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.
- But I mean, in the eight member Democratic caucus,
- I can't recall any substantial even discussions.
- Course, we were all of a liberal bent to begin with.
- And I really can't recall in our caucuses
- at all that there was any serious thought ever
- given to not funding the Gay Alliance.
- And the program went forward, and of course the Gay Alliance
- was funded.
- The bigger battle, really, I mean
- that battle was key in that it was the first public battle.
- And the Alliance won the battle.
- But while the public persona of it
- was that it was a tremendous battle, as I say,
- I don't remember that in the council
- it ever was really much of an issue.
- The bigger battle came over when the Chamber--
- and this was a few years later.
- I don't remember what year it was.
- EVELYN BAILEY: 1980?
- PAUL HANEY: Yeah, that would be about right.
- EVELYN BAILEY: When the Chamber of Commerce refused.
- PAUL HANEY: Right.
- And the Gay Men's Chorus had been formed.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Right.
- PAUL HANEY: And I have always believed that the Gay Men's
- Chorus had a profound impact, way beyond, I think,
- what people realized.
- Because it demonstrated that homosexual people
- didn't have horns.
- And that was 80-90 percent of the battle.
- So the Gay Men's Chorus was formed,
- had begun to be popular, was building an audience base.
- And at that time, the Chamber of Commerce
- owned the building at 55 St. Paul Street.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Right.
- PAUL HANEY: And up on the third floor of the building,
- they had what they called the Great Hall of the Chamber.
- It was a very nice big room.
- And the Chamber of Commerce used to rent it out
- for all kinds of special events.
- There used to be a lot of dinners
- that were held up there.
- This was before the convention center opened.
- There used to be a lot of dinners held up there.
- It was a very nice room.
- And they had rented the great, what
- was called the quote "Great Hall," end of quote,
- of the Chamber of Commerce for the concert, for their spring--
- I think it was their spring concert.
- And a guy by the name of Tom Mooney, who
- was an active Republican, he'd been Assistant City Manager
- and Assistant County Manager under Republican governments,
- et cetera--
- was the Director of the Chamber of Commerce.
- And I don't know how this occurred,
- because I can't believe that somebody
- at the Chamber of Commerce signed
- a lease with the Gay Mens' Chorus
- without Tom Mooney's knowledge.
- But anyways, they had a valid lease.
- And then it came out, publicly, that the chorus was holding
- its concert in the Great Hall of the Chamber, and a to do
- arose about that.
- And Tom Mooney sort of had the backbone of any eel
- or something to begin with.
- And he, and probably illegally, if it was a valid lease,
- but anyways, he announced he was voiding the lease.
- And while the city had no ostensible role in that--
- I mean, it was between the Chamber and the Gay Mens'
- Chorus--
- at that time I can remember that people on City Council
- were outraged.
- And I, admittedly, just sort of sat back and watched.
- And I really was amazed at how some of my peers on the City
- Council were genuinely outraged that the Chamber was
- backtracking on this.
- And course, there never was a great love
- affair between Democrats and the Chamber of Commerce
- to begin with, because the Chamber was always
- Republican businessmen, and Democrats were union backers,
- et cetera, et cetera, so that there never
- was any love lost between the entities.
- But there was genuine outrage.
- And I can remember the one who really surprised
- me most of all, was Tom Ryan.
- Tom Ryan was outraged.
- And course, it fascinated me, because here you
- had a good, loyal son of Irish-Catholic parents,
- and fit that whole old Catholic mold, et cetera.
- And Tom was really outraged.
- And it was interesting.
- It could have been a dog lovers' society.
- What he was outraged about was that somebody had a lease,
- and then somebody wanted to try and void the lease because they
- found out they didn't like something
- about their potential tenant.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.
- PAUL HANEY: And it really--
- I don't think, with Tom, I don't think the gay thing
- was really that big an issue.
- It was that a group of citizens--
- EVELYN BAILEY: Had legal rights.
- PAUL HANEY: --had a legal right to use the place,
- and now they were being denied their legal right.
- So as I say, the city had no direct role in it.
- And I honestly don't recall where they ended up
- holding the concert.
- But at that time, course, downtown
- was still downtown Sibley's and midtown and all like that.
- And the Christmas shopping season
- was still a big deal, etc.
