With the 2023 primary elections concluded candidates for seven of the eleven offices on the ballot in the City of Buffalo this year have effectively been elected. Minor party challenges to four Democratic Council primary winners are all that remain for election 2023.
The five Democratic primary elections for Council seats saw three incumbents victorious by large margins. Two newcomers will join the Council in January. Turnout was generally down compared with the total votes in the districts during the 2021 mayoral primary.
The winner in the Ellicott District, Leah Halton-Pope, won with 49 percent of the vote. She had the support of her boss, Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes, Mayor Byron Brown, and Council President Darius Pridgen. She also had more money – more than twice the total amount raised by her opponents. Cedric Holloway gained 26 percent, Matt Dearing trailed with 15 percent and Emin Eddie Egriu collected just 8 percent. The Board of Elections (BOE) failed to provide turnout information, but in raw vote totals there was about half the number of Democrats voting compared with the 2021 mayoral primary. Dearing will appear on the November ballot on the Working Families line. Michael Chapman has filed independent petitions to be on the District's November ballot.
The Masten District had two power-house candidates, Zeneta Everhart and India Walton. Everhart outraised Walton by more than two-to-one, and that, along with endorsements by the Democratic County Committee, Mayor Brown, Senator Tim Kennedy and others proved too much for Walton to overcome. Everhart's winning margin was 34 percent. In raw vote totals there were only about two-thirds of the number of Democrats who voted in the 2021 mayoral primary. Murray Holman will be on the November ballot as the Conservative Party candidate in the District.
University District Councilmember Rasheed Wyatt won re-election by a comfortable margin, 31 percent, against a strong and active challenger, Kathryn Franco. In raw vote totals there were only about two-thirds of the number of Democrats who voted in the 2021 mayoral primary. Franco has the Working Families nomination on the November ballot.
North District Councilmember Joe Golombek, the longest serving member of the Council, won with a margin of 41 percent. His opponent, Eve Shippens, ran a well-funded and aggressive campaign. In raw vote totals this primary turnout exceeded the numbers of Democrats who voted in the 2021 mayoral primary by 16 percent (215 votes). Shippens will appear on the Working Families line in November. Golombek has the Conservative party nomination.
Lovejoy District Councilmember Brian Bollman handily won re-election over his challenger, Mohammed Uddin by a margin of 39 percent. Uddin had a large campaign treasury. Voter turnout slightly exceeded the turnout in the mayoral primary.
Four members of the Common Council had no primaries, meaning that they were effectively re-elected in April when their petitions were filed. Democratic candidates for Buffalo Comptroller and City Court Judge have drawn no opponents.
City voters, of course, also vote for countywide offices. There is a challenger for County Executive Mark Poloncarz. Three County Family Court seats are on the ballot but there are only three candidates for those offices. Weak November turnouts in Buffalo have worked to the advantage of Republicans who traditionally do not run their own candidate for office in the City. Even in years when there are highly contested countywide races the number of voters showing up in Buffalo in November is meager.
The County Legislature's 10th District
In terms of ferocity of the campaign and money spent, the 10th District takes the prize in 2023. That campaign was nothing less than a war between the Republican and Conservative Parties that just happened to have candidates facing off against one another in both Republican and Conservative primaries. Lindsay Lorigo won the Conservative line by a 29 percent margin. With all districts reporting she leads Jim Malczewski in the Republican primary by 33 votes. There are likely some absentee votes to be counted.
This is the third primary election defeat for Erie County Republicans in recent years. They lost with Karen Case for Sheriff in 2021, and while he was victorious overall in the 2022 primary election, Nick Langworthy lost the Erie County portion of the congressional district to Carl Paladino. The Republican turnout in the seven towns of the legislative district slightly exceeded the total vote for sheriff in the 2021 primary but was 30 percent less than the total in last year's congressional primary in the seven towns.
The issue that became public last week concerning the investigation of State Supreme Justice Joseph Lorigo's 2022 campaign by state Commission on Judicial Conduct may have had some effect in the primaries. The late endorsement of Lorigo by Paladino also likely had an impact.
The annual salary of a County Legislator is $42,588 with a two-year term. Republicans currently hold the 10th District and the November outcome is not going to affect continued Democratic control of the Legislature.
When all the numbers are in it is likely that the total amount spent in these primaries races, including the tens of thousands of dollars funneled through the respective state committees, will be in the $150,000-200,000 range. The next financial reports coming from the candidates and the state committees will be available July 17.
The previous 10th District Legislator, Joseph Lorigo, was a registered Conservative who caucused with the Republicans. County Conservative Party Chairman Ralph Lorigo made it clear that he expected the Republican caucus of the Legislature to appoint his choice for legislator, his daughter-in-law, Lindsay Lorigo. At a legislative hearing in January Ralph Lorigo took the unprecedented steps of: (a) speaking at a public legislative session; and (b) threatening to withhold Conservative endorsements from Republican legislators who failed to follow his directive. There was and is no legal requirement for the legislators to do so.
There was talk during the primary about a "truce" between the Republicans under Chairman Michael Kracker and the Conservatives, led by Ralph Lorigo. There was no truce. The campaign was bitter, described by some as a war, and it is likely to pose continuing problems for both parties going forward, potentially directly affecting party leadership.
The BOE fails to report
Previous posts have reported on the failure of the Erie County Board of Elections to continue the tradition of publishing voter apportionment information, where the number of voters are totaled by party as are the registration numbers of voters in various local, state, and federal districts. Republican Commissioner Ralph Mohr is reportedly responsible for withholding the details.
It has also been the tradition of the BOE on their website to report both the votes received in elections by the candidates and the turnouts in the various districts, which are calculated by looking at the candidates' votes and the party registration numbers in the districts and municipalities. The parties voters are registered with is a known factor. So are the bounds of municipalities and legislative districts where those voters live. Nonetheless the Board failed to report turnout in yesterday's elections.
Twitter @kenkruly
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