Brian Sharp

@SharpRoc

Mayor Lovely Warren said she is refocused and back on track, offering an apology during a radio interview on Monday in which she appeared to blame her rough start on an orchestrated effort to derail her administration.

"I didn't expect it to come like this," she said of the media scrutiny during an appearance on WDKX 103.9FM's Wake Up Club. "But I expected there to be something, and I don't think … I handled it the best way I could have."

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Warren said she has been walking in a "Twilight Zone" the past three weeks, through losing her grandfather to taking office. She said the attention paid to her, her appointments and family, got her off track. She touted an agreement reached to get the CityGate and Costco project back on track and other efforts including the announcement of a full-service grocery to open in the East End and her moving ahead on a campaign promise to move to a quadrant system of policing.

"In 20 days, here you have all these accomplishments," Warren said, "but you don't hear about that."

The conversation then turned to the rough start, which included the disclosure of her husband's juvenile arrest record, conflict of interest questions involving her corporation counsel, City Council questions on that matter and request for an ethics investigation into her creating a security detail and hiring her uncle, which followed his being stopped on the Thruway for speeding this month, and her acknowledging one stop but his being suspended for two.

Warren was asked why she thought so many questions were being raised. Her answer:

"Power concedes nothing without a struggle. And so when I step back … and I learn that all this information that they are bringing out now are things they knew in September, but they waited until two days before I take office to start to bring this stuff out … to try to make me seem like, 'Oh, she doesn't know what she is doing.' "

She continued later: "I am not going to get into this back and forth with certain people because that's what it became, a back and forth. And I kept wondering why only two people from the media were calling me, and that's because it was all set in stone before I got there."

It was not clear which people or incidents Warren was referring to. Another report involved her development services director appointee, who pleaded to Driving While Ability Impaired on Sept. 30, stemming from an auto accident last July. A request for clarification, through her spokeswoman, was not immediately returned.

She also spoke of those who like to see the city struggle but many people "want to see things change."

To the citizens of Rochester, she said: "I owe you an apology for getting off track, and I am sorry for that those first 20 days. … I lost focus for a minute, but I'm back."

On Thursday, Warren is scheduled to head back to Washington, D.C., for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, where she expects to meet again with President Barack Obama. The national search for a new police chief could launch as soon as Tuesday. And she and school board President Van White are off to a good working relationship, she said, with plans to regularly having lunch with city school students.

BDSHARP@DemocratandChronicle.com

Twitter.com/sharproc