- And the city had a contract, had had
- for a few years, a contract with the Chamber of Commerce,
- in which the city paid the Chamber of Commerce every year
- a block of money.
- I don't remember what it was.
- Seems to me it was like forty or fifty thousand dollars.
- And the Chamber took that money and used
- it to put up decorations and light poles
- downtown and that light.
- And they also used to contract with the bus service
- for free bus service on Sunday.
- People could ride the buses.
- The stores would be open the four Sundays before Christmas,
- and people could ride the buses downtown free on the four
- Sundays before Christmas.
- And the city contracted with them--
- and governments frequently will do this,
- because when it's basically the CETA issue.
- For governments to contract for things
- is a very complex business.
- And when you're dealing with things
- that are going to involve many different pieces,
- it's easier, much easier, for the government
- to find one intermediary that it can contract with,
- and then that intermediary can fan out to all the subentities.
- So we had this contract with the Chamber.
- And the issue came up, and the most outspoken
- were Chris Lindley and Tom Ryan, that the Chamber
- had to be punished for what it had
- done to the Gay Mens' Chorus.
- And whereas I don't remember any conflict in my caucus
- about the CETA situation, there was
- conflict in the caucus about punishing the Chamber.
- Some people were just afraid to take on the Chamber.
- Some people didn't want the city to get involved
- in an issue that the city wasn't directly involved in,
- et cetera.
- And one of the things that had changed in between the two
- was Midge Costanza had left the council,
- and Ruth Scott came on the council.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.
- Stop there for just a minute.
- Midge was elected to City Council.
- PAUL HANEY: In '73 with the five of us.
- EVELYN BAILEY: But she was not the first woman
- to be elected to council.
- Was she?
- PAUL HANEY: Yes, she was.
- EVELYN BAILEY: OK.
- And she was also the person who got the most votes.
- PAUL HANEY: Right.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And my understanding
- is the person who got the most votes was
- to be Council Chair, or--
- PAUL HANEY: No.
- That's the story that got circulated,
- but there never was any such process.
- EVELYN BAILEY: But she became Vice Mayor.
- PAUL HANEY: Right.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And had she been a man,
- would she have become mayor?
- PAUL HANEY: No.
- I can guarantee it.
- There are stories about Midge that--
- I was invited to participate in providing information
- to a woman a year ago from California
- who was writing a biography of her, to which my response is,
- my mother always told me, never to speak ill of the dead.
- Midge was a very two-sided individual.
- There was the side that the public saw,
- and there was a very different other side.
- And Midge never would have been elected mayor.
- EVELYN BAILEY: But she was very popular.
- PAUL HANEY: Oh, enormously popular.
- Let me give you one example of why she was popular.
- And this occurred during the election in '73.
- At that time, the so-called "line"
- as they used to refer it, was Clifford Avenue.
- South of Clifford Avenue was black, north of Clifford Avenue
- was white.
- The line had begun to move north.
- In those days, there were realtors
- who were engaged in what was called blockbusting,
- a disgusting activity which we ultimately passed
- some legislation to outlaw.
- But it was very hard to deal with,
- because it was very hard to prove that they were doing it.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Right.
- PAUL HANEY: And there was some less than honorable realtors
- who had begun the blockbusting process
- north of Clifford Avenue.
- And the line was moving towards Avenue D,
- and ultimately, was to move to Norton Street.
- Now I guess you'd say it's Ridge Road.
- I don't know if there is a line.
- And the northeast part of the city, still at that time,
- north of Clifford Avenue, was Polish, Ukrainian,
- a lot of immigrants, very heavily first generation,
- et cetera.
- Who were genuinely frightened, personally
- frightened about the movement of African-Americans
- into their community.
- And these realtors, as I say, were
- engaging in blockbusting, in which the realtors were
- scaring them.
- Because the way blockbusting worked was
- you got one black family to move onto a street.
- You then, you being the dishonorable realtor,
- then went to all the other people on the street
- and said, "You know, this street is
- turning into an African-American community.
- You better get out.
- I'll list your house and I'll get the best price I can,
- but you better sell right now.
- Because in six months, this street will be gone."
- And they would panic people.
