Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren announced her reelection campaign in a video that touts her record leading the western New York city of more than 200,000 without addressing the campaign finance charges she faces or calls for her resignation over the suffocation death of Daniel Prude.
“Together we have made tremendous progress,” the 43-year-old Democrat says in the video posted Saturday on Facebook. Warren says the coronavirus pandemic hit the city “but it didn’t knock us out.”
“We must recognize that we rose up to meet every challenge,” she says in the video.
Warren, who is seeking a third term, was indicted last October on charges she broke campaign finance rules and committed fraud during her 2017 reelection campaign. She has maintained her innocence.
The campaign video shows a makeshift memorial to Prude, who died on March 30, 2020, a week after police officers who found him running naked through the street put a hood over his head and then held him down until he stopped breathing. Warren has said she only became aware that Prude’s death involved the use of force on Aug. 4 when video of the fatal encounter was released. But critics have alleged a coverup and called for her to resign.
Warren is Rochester’s first female and second Black mayor.
