By Chris Churchill, Columnist

I’d be lying if I claimed to know whether Dan Cerutti has a shot at being Albany’s next mayor. I think he probably does, but that’s just a guess.

What I do know is that many residents are deeply dissatisfied with the state of the city under Mayor Kathy Sheehan. And that dissatisfaction would seem to open the door to a nontraditional and relatively unknown candidate without government experience.

“It’s a two-person race,” Cerutti proclaimed Wednesday morning over an omelet at the Pearl Street Diner.

Technically, there are likely to be four candidates in June’s Democratic primary, which at the moment also features county Legislator Carolyn McLaughlin, Common Council President Corey Ellis and city Auditor Dorcey Applyrs. But Cerutti believes he and Applyrs are the front runners.

For Cerutti, that winnowing has appeal, because it sets the race as a straightforward contest between him, the outsider, and a Sheehan ally easily characterized as the candidate of the status quo. Things get more complicated if one also places McLaughlin and Ellis on the outsider side of the spectrum.

But clearly, nobody can blame Cerutti for the city’s problems; his fingerprints aren’t on this mess. Currently the CEO of healthcare startup Maia Care, he has spent years as a tech executive with companies such as IBM and Wang Laboratories.

That career carried Cerutti, a 1977 Christian Brothers Academy graduate, from Pine Hills to distant cities. But nine years ago, he and his wife Jeri returned to their hometown, settling on Marion Avenue. And four years ago, when COVID-19 closed the gym where Cerutti played basketball, he began walking.

Those long walks, he told me, made clear the depth of the city’s struggles and the pain experienced by too many residents. On those walks he began thinking about the need for change and the role he might play. Fast forward a few years, and he’s running for mayor.

His campaign is significantly focused on public safety, but he doesn’t lack other topics to chat about.

As we ate, Cerutti mentioned rapidly expanding the exemplary work of the Baby Institute to address the city’s distressing literacy rate. Albany, he said, has many retired people who would enjoy reading to children and many children who need to hear the written word — so why not marry the two?

He talked about the destructiveness of political partisanship and his (now-delayed) desire to launch a social media site that would discourage extremism and insults.

Cerutti also talked about the withering of after-school engagement programs and the possible link to violent crime. He discussed the need to attract the tech industry and the city’s failure to capitalize on the explosive growth at the Albany NanoTech campus. Thinking back to his time in Austin, Texas, he even mentioned making Albany a capital for live music.

The city could use a mood change. Getting called boring on ESPN and “moribund” in the New York Times can’t be good for morale. Even if a person thinks the claims are unfair, any clear-eyed look would conclude that Albany is not in a good place. But who or what’s to blame?

Cerutti says the city has been damaged by a multiyear series of blunders and Sheehan’s “abdication of responsibility.” He argues that the case for dramatic change and new perspectives is obvious.

The $200 million offered by Gov. Kathy Hochul for downtown revitalization could be a turning point, Cerutti says, but only if the city has a mayor who knows how to capitalize. Doing so, he adds, takes executive experience from beyond the confines of local government.

I feel obliged to mention that Cerutti is also the only white candidate in the primary. In the Albany of old, that would have been a decisive advantage but perhaps the city has evolved beyond simple racial calculations. Let’s hope so.

Still, Albany will almost certainly have its first Black mayor next year if Cerutti loses. If he wins, that aspect of history-making will probably have to wait.

“The city would benefit from having a Black mayor, no question about it,” Cerutti told me. But the more important consideration, he added, is whether Albany has the mayor it needs to meet this moment.

“The difference among us isn’t skin color,” Cerutti said. “The difference is my experience.”

Albany primaries can be especially hard to predict, in part because turnout is usually dismal. In a four-way race, a candidate might need only 5,000 votes to win.

Are there 5,000 voters willing to go with Cerutti?

Probably — yet the same could be said for other candidates. And in a way, electing so distinct a government outsider doesn’t feel like an Albany thing to do. But this year, maybe the city really is ready for change

Contact: News@DanForAlbany.com