Jun 12
2025
Political profile: Garnell Whitfield
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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 and careers as indicators of the integrity and expertise they’ll bring to the office.
“I think more important than anything I say is who I really am, who I’ve been,” Whitfield told Investigative Post in an interview.
He said his four decades in public service, most of it with the city, “separate me from everybody else in the race, and from most politicians.”
The other candidates don’t have his perspective on how city government works, he said, and their policy positions are driven by political calculations.
“I make people-centered, evidence-based decisions — unemotional, not political,” he said. “That’s what I have done my whole life. That’s what prepared me for this moment.”
Whitfield, 68, is one of five candidates competing in the June 24 Democratic primary for Buffalo mayor. He’s also seeking to create an independent party line on which to run in November’s general election, in case he loses the primary.
He’s one of three Black candidates, the others being University District Council Member Rasheed Wyatt and former Assembly staffer Anthony Tyson-Thompson. His campaign has raised more money and attracted more media attention than Wyatt and Tyson-Thompson, but all three lag far behind the frontrunners, Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon and state Sen. Sean Ryan, who are both white.
Whitfield said if elected he’ll “level the playing field” for “the downtrodden, the people who have not had a voice, the people who have been misrepresented or not represented at all.”
“That’s what I did in the fire department, and that’s who I’m going to be as mayor,” he said.
Career in the fire department
Whitfield, a graduate of St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute, joined the fire department in 1984. After 14 years as a firefighter, he set his sights on winning the position of chief fire administrator, a civil service position with tremendous influence over personnel matters.
“The chief fire administrator basically ran the department — payroll, civil service, hiring, retirements, pensions, all of those things,” Whitfield said.
“That is the job that they use to send jobs to South Buffalo. That is the job that they use to cheat on all levels.”
It was a job, he said, that no one wanted him to have.
Whitfield had the highest score on the civil service exam for the position, he said, but faced “a concerted effort” by the firefighters union and others to deny him the job. He sought guidance and support from George K. Arthur and Beverly Gray, two of the city’s most influential Black politicians. He threatened to sue the city and the union.
Finally, in 1998, then Mayor Anthony Masiello appointed him to the job. Masiello later promoted Whitfield to deputy commissioner of administration.
The candidates and their issues
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Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon: Profile and stance on the issues.
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State Sen. Sean Ryan: Profile and stance on the issues.
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University District Common Council Member Rasheed Wyatt: Profile and stance on the issues.
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Anthony Tyson-Thompson: Profile and stance in the issues.
He was a candidate for commissioner when Byron Brown first took office in 2006, but Brown instead chose Michael Lombardo and kept Whitfield as a deputy commissioner.
Brown ousted Lombardo four years later, blaming the commissioner for his failure to rein in costs. Whitfield said the department and the union at the time were “manufacturing overtime” for firefighters, costing the city too much money and compromising safety and service.
Brown tapped Whitfield to succeed Lombardo, but not because of any relationship he had with the mayor.
“I wasn’t friends with the mayor. I mean, we had a relationship, but I wouldn’t call us friends or any of that. It was more out of desperation, because nobody knew how to fix it but me.”
Whitfield said as administrator he negotiated the city’s first ambulance contract with Rural Metro, now AMR. He negotiated contract and pension agreements not only for the fire department but with other city unions, too, including the police department. As commissioner, he managed crises big and small, from snowstorms to the 2016 fire at a former Bethlehem Steel site that burned for four days.
He said worked with nearly every city department, developing “an intimate knowledge of the inner workings” of city government.
His tenure as commissioner gets mixed reviews, depending on who you ask.
A 2016 audit by the city comptroller found the department’s payroll procedures, especially in regard to overtime approvals, continued to be problematic.
The firefighters union that same year voted “no confidence” in Whitfield’s command, claiming the department failed to provide firefighters with necessary equipment and training, among other complaints. The Brown administration at the time said the union opposed Whitfield’s efforts to “modernize” the department, which included efforts to diversify its ranks. Whitfield attributed the no-confidence to union politics. He said nearly half the union’s members didn’t vote, and most of those who did were from South Buffalo. “No Black firefighters supported it,” he said.
