Andreatta: Rachel Barnhart, Arnie Rothschild and Textageddon

Arnie Rothschild is a man about town in Rochester.

He’s a businessman who runs a couple of marketing firms.

He’s a political operative whose firms produce ads for candidates and government agencies.

He’s the chief executive officer and chairman of the board of the Rochester Broadway Theatre League, which is working with Mayor Lovely Warren to scare up financing for a new theater on the old Midtown Plaza site known as Parcel 5.

So, it’s hard to know which hat Rothschild was wearing on Aug. 22 when he sued mayoral candidate Rachel Barnhart over a purportedly unpaid bill, then threatened in a series of text messages to make the dispute a news story with legs unless she shut up and paid up.

“Here is my suggestion … It felt to the cracks or Armageddon … I have an email trail … It will be a three day story … And Rachel seriously you are a world-class f--- up with no standing … Take your finger off your phone and sue for peace,” read one text from Rothschild, typos for "fell through the cracks" included.

Was he a businessman who wanted his money? Was he a political operative threatening to blow up Barnhart’s campaign with a three-day story that portrayed her as a deadbeat?

Or was he the head of RBTL attempting to silence Barnhart’s criticism of the city’s plan for Parcel 5 that she had at times conveyed via cellphone to her wide social media network?

Members of the City Council will have to ponder those questions if they bother to consider a letter Barnhart said she sent them this week detailing the texts.

Barnhart, who lost handily in a primary to Warren last week, said she wrote the council because she believed the texts illustrated Rothschild abusing his position as the head of the Rochester Broadway Theatre League by meddling in the mayoral campaign.

The letter accused Rothschild of doctoring a phony bill — Barnhart disputes the legitimacy of the $4,918 tab for mailers related to her previously unsuccessful run for Assembly — and plotting with the Mayor’s Office to harm Barnhart’s reputation.

“This is what corruption looks like,” she wrote. “This isn’t the way projects should get done in Rochester. … City Council should demand Rothschild remove himself from anything having to do with Parcel 5.”

Dismissing Barnhart’s letter as sour grapes is tempting. She got trounced in the election, and there’s no evidence that news of the lawsuit, which received fleeting coverage the day of the text exchange, torpedoed her fledgling campaign.

But Rothschild is the public face of a prominent arts organization that’s negotiating for prime city real estate and tens of millions of dollars in public financing to build its theater.

In that context, whether the texts are deserving of a rebuke or concern from council members, in whose hands the fate of the theater rests, becomes a valid question.

The texts were sent between Rothschild, Barnhart and their mutual friend, Robert Scott Gaddy, an Albany lobbyist who teamed with Rothschild to help elect Warren four years earlier but was now advising Barnhart. Politics make strange bedfellows.

“My suggestion is paid the invoice and see it fell through the cracks and we will not issue a statement,” Rothschild wrote in his opening text, following up to substitute “pay” for “paid” and “say” for “see.”

Gaddy responded by imploring Rothschild to drop the lawsuit, saying they’re all friends, and insisting the bill would get paid.

Rothschild declined. “By the way,” he added, “I need her to back off with her stupid tweets. I have a long line of emails which I will release tomorrow if she tries to play this stupid game … Scott, you are my friend and I admire you, this lady needs to shut up!”

Barnhart replied, “You’re a sick man, Arnie. Now the entire city knows it.”

That’s when Rothschild threatened Armageddon, to which Barnhart responded, “What you don’t understand is I’m the only candidate who could have gotten you your damn theater.”

“I am not buried you yet but I will,” Rothschild wrote.

It went on from there. Barnhart's letter didn't detail her or Gaddy's responses, but she provided screen grabs of them for this report.

In an interview, Rothschild said it was the drink talking.

“First of all,” he said, “I had drinks when I sent them and I shouldn’t have ever sent them.”

He said he was tired of waiting for Barnhart to pay the bill and was angry about what he characterized as Barnhart disparaging him in texts to his daughter, with whom Barnhart was once close friends. Barnhart has said Rothschild treated her like a daughter.

In those texts, sent the day the lawsuit was filed, Barnhart called Rothschild a "scumbag" and a "despicable human being."

“I just felt violated is all,” he said. “I can’t excuse my anger or my behavior but I can tell you it had nothing to do with politics. It had nothing to do with RBTL. It had nothing to do with Lovely Warren’s campaign. … My sole agenda was collecting the money. I found out the weekend before that she wasn’t going to pay and I lost my temper and I was wrong.”

“I never said I don’t have a temper,” Rothschild added. “Especially if it’s rum-induced, and that was, by the way.”

It can't be easy being a man about town with a lot of hats.

David Andreatta is a Democrat and Chronicle columnist. He can be reached at dandreatta@gannett.com.