The race for the Northwest District seat on the Rochester City Council is being waged by two Democrats with ties to a wing of the party that was once controlled by former Mayor Lovely Warren and her mentor, the late Assemblymember David Gantt.
Frank Keophetlasy is a former Monroe County legislator who worked for both Warren and Gantt early in his career. Bridget Monroe is an assistant to Brighton Town Supervisor Bill Moehle who was a liaison to City Council for the Warren administration.
The Northwest District covers a diverse swath of the city, representing the working-class neighborhoods of Lyell-Otis and Edgerton to its south and the more affluent lakeside community of Charlotte at its northern tip.
The district is currently represented by Jose Peo, a banker first elected to the seat in 2019. Peo is not vying for a second term.
Keophetlasy and Monroe square off in a primary on June 27. The winner will likely run uncontested in the general election and take the seat.
Frank Keophetlasy
Frank Keophetlasy, 29, made his foray into politics in 2019 when he was elected to represent the 28th District in the Monroe County Legislature. He ran unopposed that year, becoming the first Asian-American elected to the body, and, at 25 years old, among the youngest to ever win a seat.
Born and raised in the Lyell-Otis neighborhood, Keophetlasy comes from a uniquely Rochester political pedigree. While in college at SUNY Brockport, Keophetlasy interned under the late Assemblymember David Gantt, who he would later serve as a legislative aid for and who would offer key support in Keophetlasy’s quest for a County Legislature seat.
Prior to taking office, Keophetlasy was a northwest constituent liaison for former Mayor Lovely Warren, a Gantt protegee.
In the Legislature, he served as a founding member of the now-defunct Black and Asian Caucus, a Democratic breakaway bloc of five Gantt disciples that included the president of the Legislature, Sabrina LaMar, and legislators Vincent Felder, Ernest Flagler-Mitchell, and Calvin Lee. The bloc was dissolved when voters threw most of its members, including Keophetlasy, out of office in 2021.
In his run for the Council seat, Keophetlasy said his political leanings are about what’s best for the northwest.
“I think I have the experience to fight for some of the changes that the northwest community really wants to see happen,” Keophetlasy said. “I really love it, though, I love the northwest, and I love Rochester. That’s why I’m still here.”
Keophetlasy sees the preeminent needs of the district as a cross-section of stable housing, public safety, and opportunity for youth, all of which lend to one another.
He said he watched many childhood friends fall into drugs and violence. For them, he said, that path was predetermined by a life track that lacked other, more viable options.
“It’s a perpetual cycle, unfortunately,” Keophetlasy said. “And if we don’t improve the quality of life, the opportunity, the jobs, public safety becomes a concern. I think people turn to crime to fill in those voids of what they don’t have. It’s not an excuse or justification for what they’re doing, but it’s a reality we have to understand.”
Among the solutions are expanding recreation opportunities, offering housing support, and building a more community-oriented relationship between police and city residents, he said.
Keophetlasy is a proponent of direct outreach, going door-to-door to learn the needs of the community. He said city government, as it stands, is often “complacent” and does not actively seek out novel solutions to problems.
“Us in government have an obligation to do more and not be complacent once we’re in the seat,” Keophetlasy said. “I see a lot of complacency in the seats of government, and that hurts the community.”
Bridget Monroe
Bridget Monroe has never held elected office, but she has been working in government nearly half her life.
Monroe, 51, first joined City Council as a staffer in 1998 as a legislative aide to former Councilmember Brian Curran, who went on to become the city’s head lawyer in the Warren administration. In 2001, she began working as a legislative analyst for the Council, and later, upon Warren’s entrance into office in 2014, became the mayor’s chief liaison with the Council.
She has been an assistant to Moehle since leaving City Hall in 2018.
Monroe has lived in the Maplewood neighborhood for 22 years, almost as long as she has been working in government. She sees her longevity in both key advantages to serving on Council.
“I’ve read through 18 years of city budgets and school district budgets, I know all about the Consolidated Development Plan and funding and keeping the city financially sound,” Monroe said. “But more than that, it’s really my focus on the northwest and addressing some of the problems we have here.”
Among the top issues is stable housing. Monroe said that she sees many homes in the northwest that are near uninhabitable, yet priced so that the average resident would struggle to afford them.
“I’m very invested in making sure we have quality housing for folks, regardless of their income,” Monroe said. “Some of the ways of doing that are, obviously, working with our non-profit partners who do low-income development, and I would want to find ways to have more funding and oversight of programs that would allow homeowners and small landlords have funds get into their buildings.”
Monroe also is a proponent of fostering public safety through more what she calls “community-oriented policing.” To her, that means upping the number of Rochester police officers and making them more visible on the street.
On top of that, she wants to see broader investment in diversion and intervention programs, which could deter people on a risky path, coupled with more neighborhood-based activity options for youth.
“It’s not a case of catching a bus to, say, Edgerton, but it would be in your own neighborhood, where you can then also make connections with your neighbors,” Monroe said. “All the other adults and parents can know who the kids are on the street and try to develop a more cohesive community feeling.”