Whitfield retired in 2017, then took a job as assistant commissioner for the state’s Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services. He retired from that post in September 2019.
Whitfield and President Joe Biden on July 11, 2022. Photo courtesy of the Whitfield family.
He might have stayed retired, had not his mother been murdered in the May 14, 2022, Tops massacre. Ruth Whitfield was one of 10 people shot to death at the Jefferson Avenue grocery that day. She was 86.
The tragedy returned Whitfield to public life as a national advocate against white supremacy, speaking at protests and conferences around the country. He testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee about racially motivated domestic terrorism. He stood with then President Joe Biden at the White House for the signing of new gun violence prevention legislation.
Whitfield currently serves on the 5/14 Memorial Commission and the board of Roswell Park Cancer Center.
Last summer, with the encouragement of his family, he decided to run for mayor.
Fixing city finances
Whitfield said the city landed in its current financial mess through “mismanagement and incompetency.” His first step toward a solution would be a risk assessment to determine the nature and severity of the imbalance between revenues and expenses.
“You have to define the problem,” he said. “If you do that, you will understand that the very people proposing solutions are part of the problem.”
He said the other mayoral candidates “don’t understand how these departments work, don’t understand what drives overtime, don’t understand any of those things. So they can’t possibly have a solution for it.”
He said Scanlon and Ryan should stop “the nonsense, the childishness, the bantering back and forth” about their competing plans to keep city services funded over the next few years, while gradually raising taxes, finding new revenue sources, and cutting expenses. Scanlon wants to raise money by selling four city-owned parking ramps to a newly created authority. Ryan favors taking out a long-term loan. Whitfield said he agrees with the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority — the city’s state-imposed financial control board — that both measures may be necessary.
The mayoral candidates, the control board and the community should convene and agree on a financial recovery plan for the city — “a blueprint for moving forward,” he said. The candidates should agree to follow that plan if elected.
The state imposed the control board in 2003, when it bailed the city out of its last major fiscal crisis. For nearly a decade it exercised strict oversight over city spending, freezing hiring and wages. It shifted to an advisory role in 2012. Whitfield worked under the hard control board, he said, and found it “quite useful.” He said it could be useful again.
Whitfield said he’s better equipped than the other candidates to get a handle on the city’s runaway overtime costs, because he dealt with the issue as fire commissioner.
“As a manager, which none of these guys are, you understand that some overtime is not only necessary, but it’s cost-effective, because it’s cheaper than paying salaries and benefits,” he said.
“You’re actually not doing your job as a manager if you’re trying to eliminate all overtime, because that’s not fiscally prudent.”
The expiring police and fire contracts
Whitfield thinks there should be a moratorium on the acting mayor negotiating any new employment contracts — especially with the police and fire unions, whose contracts expire at the end of this month.
Both unions have endorsed Scanlon and donated money and provided workers to his campaign.
“To have interim Mayor Scanlon negotiating contracts with the unions that are kissing his ring is completely ridiculous,” he said. “Why would you allow him to negotiate with these unions under these circumstances, when the only thing he’s trying to do is get elected?”
He said as mayor he’d try to cure Buffalo’s “police-centric” view of public safety, which he called “myopic.” He’d like community response teams trained to deal with mental health crises to answer nonviolent calls, for example.
He also favors the creation of a civilian oversight board to investigate complaints of police misconduct.
Civilian oversight is a tool “to change the culture of policing,” he said, which historically “has been used to criminalize and to subjugate communities of color.”
“We have to be mindful of that. We have to acknowledge that, and we have to go against that. It’s a big job, but that’s what we’ve got to do.”
Police have difficult jobs, he said, and sometimes must make quick decisions in life-and-death situations.
“We have to give them some grace. They’re human beings, and I don’t want to vilify them,” he said.
But independent, external oversight of government operations — policing, finances, firefighting, the issuing of city contracts — is always a good thing, according to Whitfield.
“If you’re not doing something wrong, what the hell do you care who’s watching?”