- And you would go over to the northeast side of the city,
- and you would see twelve, fifteen, "for sale" signs
- in a block, on both sides of a street,
- and you would know that a realtor had been there doing
- blockbusting.
- And these people were scared.
- So we had a candidates forum at the old Lincoln Branch
- Library, which used to be at the corner of Clifford and Clinton
- Avenues.
- And the people there were people from the area
- north of Clifford Avenue.
- And their issue was "those people," quote end of quote,
- have to be kept out.
- Midge said to them, "I agree with you."
- Now, she was not endorsing blockbusting,
- or she was not endorsing discrimination
- against black people.
- But Midge had an insatiable need to be liked.
- So she agreed with them.
- And I don't honestly believe she understood
- what she was agreeing with, because in their mind,
- she was agreeing to keep the black people out
- of the Polish neighborhoods.
- From that place, very same night, we went to a meeting
- at--
- the five of us, the five candidates--
- went to a meeting at the Black Eagles
- Club, which was located up on Clarissa Street.
- And this was a meeting with leadership
- of the black community.
- And their big issue was--
- there was a city police captain who was black--
- their big issue was they wanted a black appointed police chief.
- And they wanted this individual--
- they wanted commitments that this individual would
- be appointed police chief.
- Right out of the box, Midge agreed with them,
- that this individual should be appointed police chief.
- The other four of us are saying things like, "Well, yes, we
- absolutely agree with you.
- We need to have the very best police chief we can have.
- It needs to be somebody whose understanding
- of all elements of the community, you know,
- what some would call the pablum."
- But we certainly weren't going to make a commitment
- to hire anybody as police chief.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Right.
- PAUL HANEY: And I can remember, we walked out of there
- about ten o'clock, and Midge went on her way.
- And Chris Lindley had shown up as an observer.
- He wasn't running-- as an observer.
- So the five of us, that is, the other four at large candidates
- and Chris, I can remember the four
- of us standing on the sidewalk on Clarissa
- Street outside the Black Eagles Club
- saying, "My god, what are we going to do?"
- Because in the space of two hours,
- Midge had given totally opposite messages to two
- bitterly opposed factions in the community.
- Now, I don't think she intended to do harm.
- I don't think she even realized what she had done.
- But she had an insatiable desire to be liked,
- and the result is, without thinking
- about the consequences, she would
- say whatever came to her mind that she
- thought would please the group that was in front of her.
- And these groups-- today, people in the press would do it.
- Course, both of these, there was no press
- at either of these meetings.
- And I don't think she'd be able to get away with it today.
- And as I say, I don't think there was anything
- intentionally evil on her part.
- It's just the way she was.
- So that the result was everybody liked her
- because she told everybody--
- EVELYN BAILEY: What they wanted to hear.
- PAUL HANEY: --what they wanted to hear.
- And we knew that.
- And there was no way she ever would have been elected mayor.
- But she spreads the story that it was "traditional,"
- end of quote, for the high vote getter to be elected mayor.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.
- PAUL HANEY: And there was absolutely no tradition
- of that nature, whatsoever.
- None.
- So anyways, back to the Chamber of Commerce.
- EVELYN BAILEY: The punishment of the Chamber.
- PAUL HANEY: And we had some heated discussions about it.
- 'Cause I say, some people didn't want
- to get involved in the issue.
- Some people didn't want to take on the Chamber of Commerce.
- And it always interested me that the two people who
- really were most outspoken-- well, the first one
- didn't surprise me.
- Chris Lindley was very outspoken,
- but Chris Lindley was a liberal of the old school, et cetera.
- So it was sort of natural for him.
- But the other one who was very much outspoken was Tom Ryan.
- And Tom Ryan-- it became almost a personal crusade with him
- that the Chamber had to be punished for doing what it did.
- The biggest problem, and slowly the other members of council
- came around in the end, and I really
- almost hesitate to say this, the biggest problem was Ruth Scott.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Hm.
- PAUL HANEY: Ruth Scott, active member
- of a prominent black church, et cetera,
- did not want to do something that appeared--
- and again, this was contrary to her public persona,
- because Ruth was clearly a liberal.
- But she was very much against doing something that appeared
- to benefit the gay community.
- And she resisted seriously.
- Now, when it ultimately came to a vote--
- course Charlie Schiano voted.
