NoMoJoMo

Party Boss

For nearly a decade, Joe Morelle was simultaneously a state legislator and Chairman of the Monroe County Democratic Committee—the boss of Rochester’s local political machine. He used that power to hand-pick a state comptroller in a closed-door process, engineer a mayoral succession that voters overwhelmingly rejected, and rise to become Sheldon Silver’s right-hand man in the Assembly. After going to Congress, he continued to treat his home district as a personal fiefdom—attempting to install his own son as Town Supervisor, and flying home from Washington to hand-pick a town councilmember. When a Black county legislator appeared on an opponent’s podcast, Morelle tried to have her fired—while leaving a white woman who appeared on the same podcast untouched. Today, every countywide elected official in Monroe County—County Executive, County Clerk, Sheriff, and District Attorney—is a Morelle loyalist.

Chairman of the Monroe County Democratic Committee (2004–2013)

For nearly a decade, Joe Morelle simultaneously served as a New York State Assemblyman and as Chairman of the Monroe County Democratic Committee—making him both a legislator in Albany and the boss of Rochester’s local Democratic Party machine.

In May 2005, the Democrat and Chronicle reported that Morelle was the likely successor to outgoing party chairman Joe Rosen. At the time, Morelle was already an Assemblyman, a former Monroe County Legislator, and a business owner. He was credited with putting the party in “solid position” and was described as someone who “has enough room to appoint his own people” within the organization. Party leaders viewed him favorably: “They view him, like previous chairmen, as a party veteran who could lead the party to even more electoral success,” the paper reported.

By 2006, when the Democrat and Chronicle endorsed Morelle for re-election to the 132nd Assembly District, the paper acknowledged the duality of his role: “For someone who also wears the Independence and Democratic chairman [hat], Joe Morelle could easily lose focus.” The endorsement praised his “leadership role” but noted the inherent tension in being both lawmaker and party boss.

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Kingmaker: The DiNapoli Comptroller Selection

In February 2007, New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi resigned in disgrace after pleading guilty to a felony. Rather than hold a special election to let voters choose his replacement, the State Legislature selected Long Island Assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli in a closed-door process—a decision that landed on the front page of the Democrat and Chronicle.

Morelle, as both an Assembly power broker and Monroe County Democratic chairman, was a key player in this insider selection. Good-government groups and editorial boards objected, arguing that an independent and experienced financial manager should serve as comptroller. Instead, the Legislature picked one of its own. The Democrat and Chronicle reported that Morelle “didn’t rule out the possibility that he had talked to the speaker” about DiNapoli’s selection, and that he “was credited with putting the party in solid position.”

Morelle defended DiNapoli, praising “his integrity and ability to build a bipartisan consensus.” But the process itself—legislators choosing a comptroller to oversee legislators—was widely criticized as a textbook example of Albany’s self-dealing culture.

Nearly two decades later, DiNapoli remains State Comptroller—never having faced voters in a competitive election for the office he was handed. In 2026, he faces his first serious primary challengers: Drew Warshaw, Raj Goyle, and Adem Bunkeddeko, who have criticized his management of the state’s $291 billion pension fund and his failure to use the office’s oversight power to address utility rates, housing affordability, and other issues affecting working New Yorkers. Morelle’s fingerprints remain on an arrangement that has kept one insider in power for a generation.

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“An Undemocratic Scheme”: Engineering the Rochester Mayoral Succession

In December 2010, the Democrat and Chronicle’s “Speaking Out” column ran a piece by William Johnson titled “An undemocratic scheme,” accusing Rochester’s political establishment of engineering the mayoral succession after Mayor Robert Duffy left to become lieutenant governor. Deputy Mayor Tom Richards was the sole announced candidate for a special election, and the column argued that the fix was in.

“Joe Morelle should be in the center of this discussion,” Johnson wrote, pointing to Morelle’s role in orchestrating the behind-the-scenes maneuvering. The column described the process as one where “Rochester political and business leaders” had pre-selected their candidate, and voters were expected to ratify the choice rather than participate in a genuine contest. Regular columns in the Democrat and Chronicle overwhelmingly rejected the arrangement, with the paper noting that public meetings drew attendance of “97 percent” opposed.

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Sheldon Silver’s Right-Hand Man

In January 2013, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver appointed Morelle as Assembly Majority Leader—the number-two position in the chamber. The Star-Gazette reported that Silver “created the position when Silver announced Morelle’s selection” and that Morelle was “humbled by the opportunity.” Morelle told the paper: “I’m on a mission. We have a strong agenda, we have a very serious agenda, and we’ve got a lot to do.”

But when Silver was arrested on federal corruption charges in January 2015, Morelle’s closeness to the disgraced Speaker became a liability. The Democrat and Chronicle reported that Assembly members “were growing through the night increasingly nervous” about the situation, and that potential successors—including Morelle—were “now scrambling.” The paper noted that “if any upstate Democrat could pull off a run for the speaker’s position, it would be Majority Leader Joseph Morelle.”

