Tag: Politics

Dec 4

2023

Poloncarz swaps one potential OTB critic for another

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A recently-appointed director of the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp.— expected to be a watchdog over the embattled gambling agency — has resigned.  State law prohibits public and political party officials from holding a license necessary to serve on the governing board of off-track betting corporations. That’s the law that prompted Jennifer Hibit — secretary of the Erie County Democratic Committee — to resign Monday from her position as Erie County’s representative on the board of the Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp., based in Batavia.  It’s unclear if the law is being applied uniformly.  Former OTB Board Chairman Richard Bianchi,[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Nov 14

2023

Kennedy has long been spending like a candidate for Higgins seat

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State Sen. Tim Kennedy’s name wasn’t on the ballot last week, but he’s been spending campaign money this year like a man running for something. In the first six months of this year, Kennedy’s state Senate campaign committee doled out $426,000, mostly on consultants and political contributions.  That’s $64,000 more than Kennedy spent in the same period in 2022, the last time he was up for reelection.  It’s twice what he spent in the same time frame in 2020, when his name was on the ballot. And it’s nearly 10 times the amount Kennedy’s Democratic colleague, state Sen. Sean Ryan,[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Nov 12

2023

Monday Morning Read

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Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll receive our latest reporting and Jim Heaney’s commentary in your inbox Sunday mornings. Brian Higgins has confirmed he’s leaving Congress in February to take over the reins at Shea’s Performing Arts Center. The move has been in the works for a while, as our Geoff Kelly reported back in September. Higgins, in an interview with The Buffalo News, said Congress is “in a very, very bad place right now.” Yeah, Congress is a mess, but he’s known that for a long time. If he didn’t want to continue, he shouldn’t have run for another term. Once[...]

Posted 5 months ago

Nov 8

2023

Poloncarz wins big; mixed bag for parties in town races

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Election Day was good to Erie County Democrats, especially in the top-ticket races. In the year’s marquee race, Mark Poloncarz beat Republican Chrissy Casilio by a resounding 18 points, winning an unprecedented fourth term as Erie County executive. And Democrats preserved their 7-to-4 majority in the Erie County Legislature, as incumbents in three competitive districts handily fended off Republican and Conservative challengers. In town and village elections, however, the results had a more purplish hue, as Democrats and Republicans alike made gains in areas that once were single-party fiefdoms. “In the suburbs, the towns that are flipping are continuing to[...]

Posted 6 months ago

Oct 11

2023

More misdeeds involving Niagara Falls candidate

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Guns gone missing and an order to stay away from a former girlfriend are included in the past of Carlton Cain, GOP candidate for Niagara Falls mayor, who once was a top official in the city’s police department.  Cain said he doesn’t recall signing an administrative order of protection issued by Acting Police Superintendent Michael Trane in 2019.  “I guess if I signed it, it happened,” he said.  The woman in question, who was cooperating with an Internal Affairs investigation of Cain, did not return a phone call from Investigative Post. Trane has not responded to an interview request.  In[...]

Posted 7 months ago

Oct 6

2023

Misconduct allegations against ‘Falls mayoral candidate

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Carlton Cain, the Republican candidate for mayor of Niagara Falls, was investigated at least twice on charges of misconduct while serving on the city’s police force before retiring in 2019. Charges that are a matter of public record include his efforts to retrieve his stolen police weapon and allegations that he removed files on him compiled by the department’s Internal Affairs unit. Cain, in an interview with Investigative Post, denied removing his Internal Affairs records. The department’s investigation of the allegation reached no conclusion.  He was docked three days pay involving the gun incident. A third matter involved a woman[...]

Posted 7 months ago

Sep 10

2023

Monday Morning Read

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Subscribe to WeeklyPost and get a leg up on Jim Heaney’s take on what’s in the news. For whatever reason, political reporters at The Buffalo News keep treating Chris Grant of Big Dog Strategies with a lot more respect than he deserves. I mean, Grant and his company employ the type of election tactics that give politics a bad name, often works for toxic candidates, including George Santos, and often spins without regard for the facts. Grant should be treated as a pariah, not a sage. Yet The News based a story Sunday in large part on his analysis that[...]

Posted 8 months ago

Sep 7

2023

What’s news in government and politics

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A digest of noteworthy reporting — some local, some state and some national — from the last week in government and politics:   Campaign finance shenanigans New York Focus reports on a new dodge for candidates who feel constrained by the state’s limits on campaign donations: Accept services from political consultants as loans, then never pay them back.  New York Focus highlights an example from Rochester, but Byron Brown’s 2021 mayoral campaign pulled the same trick. Brown for Buffalo listed more than $38,000 owed to the Atlanta law firm that represented the campaign in court as an “outstanding loan or[...]

Posted 8 months ago
Investigative Post

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