Jun 10
2025
Political profile: Rasheed Wyatt
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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 the people” and “what the residents demand.”
How should a financially strapped city parcel out its precious infrastructure improvement dollars?
Make it “a community conversation,” he said, “because the people have never been a part of the conversation on how we improve.”
What concessions should a mayor seek in negotiating a new police contract, to replace the one that expires at the end of this month?
“Listen to the people,” he said, not just the police union.
The state’s controversial Kensington Expressway project?
“The people have asked for a thorough environmental review, and I agree with that, Wyatt said.
“I don’t have any agenda other than the people’s agenda,” Wyatt said. “I think I’ve shown that as a Council member.”
Wyatt has represented the University District since January 2014, when the Council chose him to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Bonnie Russell. That November he won a special election to finish the last year of Russell’s term. He ran for reelection unopposed the following year. He faced challengers in 2019 and 2023 and easily won both times.
On the Council, he was a vocal critic of former Mayor Byron Brown’s administration, particularly his budgeting practices. He has continued that role through the eight months of Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s tenure, questioning Scanlon’s proposal to sell city parking ramps to close projected budget deficits and filing a resolution calling on the city “to depoliticize its fiscal policy.”
The candidates and their issues
Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon: Profile and stance on the issues.
State Sen. Sean Ryan: Profile and stance on the issues.
In the coming days we’ll profile the other candidates running in the June 24 Democratic primary, Garnell Whitfield and Anthony Tyson Thompson.
At the time of his appointment, Wyatt was the Council’s chief of staff, a position he owed to his long friendship with former Common Council President Darius Pridgen. They grew up together, Wyatt said, and as adults worked together on anti-violence initiatives. Wyatt created the financial systems for True Bethel Baptist Church, the powerhouse East Side congregation over which Pridgen presides. The church has complicated investments in housing and community programs, and Wyatt is proud that those systems continue to serve his church.
It was Pridgen, he said, who in 2012 talked him into leaving his 25-year career in banking and finance to take a job on Council staff, paving his path to elected office. He called the change “God-sent.”
“I always wanted to be a bank president. That was my thing,” he said. “But my personality, my heart, probably was one of an elected official.”
He said he never imagined he’d wind up running for mayor of Buffalo.
From private sector to public service
When he was a kid, Wyatt had an aunt who worked in what was then the Marine Midland building — now One Seneca — headquarters of the bank of that name. He thought the building was magnificent and told himself: “I want to work somewhere like that one day.” He set his heart on becoming a banker.
“My aunt was not actually a banker,” he said. “She was actually an administrative assistant for a law firm. But I never knew that. I just saw her going to the bank.”
Still, Wyatt’s path was set. While studying for a two-year accounting degree at Kensington Business Institute, he got a job at Marine Midland — later HSBC — collecting student loans. He moved on to servicing mortgages, while earning a four-year business degree at Medaille College. He continued to move from department to department at HSBC, gathering experience, he said, before leaving the bank to become chief financial officer for Community Health Center of Buffalo. While in that job, he helped to start Stepping Stone Academy, a now-defunct charter school where he served as executive director and board chair.
His career took him to Virginia, where he worked as a compliance auditor for the City of Newport News, while also running a credit union. He came back to Buffalo to be near his family, he said, and that’s when Pridgen hired him onto Council staff. When he took over the University District seat, his old friend — who became Council president in January 2014 — made him chair of the Council’s Finance Committee.
In 2019 he added to his resume a master’s degree in organizational leadership from Medaille College.
“I’ve done a lot of different things, a lot of unique things,” Wyatt said.
“Right now, where the city is financially, I know I have this capability to turn it around.”
Tackling the city’s fiscal woes
Asked how he’d remedy the city’s dysfunctional finances, Wyatt said he’d begin with cutting expenses.
“The first thing is to address the overtime. That’s the biggest number on the page,” he said.
Wyatt referred to a report by the city comptroller that indicated the city between 2021 and 2024 spent $138 million on overtime, while budgeting only $86 million. That overrun contributed to the deficit the city is trying to close now.
Most of the city’s overtime costs are generated by the police and fire departments, with public works a distant third.
Last month, Wyatt voted against Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s 2025-26 budget in part because he believes Scanlon is continuing his predecessor Byron Brown’s practice of lowballing overtime costs. He said the acting mayor’s “cozy relationship” with the police union — which has endorsed Scanlon — does not bode well for taxpayers.
“I’m against the overtime for police and fire,” Wyatt said. “It ain’t good. Nothing against the unions. However, it seems as though there’s a vested interest in keeping that overtime going because they benefit.”
As for increasing city revenues, Wyatt — like the other candidates in the race — blamed Brown’s reluctance to raise property taxes during his 19-year tenure.
“Not raising taxes for all those years was just the biggest mistake,” he said.
He said the city could generate more revenue by increasing fines on absentee landlords whose properties compromise quality of life in the surrounding neighborhood — and not just for housing code violations. As an example, he offered an initiative in his district that levied $1,500 fines on the owners of University Heights properties that were the sites of disruptive parties that sometimes spawned violence.
That may not be a lot of money, given the city’s chronic budget imbalances run into the millions of dollars. But every dollar helps, he said, and the fines have reduced the parties that were frustrating his constituents. He called that “smart government.”