Morelle ultimately did not become Speaker. But his years as Silver’s hand-picked lieutenant—serving as the number-two leader under a man later convicted of corruption involving millions of dollars—raise serious questions about Morelle’s judgment and the company he keeps.

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Dismissing a Rape Victim to Protect a Silver Aide

In 2001, Sheldon Silver’s top aide Michael Boxley was accused of rape by Elizabeth Crothers, a fellow Assembly staffer. Morelle, then a state Assemblyman and friendly with Boxley, spoke to Boxley after the accusation was made—and then, when a reporter asked him about it, said: “I absolutely don’t believe a word of it.”

Morelle has admitted this in a sworn affidavit filed as part of Crothers’s negligence lawsuit against the New York State Assembly. “At the time he made the comments, Morelle was friendly with Boxley,” the affidavit records. “My statement in 2001 was intended to be supportive of Michael Boxley.” He also admitted that he heard “rumors spread” to smear Crothers—an alleged rape victim.

An Assembly probe initially cleared Boxley. Then he was indicted for raping a second Assembly staffer, Rikki Shaw. In 2003, Boxley pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of sexual misconduct for having intercourse with Shaw without her consent. In 2018—fifteen years after the guilty plea and seventeen years after Crothers came forward—Morelle publicly apologized to her. In his affidavit, he called his 2001 statement “insensitive and made without full knowledge of the facts.”

In 2023, Crothers filed a civil suit against the Assembly and the State of New York under the Adult Survivors Act, alleging negligence and a hostile work environment. That lawsuit is ongoing. The night Crothers says Boxley raped her—June 29, 2001—then-Assemblyman Scott Stringer spoke to her at the hotel where they were both staying while the legislature was in session. In his own sworn statement, Stringer described Crothers as “upset and did not know what to do,” having described her assault in “excruciating and horrifying detail.” He said he offered her “unconditional support.”

Morelle offered the opposite. He took Boxley’s word, dismissed the victim publicly, and—by his own admission—heard rumors being spread against her without objecting. It took a guilty plea, fifteen years, and a civil lawsuit before he said sorry.

Shaw, who had originally been identified only as “Jane Doe” when Boxley was prosecuted, has since gone public. She submitted an affidavit in support of Crothers and other survivors. “More than 20 years after I was raped,” Shaw told the Post, “Albany is still protecting the politically connected instead of holding predators accountable.”

The trial is scheduled for August 24, 2026. Rather than acknowledge the state’s failure, Attorney General Letitia James’s office has aggressively defended the Assembly—fighting to get Crothers’s case thrown out. Crothers’s attorney, Carrie Goldberg, put it plainly: “Recognizing that the abuse and cover-up of Ms. Crothers’ assault happened in a different era of New York State’s leadership, we expected this AG who has been such a champion for victims of sexual assault to be eager to make amends with Ms. Crothers. Instead, we’ve seen aggressive efforts to try to get Ms. Crothers’ case thrown out, despite there being uncontroverted evidence that she was raped and horrifically retaliated against. It makes us question whether anything has meaningfully changed in New York politics.”

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The Party Machine Goes to Congress

When longtime Rep. Louise Slaughter died in office in March 2018, Morelle leveraged his decades as party boss to claim the Democratic nomination for New York’s 25th Congressional District. He won the June 2018 primary with just 45 percent of the vote in a four-way race, defeating Rachel Barnhart, Adam McFadden, and Robin Wilt.

The general election opponent, Republican Jim Maxwell, called Morelle “a career politician steeped in the ways of corruption and gridlock” and positioned himself as “a fresh face” with “no political baggage.” The Democrat and Chronicle described the race as a contest between a political insider who had “picked up the Democratic mantle” through “a lengthy political résumé” and an outsider. Morelle won, carrying his decades of party connections, name recognition, and an established donor base into Washington.

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The Irondequoit Fiefdom

Even after going to Congress, Morelle has treated the Town of Irondequoit as a personal political fiefdom—controlling who runs, who steps aside, and who fills vacancies.

In 2021, longtime Irondequoit Town Supervisor Dave Seeley—a former Senior Advisor to Morelle in the State Assembly—stepped down mid-term to become Executive Director of RochesterWorks. With the seat open, Morelle’s son, Joe Morelle Jr., ran for Town Supervisor on the Democratic line. But Morelle Jr. lost to Republican Rory Fitzpatrick by 76 votes, handing Irondequoit a Republican supervisor for the first time in years. Fitzpatrick served until 2023, when Democrat Andrae Evans reclaimed the seat—only to be censured by the Town Board over allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation.

