Sean Ryan handily wins Buffalo mayoral primary

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State Sen. Sean Ryan beat Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon in yesterday’s Democratic primary by about 11 percentage points — nearly 3,000 votes.

I thought it would be closer. So did Ryan’s campaign team. There are provisional ballots still to be counted, but not enough to change the results.

We’ll provide an analysis of the race and what voters say motivated them this afternoon on our website. But here’s a few things to know about how it broke down:

— Ryan had 12,249 votes at the close of the night, Scanlon 9,278. Ryan captured 46.5 percent of the vote, Scanlon 35.2 percent.

None of the other three candidates in the race found any traction, garnering about 4,700 votes between them. They collectively won 18.2 percent of the vote.

Garnell Whitfield, the former fire commissioner, finished third with 2,136 votes. University District Council Member Rasheed Wyatt was close on his heels with 2,023. Anthony Tyson-Thompson, a former staffer for Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes, finished last with 632 votes.

— Turnout was 26,368 votes — roughly 27 percent of enrolled Democrats. That’s higher than 2021, but lower than 2017, and a pretty sorry showing for the first open race for Buffalo mayor in 20 years. 

Then again, turnout in 2005, when Byron Brown won the first of five terms, was only 4,000 votes higher.

— City Democrats cast 7,500 early votes, about double the number of early votes cast in 2021. South Buffalo, Scanlon’s base, accounted for 26 percent of early votes cast. The Elmwood Village and the West Side — regarded as Ryan’s base — accounted for 28 percent. 

East Side voters cast nearly 22 percent of early ballots; North Buffalo voters, nearly 21 percent. The remainder came from Black Rock and Riverside, where early voting was light.

Scanlon won the early vote, but only by a hair.

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The Scanlon camp is likely to use the low turnout as justification to keep campaigning into the fall, hoping to marshal a coalition that can defeat the Democratic nominee — as Jimmy Griffin did in 1977 and Byron Brown did in 2021. Scanlon created an independent line, called the Good Neighbors Party, which ensures he’ll be on the ballot in November.

Like Scanlon, Whitfield circulated a nominating petition for an independent party line on the November ballot — the New Buffalo Party. Scanlon’s camp has challenged the validity of that petition. 

If Whitfield’s petition survives the challenge, he’ll join East Side businessman and community activist Michael Gainer in the general election. Gainer, who was disqualified from the Democratic primary for a faulty nominating petition, successfully created his own line — the Restore Buffalo Party.

Then there’s the Republican nominee, attorney James Gardner.

So Ryan goes onto the general as the Democratic nominee. Scanlon, Whitfield, Gainer and Gardner may all await him there.

Another five-way race. On to November.

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