Articles for Geoff Kelly

Jun 19

2025

Buffalo’s $2 million mayoral primary

Next Tuesday’s Democratic primary election for Buffalo mayor is already a $2 million affair, as of the most recent campaign finance disclosures, with a weekend of TV and radio spots, phone banks, social media ads and mailers still to come. That figure doesn’t count independent expenditures — money spent by political committees unaffiliated with, but supporting, a one candidate or another. The first such independent expenditure took place this week in support of Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon, paid for by an Albany-based group whose backers are for now a mystery. On its own account, Scanlon’s campaign committee has spent $950,879[...]

Posted 16 hours ago

Jun 17

2025

Podcast: Profiling Buffalo mayoral candidates

There’s just one week left until the Democratic primary fro Buffalo mayor, the marquee race this election season. In the last month, Investigative Post’s government and politics reporter, Geoff Kelly, profiled four of the five candidates on the ballot: state Sen. Sean Ryan, University District Council Member Rasheed Wyatt, former Assembly staffer Anthony Tyson-Thompson and former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield. In January Kelly wrote a three-part profile of the fifth candidate, Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon. Editor Jim Heaney last week sat down to ask Kelly his impressions of the candidates and the contest. The candidates and their issues Acting[...]

Posted 3 days ago

Jun 12

2025

Political profile: Garnell Whitfield

Garnell Whitfield at his Dec. 3, 2024 ,mayoral campaign launch. Photo by Nate Peracinny. Garnell Whitfield, the former fire commissioner, has specific ideas about what he’d do if elected mayor of Buffalo — about city finances, overtime costs, the shortage of affordable housing, and a host of other issues. But those policy positions aren’t the platform on which he’s built his campaign. And he doesn’t think candidates and voters should get bogged down in debating, for example, whose plan to rescue city finances is better, or how to restructure city government. Rather, he hopes voters will measure the candidates’ characters[...]

Posted 1 week ago

Jun 11

2025

Political profile: Anthony Tyson-Thompson

Mayor candidate Anthony Tyson-Thompson Anthony Tyson-Thompson is to many voters the least familiar of the five candidates running in the June 24 Democratic primary for Buffalo mayor.  He was the last candidate to join the field, skipping the party’s months-long endorsement process and announcing his candidacy in mid-April, just two weeks before nominating petitions were due. His campaign is largely self-funded, he said, and it shows. He has few campaign signs around the city, no ads and no mailers — just social media. The East Side native is also the youngest mayoral candidate, at 34, with the least experience in[...]

Posted 1 week ago

Jun 10

2025

Political profile: Rasheed Wyatt

Rasheed Wyatt in Council chambers. There is a consistent theme in University District Council Member Rasheed Wyatt’s solutions to almost every ailment and policy question confronting Buffalo and its government. Ask the people what they want, he says.  And then do what they tell you to do. In an hour-long interview with Investigative Post, Wyatt — one of five Democrats competing in the June 24 primary for Buffalo mayor  — invoked “the people” and their wishes no fewer than a dozen times. In response to nearly every question asked, he proposed convening “a community conversation” to learn “what’s good for[...]

Posted 1 week ago

Jun 5

2025

Where Ryan stands on the issues

State Sen. Sean Ryan at a May 30 press conference in Lafayette Square. This is the second of two stories on mayoral hopeful Sean Ryan. On Wednesday we published a political profile. Sean Ryan doesn’t lack for ideas on how to fix what he sees as dysfunction in City Hall and the impact it has had on neighborhoods across Buffalo. “We can’t do the basics. We’re not delivering basic services for our people. And that’s not even scratching the surface on our systemic problems,” he told Investigative Post. “The neglect is becoming more and more apparent. Can’t plow our roads,[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Jun 4

2025

Sean Ryan: a political profile

State Sen. Sean Ryan at a May 30 press conference in Lafayette Square.  This is the first of two stories on mayoral hopeful Sean Ryan. On Thursday we published a  story on where he stands on the issues.  State Sen. Sean Ryan has a long history of advancing progressive causes, both in his 14 years as a state legislator and in his prior career as an attorney. He’s championed urban highway removal, affordable housing, living wage ordinances, tax subsidy reforms and a host of other issues that reflect the priorities of the heavily Democratic districts he’s represented in Albany.   Now,[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

May 29

2025

More bad budgeting from Buffalo politicians

Writing about the City of Buffalo’s finances is like watching the movie Groundhog Day, but the wheel of suffering never stops turning.  Before the story reaches its happy-ever-after conclusion, the film rewinds to the beginning. Again and again, year after year. The Common Council on Tuesday adopted, with few minor amendments, Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s proposed budget for the city’s upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1.  The $622 million plan recycles many of the fiscal sins of the Byron Brown administration, whose specious revenue and expense projections yielded deficit after deficit — backfilled first with cash from the city’s[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago
Investigative Post