The gladiator in the thunderdome

“Character must show itself in the man’s performance both of the duty he owes himself and of the duty he owes the state.”

A passage from the “Citizenship in the Republic” speech, made by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt just a mere 114 years ago. Most know of this speech by it’s more famous passage alluding to the “man in the arena.”

We think of the “arena” for this passage as one Roman spectators would watch gladiatorial combat for fun — the brutality of it all for the adoring and spectacle-thirsty public. Today, that “arena” can be better described as a “thunderdome” — full of noise, glitz, lights, distractions, and so much more.

The political thunderdome — Albany’s only true major sport — is a place those with weak stomachs or indecision can’t exist. It is one part American Gladiators — a fight to the finish; one part subterranean gathering-space for zoosadist mayhem; one part “House of Cards”; one part “Boss” (it was on Starz, look it up); one part attempting to be like “The West Wing”; several drops of “Veep”; and inside a warped version of the “Chronobowl” as seen in “The Flash”.

I’ve seen the innerworkings of this thunderdome first hand for twenty years — on all sides politically and all slant ways. From foot soldier to strategist, I’ve done it all and have the bruises and scars to show for it.

And in those twenty years, there is a man who created a rift in the vortex, who fought his way to earn a seat at the table, and a man whose opponents are looking to close that vortex for their own political gain.

That man is David Soares, Albany County’s district attorney.

The rift in the vortex

If you know Albany politics, you know it’s both major league and a blood sport. The Democratic machine and its successiveness have dominated city and county politics for just over a century. The machine — even on its rise of power — was tougher and more strict than the mob (ask Legs Diamond how selling “insurance” in Albany went).

Albany has only had four mayors in 90 years and only four county executives in nearly 50 years. You get in line, you vote, and you’re a good Democrat.

In fact, voting machines in Albany — prior to modernization — used to have a clear, distinct noise if you did not vote down Row A (a loud clank noise that was audible to a poll watcher).

That was the landscape. And for years, that power was never challenged, never questioned. Reformers within the party would come through — be it those who stayed in Albany after college or those who were excommunicated from the machine, but never a total outsider.

In 2000, Sol Greenberg, who had been in office for 25 years (he, himself, a beneficiary of “Uncle” Dan O’Connell’s patronage when he first ran in 1974), retired and one of his Assistant District Attorneys, Paul Clyne, was tapped to lead.

Clyne had a political pedigree — the son of “Maximum” John Clyne, an Albany County Court Judge. The conventional wisdom at the time was the younger Clyne could have been district attorney for as long as he wanted — that’s how it would go.

Clyne’s tenure as district attorney is largely unremarkable and bookended by the tenures of Greenberg and Soares, thus this scion has been relegated as a footnote as the successor to one and a primary loser to the other.

Clyne made one critical political mistake — not one that erred locally but sent shockwaves up the hill at the Capitol with the arrest and conviction of an aide to then-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. In an environment full of sharks, there was an understanding — almost a cardinal virtue — that the floor and ante rooms of a legislative chamber were not one for handcuffs and warrants. With the aide walked out in front of members, staffers, lobbyists, and most importantly, television cameras, local power believed it trumped state power for this one moment.

Enter David Soares.

Soares, born from Cape Verdean parents off the west coast of Africa and grew up in the hardscrabble city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, came to Albany like most do: via higher education. The Cornell alum went on to graduate from Albany Law School and after a legal internship stint at the Albany County Airport Authority, became an Assistant District Attorney under Greenberg and Clyne— becoming the county’s first “community prosecutor.”

According to the National District Attorneys Association, a community prosecutor is “a problem-solver who focus not merely on individual crimes once committed, but on such acts within a context. They view individual acts as having a history, potentially a future, and as part of a problem or set of problems within a community.”

Soares handled concerns in the city’s toughest neighborhoods — Arbor Hill, West Hill, and the lower wards — alongside the Albany Police Department, namely Chris D’Alessandro, who was a commander for the force.

Their work was earning plaudits, not from City Hall, but from those in those neighborhoods who finally felt heard.

In politics, it’s all about the story. It is also about ensuring that credit goes to the top, not to those below. And if you make too much noise, your days are numbered.

In 2004, in an almost successive wave, both D’Alessandro and Soares were terminated from their positions for reasons that, simply put, weren’t kosher. The “man” had said “enough.” From the outside looking in, both of them were screwed by their bosses — whether that was from City Hall or from the District Attorney’s office.

And in politics, if you create the narrative of the rightfully scorn fighting against “the man” — well, you got yourself a race.

Soares did the unthinkable: he told Clyne he was going to challenge him the Democratic primary.

And Clyne did what was the conventional wisdom of machine politics at the time: termination. “How dare this guy, who isn’t even from here, who isn’t one of us, even consider challenging me?” — he didn’t actually say this, but you get the idea.