Removing the Kensington Expressway
Whitfield favors removal of the Kensington Expressway and a restoration of Humboldt Parkway, re-connecting Delaware and Martin Luther King Jr. parks.
He opposes the state Department of Transportation’s preferred option of capping one section of the highway.
He said the expressway was built for the convenience of mostly white suburbanites at the expense of communities of color. It further exacerbated the city’s racial segregation. It damaged home values and killed businesses in preeminently Black neighborhoods. He said its pollution has been damaging residents’ health for decades.
“And we’re not even talking about Frederick Law Olmsted yet,” he said, referring to the 19th-century landscape architect who designed the city’s parks system and the tree-lined boulevards connecting them.
“The best laid-out city in America, maybe the world. Central Park is a park in a city. Buffalo is a city in the park. It’s unheard of. It’s an asset. It’s what makes us special.”
The expressway destroyed Olmsted’s plan, he said.
“This was done throughout America in communities of color intentionally,” he said.
“Tell me what would make it right today? I mean, that’s not complicated. It’s simple. So what the hell are we arguing about?”
On charter revision and other issues
Whitfield is skeptical about the charter revision commission being empaneled by the Common Council, arguing it was convened to answer political questions about mayoral succession and how to fill the vacant South District Council seat while Scanlon is acting mayor.
But if there’s going to be a charter revision commission, he wants it to consider big reforms like term limits for elected officials. He thinks the commission also should look at New York City’s ranked-choice voting system and limits on political donations by city contractors.
He favors a good cause eviction law to protect renters in the face of rising housing costs.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomAsked about the city’s role in subsidizing real estate development, he said he supports lots of public input and robust community benefit agreements, or CBAs.
“And I don’t think CBAs should be driven by the developers,” he said, noting that sometimes they result in improvements to public infrastructure that bolster the developer’s investment.
“Maybe we do a community garden that’s not necessarily attached to that project. Maybe we use the CBA money to help support the arts. I think the city should stop playing from the rear. We should assert ourselves.”
He said before the city subsidizes the construction of affordable housing, it should enforce laws and support existing programs meant to keep housing safe and up to code. That means inspecting rentals for lead paint and pipes and connecting qualified homeowners with grants to fix up their properties.
“We have to make sure that we take care of the people and the properties that are already here,” he said.
A family affair
Whitfield announced his candidacy on Dec.3 at Durham Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church, which he’s attended his whole life, surrounded by his family and religious leaders, as well as current and retired firefighters.
According to the most recent campaign finance disclosures, Whitfield had raised a little over $73,000 as of mid-May. Nearly half that money came from himself and members of his family.
Catherine Schweitzer, executive director of the Baird Foundation, kicked in $5,100. Developer Sam Savarino gave $2,500 through one of his companies. Some fellow graduates of St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute have donated, too.
Early on his advisors included India Walton, the winner of the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary, who lost in that year’s general election to the incumbent Brown’s write-in campaign. He also brought on a former advisor Bill de Blasio, the former New York City mayor, as a campaign consultant.
But it was his family that passed his Democratic nominating petitions in February and March. They collected 4,315 signatures, second only to Scanlon. In April and May they collected enough signatures to create an independent ballot line in November.
When the former de Blasio consultant left the campaign in January because fundraising was slow, Whitfield’s family convinced him to stay in the race.
“Everything you see here is my family, my daughters,” he said, sitting at a desk in his campaign office on Jefferson Avenue. “That’s it. That’s who did that’s who did this. That’s my team.”
On the desk was an unopened envelope containing a challenge to the validity of the independent nominating petition he submitted last month to the county elections board to create the New Buffalo Party line. The return address indicated the challenger was filed by a Scanlon staffers — a city employee.
He shrugged it off.
“Their whole thing is for me not to be there in November,” he said.
He said Scanlon’s and Ryan’s fundraising and endorsements indicate “they’re bought and paid for.” He said he won’t have all the answers if elected mayor, but he’ll own his mistakes.
“I’m not going to lie to you, I’m not going to trick you, and I’m not going to be leveraged and encumbered with all the other nonsense, politically, economically, like these guys are.”
