As the Sept. 14 primary nears, accusations of racial politicking are being leveled at Common Council president candidate David A. Franczyk after some of his decade-old campaign material resurfaced recently.
     About half a dozen white opponents of Franczyk, who represents the Fillmore District on the Council, appeared
outside his campaign headquarters at Hertel and Colvin avenues Sunday to distribute copies of the  two separate mailings from Franczyk's 1989 Fillmore District campaign.
     Although nearly identical in layout, one mailing was targeted specifically at black voters in his district and the other at its white voters. Franczyk's opponents contend that the separate mailings and the different content of each are evidence of his racial politicking.
     "If the mayor did these separate mailings, would we tolerate it? I don't think so," said Sandra Shatley, a Fillmore District resident who was among those handing out copies of the two mailings to pedestrians and motorists along Hertel.
     "I don't think Dave Franczyk should get away with it, either," she added.
Franczyk on Sunday did not deny having distributed the separate mailings 10 years ago, but he did deny that there was anything wrong or inherently racist about the mailings. In fact, he insisted, many other local politicians tailor their campaign material to appeal
to different constituencies.
     "It's time-honored ethnic campaigning," Franczyk said. "It's a form of political advertising to appeal to particular ethnic groups."
     Those opponents challenging Franczyk on the practice pointed out that the  white  version  of the  mailing showed pictures of Franczyk with white politicians and constituents, while the black version showed Franczyk with only black supporters and two black
Council members who had endorsed him.
     Further, the opponents contended, the version targeted at whites appealed to fear among some whites in the district by running an excerpt from an Am-Pol Eagle editorial warning that a split in the vote between the two Polish-American
candidates running could at that time result in the first-time elec-
tion of an African-American representative in the Fillmore District.

The primary date was printed seven times in the white version,
while not at all in the black version.  William Wilkins,  a Niagara
District resident and one of the organizers of Sunday's protest,
contends that the intent was to discourage black voters in the Fill-
more District- from going to the polls. "In the primary, voter apa-
thy is extremely high," Wilkins said Sunday.
     "There are 116,000 registered Democrats in the city. Over the
last three elections, only 25,000 have voted. So the experts say you
want to mention the primary date as often as possible, which is ex-
actly what he  did for the white version. It has. the primary date
seven times, four 'times on the front cover. The black version has
it riot  at  all, which plays on voter apathy to keep the African-American vote low," he added.
     Franczyk said the primary date was not included in the black version in case it became necessary to use the same material for the general  election.  He  insisted  that there was no substantial difference in  the  messages conveyed  in  the two mailings.
     "They both carried the same message: Support Dave Franczyk,"
he ,said, "and I obviously got support in both communities."
     He said he had done nothing more than what some local ethnic
advocacy journals, such as the Challenger, a local weekly African-
American paper, and the Am-Pol Eagle, do in appealing to their in-
dividual constituencies.
     Wilkins, however, insisted that he and his followers are politically unaligned. Wilkins said they plan to distribute 20,000 copies of the Franczyk mailings and material pointing out the differences between then.
     "We're just concerned citizens," Wilkins said. "That's all it boils
down to. We know people that have lived in the Fillmore District.
We've been in the Fillmore District,  audit's  ashambles.  (Fran-
czyk) has used racial politics to further his career over the last 14
years, and I think that's terrible. It has no place in politics, especially in Western New York, which is an extremely diverse community."