Concurrent to this, the upstart Working Families Party — formed just six years prior as a coalition of left-leaning and progressive groups such as Citizen Action of New York — had their sights on Upstate New York. They had already won key races in Brooklyn, namely a public defender and former Assistant Attorney General named Letitia James who won a New York City Council race under the most wildest of circumstances.

WFP, along with criminal justice advocates, supported Soares due to his campaign’s theme of reforming the “Rockefeller drug laws,” the most severe in the country. A district attorney as an public safety advocate? A wild concept.

There is a reason why “Rocky” resonates with viewers nearly 50 years after it came out. It is the classic underdog story. A down-and-out fighter who was given a shot by a champion who was full of hubris. The champion, with all of the pomp and regality of being a champion, did not think much of this challenger. And the challenger had a rag tag team of his trainer, his best friend, and his best friend’s sister who becomes his girlfriend — all in his corner, against all odds.

And if we are to compare the 2004 run to “Rocky,” you need to make it through the first two films together — as winning the Democratic primary was the first film and winning the general election was the second.

Both the primary and the general elections can be best described as bloodbath, bruising battles.

After Clyne lost, the “man” could not stand the fact the Democratic standard bearer for District Attorney was not only an outsider, but (hold your monocles and pearls) non-white.

Clyne remained in the race, by virtue of the Independence Party. The “man” decided it would be advantageous to hitch horses to the Republican nominee, Roger Cusick. Cusick, a respectable, fairly milquetoast attorney, made a compelling case: Clyne didn’t meet the mark and he had the chops.

If the primary election had been nasty, the general election was just as much so. Negative campaign advertisements and allegations far and wide were geared to discredit Soares.

Less than savory actions also took place, such as removal of campaign signs.

I know this first-hand because I did it. It was in October 2004 and under the direction of “the man,” a few of us — freshmen in college — were given the order to remove Soares signs in the city’s upper wards (the irony of putting up Soares signs in 2024 out in the hill towns of Albany County isn’t lost on me — cosmic justice, as it were). The signs were thrown into a van, off to a destination we weren’t privy to. “Keep the Clyne and Cusick signs up, get rid of his,” the directive was. Is stealing campaign signs wrong? Absolutely, and I never did that ever again.

If you’re reading this up to now, yes — I was not a Soares supporter in 2004. In fact, most of my criticism in my youth was how could a district attorney in one county change the laws at the state level. I was thankfully very wrong on that at the time.

On Election Day, it wouldn’t make a difference. Soares won, overwhelmingly against both Cusick and Clyne.

Soares had earned his place — but it wouldn’t be the only time he would faced with a main-event battle.

Over the next two terms in office, Soares and his office made both fighting crime and building hope a priority. And through a series of very public cases — namely the Peter Porco murder trial — Soares’ notoriety grew.

But, for as much as Soares had earned his place, “the man” had another plan.

Enter Lee Kindlon.

Kindlon, the scion of prominent defense attorney Terry Kindlon (who represented Porco’s son Christopher against Soares’ office and lost), declared his intention of running against Soares in the 2012 primary. An organized effort, Kindlon announced his run 10 months before the primary.

Around this time is when I met David Soares for the first time.

I had recently graduated from the University at Albany, got my first PR job up in Saratoga Springs at an agency that became the literal job from hell, and ended up doing freelance work. At a political fundraiser a couple of months prior, I met his campaign manager, who can be best described as a fiery, no nonsense, effusive, brutally effective, and hard charging woman. Two months later — on January 1, 2012, I met her again, at the precipice of forming our own agency, at the swearing-in ceremony for the Albany County Legislature. I told her, “we started our own agency.” She immediately put us to work — in which the Soares campaign became our first major client.

Similar to this year, the 2012 campaign cycle was a once-in-a-generation event with vacancies in three of the region’s Assembly seats and a contested primary for district attorney. A consultant’s dream, as it were.

We poured our souls into that campaign. And many of the same players who were around in the 2004 campaign were still around — both politically and financially. By the summer, though, another “man” emerged.

In the eight years since the 2004 campaign, the Working Families Party had racked up victories upstate and downstate and had become a powerful force.

A powerful force with certain interests — and certain relationships with vendors downstate.

Around July 2012, there was a directive from WFP wanting to end our agreement with the Soares campaign for “financial reasons,” so we were told at first. In reality, they believed we were too young, too inexperienced, not the “right fit” at the time — even though we hit every mark assigned. Losing the Soares campaign — and like I said, poured everything into as we were building the firm — would have been a death blow.

Soares and his campaign manager backed us, a point that I will never forget. The choice could have easily been: go with the so-called guarantee with a downstate firm with every resource available, or continue to use the upstart. Gladly, they chose the second — probably would not be writing this if the first was chosen.

