Rachel Barnhart

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Birth name Aliases
Rachel Barnhart None
Birth date Birth place
Info Needed Rochester, NY
Date of death Place of death
N/A N/A
Known for
Investigative journalism and web presence
Occupation(s)
Journalist, news anchor, politician
Website
[WWW]Professional site
[WWW]Facebook
[WWW]Twitter

Rachel Barnhart was an acclaimed investigative journalist and news anchor for WROC TV-8. She has also worked for WHAM TV-13. She is a Rochester native who grew up in Maplewood and graduated from John Marshall High School and Cornell University. In 2016 she left journalism for politics.

Barnhart is also known for her Twitter and local blog, The Rochesterian. She was awarded Best Local Blog and Best Local Twitter Feed in City Newspaper’s Best of Rochester 2012 contest. She won again in 2013.1 There is also another Twitter account called [WWW]Fake Rachel Barnhart that seems to exist primarily to bait and criticize the real Barnhart. City Newspaper named Fake Rachel Barnhart "Best Media Raspberry" for the Critic Pick portion of the Best of Rochester 2013, arguing that "speaking as a journalist, I think we sometimes need to get our wigs yanked."2

In February, 2014 Barnhart was named the 50th Most Influential New Yorker on Twitter by New York magazine. The rankings were based not on followers but "recent engagement." According to the magazine, "The data, compiled by social media company PeerIndex, uses a special set of algorithms to come up with a New York influence score it calls 'Apple π,' measuring interactions through responses and retweets."3

In 2016 she ran for NYS Assembly against Harry B. Bronson and lost the primary. In 2017 she unsuccessfully challenged Mayor Lovely A. Warren for the Democratic mayoral nomination.

In June 2019, she won the Democratic primary to represent the 21st District in the City of Rochester, which includes her home in the Beechwood neighborhood. In September 2019, she was appointed to that seat to complete the term of Mark Mouio before winning the general election that November. She was re-elected in 2021.

Awards