Tag: Politics

Jun 26

2025

Buffalo’s mayoral election has been settled

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The fat lady has sung. Sean Ryan will become mayor come January 1. The November election is simply a formality, barring any drastic unforeseen circumstance. Prior to the primary, Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon stated his intention to run on a third-party line if he didn’t win the Democratic nomination, although in his concession speech Tuesday night he said he had some “soul searching” to do. The cold, hard fact is that he was only able to garner 35 percent of the vote Tuesday. His strategy, should he continue his campaign into November, is to pull a Jimmy Griffin — supplement[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jun 25

2025

Buffalo primary voters sought change in City Hall

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With a commanding voice Tuesday, Buffalo’s Democratic voters said they preferred state Sen. Sean Ryan to lead the city over Acting Mayor Christopher Scanlon. At polling sites across the city Tuesday, voters told Investigative Post reporters that they were ready for change in City Hall — be that Ryan, former fire commissioner Garnell Whitfield, University Common Council Member Rasheed Wyatt or even newcomer Anthony Tyson-Thompson. Most of those interviewed favored someone other than Scanlon, a reflection of the actual vote. The acting mayor, some said, had failed to gain their trust eight months after succeeding Byron Brown, who resigned in[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jun 25

2025

Five takeaways from the Buffalo mayoral primary

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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 months ago

Jun 24

2025

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[...]

Posted 4 months ago

Jun 19

2025

Buffalo’s $2 million mayoral primary

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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 4 months ago

Jun 17

2025

Podcast: Profiling Buffalo mayoral candidates

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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 4 months ago

Jun 16

2025

Buffalo’s race for mayor, by the numbers

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Last week, Ken Kruly, author of Politics and Other Stuff, published an insightful analysis of where the votes for mayor are likely to come from in the upcoming primary election for Buffalo mayor. Total turnout will likely be in the range of 30,000 – the average of previous elections.  Dividing up the vote five ways may mean that the winning candidate will need 12,000 to 15,000 votes … A solid base of support, buttressed by the financial resources available to get their messages across to the largest number of potential voters, moves both [Chris] Scanlon and [Sean] Ryan to the[...]

Posted 4 months ago

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[...]

Posted 4 months ago
Investigative Post