The Soares-Kindlon battle was a pound-for-pound battle — it was Rocky IV (we’ll get to Rocky III shortly). And in the end, Soares was victorious — beating Kindlon 57 percent to 40 percent with 2.75 percent write-ins.

And for a while, things were good. A few years later, Soares had a major health scare, but came back swinging for the better.

Four things would happen shortly after that would change the landscape, including a “triple-threat” of reforms.

In 2019, New York State enacted legislation that eliminated cash bail, driven by the controversy surrounding Kalief Browder’s arrest, imprisonment, and death. Lawmakers used Browder’s suicide by hanging to push bail reform over the finish line.

Cash bail, used to keep certain criminals off the streets, would be eliminated for a wide range of crimes if it meant certain criteria. Similarly, another reform — entitled “Raise the Age” — would remove “adult status” for offenders if they were 16 or 17 years of age; instead, having those cases adjudicated in the family court system. And finally, prosecutors’ offices would be overburdened with unrealistic guidelines with changes to discovery as part of “discovery reform.”

Add in a global pandemic and it’s a recipe for unraveling much of the progress under Soares.

From 2005 to 2019, with Soares as district attorney, index crime (murder, rape, robbery, larceny, aggravated assault, burglary and car theft) went down in Albany County by 37 percent.

There is a difference between stating facts and causing division. There is a difference between being aghast at what’s happening in a community versus “throwing your hands in the air.”

As president of the District Attorneys Association of New York State, Soares became a leading advocate, providing a rationale argument for fixing or reversing these pieces of legislation. As district attorney, Soares is on the front lines of seeing the impact the triple threat had on creating a revolving door of justice that made communities across not just Albany County, but the state less safe.

Just as he did in 2004, Soares took up the mantle of the advocate-in-chief — this time, using his experience in office to shape his world view, but rooted in continuing the leading crime prevention initiatives and strategies his office has been known for.

It was only this time, when the Working Families Party — which in the following eight years after the 2012 re-election campaign became racked with controversies involving endorsements and lessened political power — turned its back on Soares and endorsed a young former assistant district attorney, a new-era progressive in a similar vein to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, against him in the 2020 primary.

Soares-Toporowski was the first major primary of the pandemic era, where mail-in ballots were allowed for all voters. A campaign fought largely on the digital front and direct mail, Soares once again was victorious.

Fast-forward to earlier this year: Soares received the endorsement of the executive committee of the Albany County Democratic Committee, along with fellow Democratic candidates seeking local and state office, on January 31. In the prior year, no candidate had emerged to challenge Soares, in which if a candidate were to emerge and to challenge an incumbent, they would have had to begin to mount a challenge early in 2023.

The following two weeks became amongst the longest. And a campaign would now ensue.

The “man” strikes back.

Lee Kindlon, coming off representing the owner of the limousine that killed 20 people in 2018, would attempt another run in “the fourth quarter”, racking up endorsements from the new “man” apparatus who would again attempt to silence Soares.

This new “man” — not unlike the “man” of the past — still could not stand the sight of Soares.

And Soares, once again fighting “the man,” has earned the support from many within the party, the labor movement (who has supported each and every one of his campaigns), law enforcement, and business owners.

Twenty years ago, the campaign was seen as a referendum about the Rockefeller drug laws.

Today, the campaign is very much a referendum on the state of criminal justice reforms and how they affect communities in New York State.

Going back to the “Man in the Arena” speech, which defines Soares’ entire political career:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

In the twenty years I’ve been around politically, there is no greater political gladiator who has earned his ticket each and every time than Soares.

Soares is our own political Rocky Balboa. And just like Balboa said to his son in “Rocky Balboa”:

You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.

The devotion to doing good. The ability to connect with young people, seniors, and everyone in-between. The protection of the vulnerable, both in human and pet form. Doing things because they were right, not because they were politically expedient. And above all else, being there when it counts — both visibly and behind the scenes.

I have been fortunate to have had a front-row seat to the action, and working with him on this campaign, just like in 2020 and 2012, has been an honor.

In each of these primary battles, the noise, the glitz — that thunderdome — roars. And in each instance, Soares comes out on top.

Defense of David is not just another gig for me — it’s personal.

You don’t stand idly when friends need you when they had your back, even when they didn’t know you as well. And I, along with many others, have Soares’ back in yet another main event primary.

Keep the rift in the vortex. Keep the community gladiator in the thunderdome.

Am I still paying the price for taking down those signs on Hackett Boulevard? You bet.

This Tuesday is the primary. And if you live in Albany County and are a registered Democrat, there is no other choice but to re-elect Albany County’s once and future district attorney, David Soares.