Articles for Geoff Kelly

Jul 10

2025

Behind the closing of Club Marcella

The entrance to the former Club Marcella. Photo by Grant Ashley. When Buffalo police shut down Club Marcella in December 2023, club owners Joe Guagliardo and Michael Slyder seemed to have a lot of questions to answer.  One person died and three others were injured in two shootings inside the club that year, and another three were injured in shootings just outside the club. In the 18 months the club was open at its new location on Michigan Avenue, Buffalo police responded to 32 assaults, 10 fights and four other reports of shots fired. The State Liquor Authority charged the[...]

Posted 1 week ago

Jul 1

2025

City Hall turns blind eye to parking encroachment

Cars parked on sidewalk at 145 Delaware Avenue in downtown Buffalo. Daniel Sack  — a frequent critic of City Hall indifference, ineptitude and corruption — says the City of Buffalo for years has been allowing the owner of a surface parking lot on Delaware Avenue to charge customers for three spots that sit squarely on city property. And the Elmwood Village resident says it’s high time the cash-strapped city government stood up for the people’s property rights and claimed their share of the proceeds. “Every weekday if I drive by 145 Delaware there are cars parked on the sidewalk,” he[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Jun 25

2025

Five takeaways from the Buffalo mayoral primary

Editor’s note: This story was updated Wednesday at 7:15 p.m. State Sen. Sean Ryan scored a resounding victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for Buffalo mayor, beating Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon — his chief rival — by 11 percentage points. Ryan finished with over 46 percent of the vote in the five-way race, while the incumbent had just over 35 percent. The three other candidates — former fire commissioner Garnell Whitfield, University District Council Member Rasheed Wyatt and former Assembly staffer Anthony Tyson-Thompson — split the rest. Here are five takeaways from yesterday’s results: It was all about turnout Ryan’s base[...]

Posted 4 weeks ago

Jun 24

2025

Sean Ryan handily wins Buffalo mayoral primary

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[...]

Posted 4 weeks ago

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 1 month 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 1 month 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 month 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 month ago
Investigative Post