatever they thought was best.

Well, course, in retrospect that put the United Way even more

in the bull's eye.

So anyways-- and I can't remember

exactly how that divorce occurred,

but the divorce occurred.

The whole CETA program ended up back in the city's lap.

And oh, there were some wild city council meetings,

because this Fletcher Brothers character--

and he enlisted some of the fundamentalist preachers--

and oh, they were just--

we had some disgusting city council meetings.

And it also was the first time.

And the only one whose name I can recall is Tim Mains.

It was the first time that I ever met Tim Mains.

But there was only like four or five or six

people that began coming to the council meetings representing

the Gay Alliance.

One was--

EVELYN BAILEY: Michael Robertson.

PAUL HANEY: Yes, that's right, Michael Robertson.

EVELYN BAILEY: And probably Bob Crystal.

PAUL HANEY: I don't recall that name.

EVELYN BAILEY: Maybe Patti Evans?

PAUL HANEY: I think I recall that name.

There's a guy that's a realtor, works for Nothnagle,

lives up in Cornhill?

EVELYN BAILEY: Richard Sarkis?

PAUL HANEY: Richard Sarkis was somewhat part of it,

I think, although not as active as the others were.

And at any rate, I honestly don't

recall that there was any hesitation

on the part of the city council members about the issue.

EVELYN BAILEY: Charlie Schiano raised--

PAUL HANEY: Yeah, Charlie Schiano was a nut case.

Charlie Schiano played to the audience.

I mean, if the audience wanted to burn Joan of Arc,

Charlie Schiano would have cheered them on and led them.