Ryan wins, Democrats sweep Cheektowaga

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Erie County Democrats had plenty to celebrate Tuesday night.

It was no surprise that the party’s nominee for Buffalo mayor, Sean Ryan prevailed, beating two opponents with more than 70 percent of the vote.

Nor was it a surprise that incumbent Erie County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick won reelection, beating Republican and Conservative nominee Christine Czarnik by nearly 18 percentage points.

The real wins for Democrats were outside the city.

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In Cheektowaga, the party’s candidates swept every race, winning back the majority on the town council by unseating two Republican and Conservative incumbents and a former highway supervisor — Michael Jasinski, Anthony Filpiski and Mark Wegner. One of the Democrats, Tiffany Lewis, will be the first Black woman on the council.

Diane Benczkowski, a former town supervisor — also a former Democrat, on the ballot this year as a Republican and Conservative — was running in a special election to retain a council seat to which she was appointed earlier this year. She lost to Democrat Stephen Nowicki by nearly 17 percentage points.

The race for City of Tonawanda judge featured two Democrats — one endorsed by the party, one running on the Republican and Conservative Party lines. Dean Lilac, the Democratic nominee, won. And Democrat William Strassburg, the city’s former police chief, unseated the city’s incumbent mayor, John White, winning by nearly 10 percentage points. Democrats won all four city council seats on the ballot, too.

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In Amherst, where the GOP has been out of power for a decade, Republicans hoped to re-assert themselves by running against recent property tax increases and big-ticket public projects adopted by Democrats. Instead, Democrats won all four races on the ballot — town supervisor, town justice, and two town board seats.

In Hamburg — another big town with competitive races — the GOP fared better. As I write this, Beth Farrell Lorentz, the Republican and Conservative candidate for supervisor, led Democrat Robert Reynolds by 111 votes. The Democratic candidate for town clerk, Natalie Nitsche, was ahead of Republican and Conservative candidate Brad Rybczynski by 256 votes.

The GOP will retain their majority on the town council. Republican and Conservative candidate Lynn Dixon — the former Erie County legislator — finished first in a four-way contest for two council seats. Her running mate, Nicholas Ortiz, was up by 291 votes over the nearest Democrat in the race, incumbent Megan Comerford.

Democratic incumbent Edward Hughes handily won reelection as highway superintendent.

Walter Rooth III, the Republican and Conservative nominee for Hamburg town justice, prevailed over Democrat Lisa Poch — though Rooth is a lifelong Democrat alienated from the county party’s leadership.

Still, the premiere race on the ballot was for Buffalo mayor.

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Ryan’s win felt like a foregone conclusion after the hard-fought and expensive Democratic primary, in which he beat Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon. Many voters in Scanlon’s South Buffalo base turned to Republican and Conservative candidate James Gardner in the general election, and Gardner won a handful of election districts in that part of the city.

But it wasn’t nearly enough to make a dent in a city where registered Democrats outnumber all other voters two to one. At the end of the night, Ryan had nearly 30,000 votes. Garner had just under 10,000; independent candidate Michael Gainer, running on the Restore Buffalo line, had just under 2,000.

“I made my campaign about delivering on the basics,” Ryan said in his victory speech Tuesday night. “For the last 11 months I brought this message to voters: We can get the little things right and we can take on the big, tough issues like poverty, lead poisoning, and the affordable housing crisis. These will be my priorities.”

Ryan, the city’s first new elected mayor in 20 years, is expected to announce his transition team later this week.

In other races:

• Erie County Sheriff John Garcia won a second term. He ran unopposed. Erie County Democratic Chair Jeremy Zellner said at the beginning of the year he couldn’t find a viable challenger to the incumbent.
• In a rare loss for an incumbent, Jennifer Mecozzi lost the race for West District member on Buffalo’s school board to challenger Talia Rodriguez. Rodriguez won the three-way race with 44.7 percent of the vote to Mecozzi’s 34.4 percent. Mustafa Abdo, a city building inspector who ran for the seat once before, finished third with 20.5 percent.
• Betty Jean Grant fell well short in her bid to return to the Erie County Legislature. She lost to Taisha St. Jean Tard, who was appointed to the District 2 seat in January to succeed April Baskin when Baskin became a state senator. St. Jean Tard finished the night with 80 percent of the vote. Running on the same Restore Buffalo line as Gainer, Grant had 2,077 votes at the end of the night  — 148 more votes than the mayoral candidate.

Voter turnout was light across the county. In the Buffalo mayor’s race, fewer than 42,000 voters cast ballots. In 2005, the last time there was no incumbent on the ballot, about 75,000 people voted.

There were four candidates for mayor that year. Byron Brown — then, like Ryan, a state senator — was the Democratic and Working Families party nominee. Former University District Council member Kevin Helfer ran on the  Republican and Conservative Party lines. Community activist Judy Einach was the Green Party candidate, and Charlie Flynn, a Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority commissioner, ran on the now-defunct Independence Party line.

Helfer got about 20,000 votes — double Gardner’s total this year. Einach got 3,500. Flynn got 3,100. Brown got almost 47,000 — 62.7 percent of the vote.