10 September 2005
A Buffalo Report editorial
How to vote in the October 13 Buffalo Democratic mayoral primary
There are only two candidates left in the Democratic primary for mayor of Buffalo: Byron Brown and Kevin Gaughan.
Byron Brown is a pleasant fellow who has said nothing of substance about anything that matters for years. With all the difficult and messy issues in play in Buffalo, that is no mean task, one that took and no doubt continues to take a great deal of work, dedication and concentration. He is the darling of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership (the organization that poured a ton of money into the destruction of Buffalo Common Council President James Pitts' political career) and the Buffalo News (the newspaper that wrote editorial after editorial in the same cause). The unions like him and some of them endorsed him even before the other candidates had a chance to say what their positions were. The reason the Partnership and Buffalo News like Byron Brown and disliked Jim Pitts are two sides of the same coin: Pitts wasn't owned by anyone and he was unpredictable; Byron Brown is nothing if not predictable, and if he isn't owned he is, at least as far as the money brokers in town are concerned, safely leased. With Brown as mayor there will be some slight redistribution of who gets the marginal spoils, but no change in anything of substance.
For several years now we've thought Kevin Gaughan something of a silly person. Maybe it was that May 2001 afternoon during the centennial of the Pan American Exposition when he rode down Lincoln Parkway perched on the back of his Cadillac convertible grinning, waving, and tossing out miniature footballs. He must be running for something, we said, but what? Nobody sits on the back of a Cadillac convertible and tosses miniature footballs into a crowd unless he's running for something. Then, not long after, he announced his candidacy for Buffalo's mayor. But the footballs had been tossed in vain: his campaign collapsed when it turned out he didn't have a Buffalo mailing address. He lived in Hamburg and everybody knew it. He hurried up and got himself a pied-à-terre with the city limits, but the harm had been done and he soon dropped out.
Then there was the Buffalo News hype of him for years as a "civic leader." A leader is someone who has followers, but the Buffalo News never found anybody marching behind Kevin Gaughan. It was "Kevin Gaughan, civic leader," never "Kevin Gaughan, leader of ______." It was like reading about someone who always bore the epithet "the symphony conductor" without ever a note of any connection with any symphony anywhere anytime. Sometimes the News referred to Chautauqua conferences on regionalism and education Kevin had organized in 1997 and 1999, and another he'd organized on the Erie Canal in 2000. But lots of people organize conferences, and some people organize a lot of them. Organizing a conference is organizing a conference, not being a leader. In July, Buffalo News columnist Donn Esmonde wrote a piece about Gaughan that so dripped with adoring goo it seemed little more than a campaign piece. Indeed, Gaughan's campaign slapped a new header on it and republished it themselves the next day.
Gaughan has long seemed a Johnny-one-note, always talking up the virtues of melding the city and county with not much a notion of how and why to merge this city and this county, or how to get a rational conversation about regionalism started in a place where the suburbs wanted nothing to do with the city, the city wanted nothing to do with the suburbs, and county executive's office wanted nothing to do with anybody who wasn't in the furniture business. His talk of regionalism never seemed attached to anything: a pleasant idea, like giving up fossil fuels or having lots more green space in our urban environments. Well, yeah, that's good. But how? With what? Who pays? The politics around here have been so mean, pinched and corrupt that nobody was interested in giving up anything unless they got twice as much in return. With one exception, Kevin's unspecific proselytizing never came to anything. The exception was County Executive Joel Giambra, who made regionalism noises that echoed Kevin's, but Giambra was even more vague about it. The point seemed to be mostly about him accumulating power. Well, that's defunct: after the recent financial meltdown of the Giambra administration it seems unlikely that the city will want to crawl into bed with the county for years to come.
But that's all background to now. Now there are just two candidates in the race for Buffalo's Democratic nomination and it's no longer Kevin Gaughan talking to anybody who might listen about his pet idea but Kevin Gaughan as the only Democratic option other than Byron Brown. It's gotten specific, which was enough to turn the Buffalo News editorial page against him.
Gaughan does have opinions on things other than a city-county wedding and, unlike Brown, he is eager to talk about them. He has, for example, strongly opposed the downtown casino which is almost certain to bring profits to a few local developers but which will do huge damage to the city's economy. The Buffalo News editorial page this week rolled over and wimped out on that one, saying, It's a lousy deal for the city but it's here so let's just make nice and hope they'll be gentle with us. Brown says as little about it as possible, but when a community group opposed to a downtown casino last month asked all six mayoral candidates to meet with them to talk about their positions on the casino, Brown was the only one who refused to come. He doesn't even have the courage of his lack of conviction. Gaughan has railed at the inefficiency of city hall and he has called for a 50% reduction in the mayor's salary, which may be easier for him to say than someone who needs the salary to live on, but which is a nice idea anyway. The call in Buffalo city hall is always "I want more, let everyone else fend for themselves," never "Let's all take a little less so we might all be better off."
Byron Brown's campaign is an insult to the citizens of Buffalo. It is a bunch of fatcats who have never given a damn about ordinary people in the city delivering to us a candidate they've anointed and using their house organ, the Buffalo News, to tell us that's it, folks.
Would Kevin Gaughan be a good mayor for Buffalo? Who can say? He's never run anything. We can't even find out if he's ever had a real job. Would he be better than what we've had? How could he be worse? Would he be better than Byron Brown? Sure he would. And Byron has never run anything either.
On Tuesday, we're going to go in that booth and throw the lever for wildcard Kevin Gaughan. And we recommend that you do the same.
Copyright 2005 by Buffalo Report, Inc.