- The vote became to rescind the contract
- that the city had with the Chamber over the Christmas
- decorations, et cetera.
- And course Charlie Schiano would be against that.
- He always went with the peanut gallery.
- How Ruth ultimately voted, I do not recall.
- But in caucus, she was the last holdout
- about punishing the Chamber for throwing the Gay Mens' Chorus
- out of the Great Hall.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Did City Council revoke?
- PAUL HANEY: Oh, yes.
- City Council revoked the contract.
- There was some bitterness.
- There was, you know, bitterness in the community about it,
- et cetera, but oh yes, city council revoked the contract
- and severed its relationship with the Chamber.
- EVELYN BAILEY: I mean, the other thing
- was that the Gay Alliance wanted to hold its annual meeting
- at the Chamber of Commerce.
- And they were refused.
- PAUL HANEY: Wanted to what?
- EVELYN BAILEY: Wanted to hold its annual meeting--
- PAUL HANEY: Oh, did they?
- Oh, I didn't know that.
- EVELYN BAILEY: --at the Chamber of Commerce,
- and they were refused.
- PAUL HANEY: Oh, I didn't know that.
- EVELYN BAILEY: That's when Jackie Nudd was president.
- PAUL HANEY: Oh, OK.
- I don't recall knowing that.
- EVELYN BAILEY: And there was a huge uproar in the community,
- and people picketed Tom Mooney's house.
- PAUL HANEY: I don't remember that at all.
- Isn't that interesting?
- EVELYN BAILEY: And I believe, I'm not positive,
- but at some point in the future, the Gay Men's Chorus
- did have a concert at the Chamber
- in order to set right the action.
- PAUL HANEY: Yeah, there was.
- It was quite a triumphal evening, if you will.
- But yeah, I forget.
- It was a good couple of years later.
- But yes, ultimately the Gay Men's Chorus
- did have a concert there to correct
- the wrong that had taken place.
- Yeah.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Paul, I need to stop, but I want to thank you,
- and I really would like this conversation to continue.
- Because from my perspective, it is
- important to know the history of city
- council and other happenings.
- Because along those same lines, you
- have anti-discrimination legislation,
- and you have domestic partnerships,
- and I value your historical perspective.
- And some of the questions I asked in my email,
- you know, what part did liberation
- in the legacy of our forefathers have
- in shaping the political environment here
- in Rochester, the burnt over district, all of those
- kinds of experiences which, whether or not
- you claim it, impacts the community
- and impacts the response of the community.
- PAUL HANEY: Well, Rochester has always
- been a very interesting place.
- Rochester has a long, long history of being socially--
- I always defined Rochester as socially liberal
- and economically conservative.
- And I mean, the long history of social liberalism
- in this community--
- I mean, people like Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony,
- and less better known ones like Red Emma, and--
- EVELYN BAILEY: Walter Rauschenbusch.
- PAUL HANEY: Yeah.
- You know, there's a real whole tradition of this in Rochester,
- so that Rochester, while being an economically very
- conservative place, could be a hotbed of abolition
- and the women's right to vote.
- And it had a very active socialist community
- at one time, I mean rabid socialism.
- And that's a tradition that I think you're right,
- laid in some ways the ground--
- like at one point, if you went back twenty years ago
- when Rochester had accomplished several things
- like the partners legislation, which all occurred
- after I left the council.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.
- PAUL HANEY: But it occurred well before similar things
- in Syracuse or Buffalo and that like.
- People use to say to me, "Why is that happening in Rochester
- but it hasn't happened in Syracuse, or Buffalo, or even
- New York City?"
- And people used to attribute it to people like Tim Mains
- and that like.
- And certainly Tim played--
- EVELYN BAILEY: A role.
- PAUL HANEY: And an extremely important role.
- But I think the real reason why an activist like Tim
- was able to do things like this was because there was
- this long history of social liberalism in Rochester
- that didn't exist in Buffalo.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Right.
- PAUL HANEY: And part of it goes back to what we first
- talked about, that the socioeconomic educational level
- in Rochester was always higher than it was in a Buffalo,
- or even in a Syracuse, So that Rochester was always
- a much more liberal community, socially liberal community.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Education and levels of education do that.
- PAUL HANEY: Right.
- EVELYN BAILEY: Thank you.