As many of you readers know, India Walton, nurse, community activist and leader and democratic socialist, defeated four-time incumbent Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown in the recent Democratic Party primary (damn, it feels good to write that sentence). Val and I proudly voted for and donated to the campaign of India Walton, and plan to do each again. Val and I are Democratic committee people on the left side of the electoral/philosophical spectrum, me for about 15 years, Val for almost 20 years.
What moves me today is an idea that really gets my gander up (or other antiquated expressions), that Buffalo is a one-political party city, which is about as bad as believing that Buffalo and other Erie County municipalities should have open primaries. No and no. If there was a law or imposition that only one political party could hold office in the city, I could understand such a sentiment, but that is not so. People have elected only Democrats for several years in city, county and state offices, but you only have to go back about 5 years to find Republicans representing parts of the city.
With every single elected city official in Buffalo and every other elected official at any other level in Buffalo a Democrat, I realize the easy comment/response is that this a one-party city. But that is really an oversimplified, intellectually lazy and simply wrong statement. It isn’t fair, but more importantly, is wrong and kind of dumb to blame Democrats for being able to organize, work hard and offer the stands on issues that the vast majority of city residents favor/agree with; it’s contemptuous to Democratic voters. Instead, we have a Buffalo Republican Committee that, through marching orders from the Erie County and New York State Republican committees, have basically given up on the City of Buffalo, even with an officeholder as recent as former State Senator, now Congressman Chris Jacobs. The obvious reason for Republicans giving up and not even making reasonable efforts challenging or vying for elections in Buffalo is that the fewer competitive races in Buffalo, the lower the Democratic voter turnout may be, affecting county, state and federal elections.
Enrollment of Democrats versus Republicans in Buffalo favors Democrats by a margin of about 7-1 to 10-1, but fighting for your beliefs and political existence would seemingly be a good idea for running candidates against incumbents in the city. Democrats also hold majorities in the New York State Assembly and State Senate, as well as occupy the Governor’s Mansion, but it wasn’t long ago that Republicans held the majority in the State Senate and held the governorship (the electrifying, magnetic George Partake) and even had a U.S. Senator in the slimy, how-did-he-avoid-prison Alphonse D’Amato. I understand that Republicans have a horrible track record of electoral success, as well as actual policy implementation, in urban areas, but when your party pretty much stands for horrible policies and is blatantly racist, maybe the best we can hope for is a GOP that exists but barely succeeds at anything in the city besides voter suppression.
I am not stating that every office being held by one party, in Buffalo Democrats, doesn’t create some problems. Sadly, this situation has led to some political laziness and the election and re-election of someone as boring, non-innovative, incompetent and some would say even worse like Byron Brown, who served on Buffalo’s Common Council and in the New York State Senate before becoming mayor. This creates a situation where the winner of Democratic primaries in Buffalo are de facto election winners; if there is no Republican candidate, as there is none for the Buffalo mayoral race in 2021 and has previously occurred, then the election itself becomes all but a formality. Some people believe this makes it a good thing that Byron Brown, after his primary loss to India Walton, has announced he will conduct a write-in campaign for mayor. It is a real long-shot election strategy, but no one at this point expects Brown to do the smart thing, the classy thing and the right thing and concede the primary election and leave the race. But it seriously demonstrates some hypocrisy and self-aggrandizement in Brown’s part, since he has won several primaries in the past and never welcomed write-in campaigns, but no doubt expected losing candidates to bow out of the race. It is hard to believe that Brown, the former New York State Democratic Committee chair, did not expect and advocate for primary winners to be the party’s candidates and not seek disgruntled losing Democrats to continue their campaigns. But, here he is.
There is the related concept that political primaries, which decide the parties’ respective candidates, should be open to all voters, regardless of affiliation. Some say that in a city like Buffalo, where one party dominates elective offices, that this would give all voters a chance to vote on the candidates at a time their voices could be heard. Primaries are specifically held to determine which candidate represents a specific political party in the general election, so absolutely no, no one not registered to that party should be allowed to vote in the primary. Want to vote in a political party’s primary? Join the damn party. Why should anyone not holding the same beliefs as a specific party get to choose its candidates? Don’t give me the argument of there being no chance of outsiders winning primaries; India Walton just did so. Also, it is not a political party’s responsibility that the other parties run candidates or run candidates of any particular quality. Open primary? Sure they’re called general elections.