Morelle’s grip on Irondequoit hasn’t loosened. In March 2026, when Town Councilmember Peter Wehner resigned after relocating for work, Congressman Morelle flew from Washington, D.C. to Irondequoit to personally nominate Ryan Trevas—a former leader of the Irondequoit Democratic Committee—for the vacant seat. At the designation meeting on March 10, Trevas received 109 votes to challenger Kathryn Walker’s 29, in what local commentators described as a “show of force” by the Morelle machine rather than a genuine democratic process. Walker had been nominated by Ann Cunningham, the sole woman on the Town Council, who expressed concern that “the IDC did not work with the board” in selecting a replacement.

A sitting member of Congress flying home to hand-pick a town councilmember tells you everything about how Joe Morelle views local government: not as a democracy, but as a machine to be operated from the top.

The machine’s grip tightened further in April 2026. With Ryan Trevas—Morelle’s March pick—now facing Kathryn Walker in a June 23 Democratic primary, Morelle’s son Joe Morelle Jr., now chair of the Irondequoit Democratic Committee, filed a court action to knock Walker off the ballot entirely. Through attorney Joshua Oppenheimer of Greenberg Traurig, Morelle Jr. alleges that roughly half of Walker’s approximately 800 designating petition signatures are invalid, including nearly 100 he claims are outright fraudulent—“line after line,” he asserts, purportedly in “the same handwriting.” The filing names Walker’s volunteer petition-carriers, including former Monroe County Health Commissioner Michael Mendoza and Town Council Member Ann Cunningham, as alleged participants in the fraud.

The Monroe County Board of Elections had already completed its own review and invalidated just 53 of Walker’s 791 signatures, mostly for ordinary issues such as voters not being registered as Democrats. Walker cleared the 500-signature threshold by nearly 300. Her response: “The system here is being used to block competition instead of protect voters.” Fraud allegations in ballot-petition challenges are, as Rachel Barnhart put it, “a nuclear option”—a legal weapon that forces a challenger to spend time and money defending herself regardless of the merits. Morelle Jr. has offered the court no evidence of widespread fraud beyond his own assertions.

The irony is hard to miss. In 1990, Joe Morelle Sr. was found by a judge to have fraudulently obtained petition signatures to get himself onto the ballot for his first Assembly race—and ultimately pleaded guilty. A generation later, his son wields the same accusation as a weapon against an opponent who appears to have out-collected the machine’s candidate the old-fashioned way.

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Racialized Retaliation Against Sabrina LaMar

In 2020, Monroe County Legislator Sabrina LaMar—a Black woman who also served as an adjunct professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology—appeared on a podcast hosted by Robin Wilt, a local political figure. The appearance was perceived as supportive of a Morelle opponent.

What happened next revealed the ugly side of Morelle’s machine politics. LaMar filed an ethics complaint alleging that Rep. Joe Morelle attempted to have her fired from her adjunct position at RIT in retaliation for appearing on the podcast. LaMar publicly called on Morelle to resign over the alleged retaliation.

But here is the detail that makes the retaliation especially damning: Sue Hughes-Smith, a white woman who was also a Monroe County Legislator and an adjunct professor at RIT, appeared on the very same podcast. Morelle never threatened Hughes-Smith’s job. Only LaMar—the Black woman—faced professional consequences for her speech. The retaliation was not just political; it was racialized.

Morelle himself confirmed, in his own words, that he had personally reached out to RIT about LaMar. In an attempt to defuse the ethics complaint, he released screenshots of his own text messages to Deborah Stendardi, RIT’s Vice President for Government and Community Relations. “I try not to overreact to annoyances, but wanted to share the link below with you,” Morelle wrote. “Sabrina LaMar did a recent video for Robin Wilt’s congressional campaign… Can you take a look at this and give me your thoughts on it?” That is a sitting member of Congress flagging a Black woman legislator’s political speech to a senior administrator at her employer and asking for her “thoughts” on it. Morelle maintained he never asked RIT to fire her—but he also chose to release the texts himself, and the texts speak for themselves.

Robin Wilt, the podcast host who witnessed Morelle’s selective punishment firsthand, is now challenging Morelle in the 2026 Democratic primary for New York’s 25th Congressional District.

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Overriding Black Voters: The 2013 Mayoral Race

In 2013, Morelle’s machine backed incumbent Mayor Tom Richards for re-election. City Councilmember Lovely Warren, a Black woman, challenged Richards in the Democratic primary. The party establishment lined up behind Richards—and critics alleged that the designation process was orchestrated before predominantly Black districts had held their committee meetings, effectively sidelining Black Democratic voices.

It didn’t matter. Warren defeated Richards in the September primary by 15 points, 57 percent to 42 percent—a stunning upset of the party machine’s handpicked candidate.