“It’s not just simply I want to do this because I’m trying to raise revenue. Those are things that are impacting the quality of life,” he said.
Housing, charter revision and other policy positions
Wyatt said the city’s shortage of high-quality affordable housing has resulted in high rents for substandard apartments. Landlords are “preying on poor people, giving them inadequate housing because they’re not held accountable to do what they’re supposed to do.”
He praised a program created by state Sen. Sean Ryan, a rival in the June 24 primary, that will bring millions of dollars to help “mom-and-pop” landlords bring their rental units up to code. He also noted that Ryan’s program, as well as a city-county partnership begun under the Brown administration, will underwrite affordable new-builds on city-owned lots in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
He said he’d like to expand those programs and make more money available to owner-occupants who are struggling to keep up their properties. He said he hoped the subsidized new-builds would include “more doubles, because that helps create generational wealth.”
“We have to take care of our city budget so that there are funds available to do those things,” he said.
When the city supports private development — whether through tax abatement, grants of city-owned land or code variances — he wants to end what he perceives as favoritism and pay-to-play politics.
“It seems like the same old people are connected. Well, I want different people connected,” he said
He cited his opposition to the $561,000 loan the city extended to Braymiller Market in a failed effort to keep the heavily subsidized downtown grocery open.
“Because right now it just seems as though anybody you know, if you’re my friend, if you’re Braymiller, you can get whatever you want.”
The Braymiller controversy is one of many issues that have pitted Wyatt against Scanlon, who supported the loan as a lawmaker and then, as acting mayor, sought to forgive the debt when Braymiller went under. When Scanlon became Council president, he removed Wyatt as Finance Committee chair. The animosity between the two has manifested on the Council floor. It surfaced in last Tuesday’s televised debate between the five Democrats competing for the party’s ballot line.
Wyatt thinks the charter revision commission the Council recently empaneled shouldn’t meet or take any actions until after the November election.
“I think that the duly elected mayor should be a part of the process, not the acting mayor,” he said.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomWhen a charter revision commission convenes, he wants to see proposals that make city government “more amenable to the people,” rather than focused on political questions like mayoral succession and the filling of vacant Council seats — the issues that compelled lawmakers to call for a charter review last fall.
He would like the commission to explore a city manager form of government, whereby an elected mayor is the city’s political leader but governmental operations are overseen by a professional manager insulated from city politics.
Newport News had a city manager, he said, “and they’re thriving.”
“You have people who are making decisions based on finances — and not simply based on, ‘I’m going to be running for mayor next year,’” he said.
“I think a city manager model, somebody that’s doing their due diligence, someone that’s an expert in this field, is the remedy to help us move forward.”
Wyatt sponsored legislation to create an independent citizen police oversight board, which never left committee for a vote. He continues to support the idea.
Investigative Post spoke with several Council members and staffers about Wyatt’s record as a legislator. On the plus side, all agreed he’s a good person who is popular with his constituents.
Some said he’s given to grandstanding on the Council floor, particularly since Scanlon succeeded Pridgen as Council president in January 2024. The change in leadership left Wyatt, who’d been part of Pridgen’s majority voting bloc, isolated and frequently at odds with Council leadership.
A shoestring campaign
Wyatt has raised just shy of $24,000 since declaring his candidacy, according to the latest campaign finance filings.
That puts him next to last in the fundraising race among the five Democratic primary candidates. Scanlon and Ryan lead that contest, having each raised over $1 million since last July. Former fire commissioner Garnell Whitfield is a distant third with $73,000. Anthony Tyson-Thompson, a former aide to Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes, comes in last with a little over $3,000.
Wyatt’s biggest single donor is financial consultant Michael O’Mara, who gave two donations totaling $3,500.
Erie County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick and Erie County Legislator James Bargnesi gave $100 apiece. Buffalo Board of Education Member Paulette Woods gave $125.
Wyatt has never been a big fundraiser, having brought in about $72,000 during his 11 years in office. His campaign was delinquent in filing campaign finance disclosure reports between 2019 and 2022. He’s up-to-date now.
Wyatt’s campaign manager is Willie Morris, past president of Grassroots, the political club that gave rise to Brown and Peoples-Stokes, and with which Pridgen and Wyatt were also allied. Morris told Investigative Post he came out of “semi-retirement” to help Wyatt because “he’s a good man.”
In the absence of big donors, the campaign has been raising money by selling chicken dinners on weekends, according to Morris. He said last week they’d sold enough of those dinners to pay for some TV ads, which he said should begin airing soon.
Wyatt signs have been popping up in recent weeks, mostly on the East Side but also in some West Side neighborhoods, where Wyatt’s vocal opposition to the Brown and Scanlon administrations has won him a following. Morris said he thinks the University District will turn out for Wyatt. He worries the rest of the city’s East Side will split between the three Black candidates — Wyatt, Whitfield and Tyson-Thompson — to the advantage of Scanlon and Ryan.
“My job is to head that off,” Morris said, though he wouldn’t say how he’d accomplish that goal.
Wyatt said his goal is to bring to the mayor’s office “a level of trust and honesty to that office that we haven’t seen in a lot of years.”
“Honesty and transparency,” he said. “That’s going to be the hallmark of my administration.”