What happened next was extraordinary. Rather than rally behind the Democratic nominee—the standard obligation of a party organization—Richards remained on the ballot on the Independence Party line. The Democratic establishment that Morelle led did not aggressively pressure Richards to drop out or throw its weight behind Warren. Richards ran against the woman who had beaten him in the Democratic primary, splitting the vote in a general election. Warren won anyway, 55 percent to 39 percent, becoming Rochester’s first female mayor.

The episode became a lasting grievance in Rochester’s Black political community: Morelle’s machine would rather run a spoiler campaign against its own party’s nominee than accept a result it didn’t control.

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Installing Jamie Romeo Over Jennifer Boutte

When Adam Bello won the Monroe County Executive race in 2019, his vacated County Clerk seat needed to be filled. Governor Andrew Cuomo appointed Jamie Romeo—a former executive director of the Monroe County Democratic Committee and Morelle’s hand-picked successor in the State Assembly—to serve as Clerk through the end of 2020. The appointment gave Romeo the enormous advantage of incumbency heading into the Democratic primary.

Jennifer Boutte, a Black woman and Director of Development and Community Engagement for CDS Life Transitions, announced her candidacy and fought for the seat. Boutte was blunt about what she was up against: “I am not fighting to win votes against Jamie. I am fighting against a system that was structured for candidates such as myself to fail, leaving voters without a choice.” She added: “Being that we live in such a diverse county and leadership is not comprised of the same level of diversity—not to mention geographical diversity—it further proves that we have a problem that is systemic.”

Romeo won the primary 57 percent to 43 percent—with the built-in advantage of a gubernatorial appointment that Morelle’s network helped secure. The pattern is clear: when a seat opens up, the machine moves quickly to install a loyalist before voters have a say.

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Diluting Black Votes: The Redistricting Fight

After the 2020 Census, Monroe County needed to redraw its 29 legislative districts. What followed was a 13-month battle over Black political representation that revealed how far the Morelle machine would go to protect its incumbents.

County Executive Adam Bello—Morelle’s protégé—opposed maps that would create majority-Black districts in Rochester, instead pushing for what he called “crossover districts” or “minority-opportunity districts” where Black voters would not constitute a majority. Critics, including Legislature President Sabrina LaMar and civil rights organizations, argued that Bello’s approach cracked Black communities across multiple districts to prevent Black candidates from winning Democratic primaries against white incumbents aligned with the Morelle machine.

The Crescent Coalition—a group including LaMar, Brighton Town Board member Robin Wilt, Rev. Myra Brown of Spiritus Christi Church, ROC Acts, the Urban League of Rochester, and the Poor People’s Campaign—pushed for five majority-Black districts. Bello vetoed the Legislature’s map twice.

The standoff ended when the Rochester NAACP, Robin Wilt, Myra Brown, and other plaintiffs filed a federal lawsuit under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (Rochester, NY NAACP Branch #2172, et al. v. Monroe County, et al., No. 6:2022cv06558, W.D.N.Y.). Rather than defend the “crossover district” theory in court—a theory widely regarded as legally discredited—the county offered a settlement the same day the lawsuit was filed. The result: six majority-Black districts, more than the Crescent Coalition had originally proposed.

Robin Wilt, one of the plaintiffs who forced the county’s hand, is now challenging Morelle in the 2026 Democratic primary for New York’s 25th Congressional District.

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Every Countywide Official: Morelle’s People

The full scope of Joe Morelle’s machine becomes clear when you look at who holds countywide office in Monroe County. As of late 2025, every single countywide elected official owes their position, directly or indirectly, to Morelle.

County Executive Adam Bello is a former aide to Morelle from his days in the State Assembly. Bello went on to serve as executive director of the Monroe County Democratic Committee and as Irondequoit Town Supervisor before Morelle’s machine helped elect him County Executive in 2019—the first Democrat to hold the office in decades. Bello refers to the elder Morelle as his mentor.

County Clerk Jamie Romeo served as executive director of the Monroe County Democratic Committee—Morelle’s party organization—before being elevated to chair in 2015. When Morelle left the State Assembly to run for Congress in 2018, Romeo won his vacated Assembly seat. She then left the Assembly after just one year to run for Monroe County Clerk in 2020, winning with the full backing of the party apparatus she had previously led.

Sheriff Todd Baxter was personally recruited by Morelle to switch parties and run for Monroe County Sheriff on the Democratic line in 2017, as documented above.

District Attorney Brian Green was an Irondequoit Town Justice before being appointed Monroe County District Attorney by Governor Hochul in September 2025, following the resignation of Sandra Doorley. The appointment was praised by Bello—Morelle’s protégé—and Green came from Irondequoit, the town Morelle treats as his personal political base.

As conservative commentator Bob Lonsberry observed, with Green’s appointment, Morelle had personally chosen every countywide elected official in Monroe County. County Executive, County Clerk, Sheriff, District Attorney—all of them are Morelle’s people. That is not a political party. It is a machine.

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