What is Politics?
It is a person undertaking to represent others in an effort to make their town, district, city, county, state, etc., a little better.
It is a process by which these people seek elected office.
It is a battle of ideas.
It is a battle of personalities.
It is, by necessity, adversarial.
It is an appeal to various people and constituencies that they should support you with their action, their money, their voices, and votes.
In Erie County, politics is oftentimes messy and, even more frequently, stupid.
Erie County Republicans are predictable. This is a small-c conservative area, and they win elections mostly through appeals to people’s fears, anger, prejudices, and whatever right-wing trope is floating around talk radio or Fox News at the time. Ask one of them to define “woke”. Ask them if every gay person is a “groomer.” Ask them what the existential threat is from drag brunches. Ask them about January 6th and when they stopped believing in democracy and the peaceful transfer of power.
Twitter is garbage, blogging is dead, and our local media are so risk-averse that seldom does anyone really drill down on the sheer madness taking place.
THE RIGHT
The Republican candidate for County Executive is Chrissy Casilio-Bluhm, a former neighbor of mine. She is a professional in public relations, mother to three children, and wife of a pharmacist. Ordinarily, a perfect resume for a person running for office who is dependent on suburban votes. She’s one of you.
Except when we get to the conspiracy theories like whether Damar Hamlin really died and has been replaced by a double.
Or whether Covid was all a big hoax.
Or whether elections are rigged.
Or whether the January 6th coup attempt was an Antifa plot.
Or whether an online furniture retailer trafficked in children.
Mrs. Casilio-Bluhm has a Twitter account that has been locked at least for a few weeks. Up until mid-February, the bio read as follows:
As of this week, the highlighted text and the paid-for Twitter Blue blue check is gone.
I guess she is no longer fiscally conservative nor socially moderate. It is utterly unconscionable that this Twitter account is restricted given that she is now running for office. I have no doubt that it is being sanitized of embarrassing nonsense that plays well with other “Catturd” reply accounts, but not so well in a broad general election.
Mrs. Casilio-Bluhm is undoubtedly an excellent and devoted mother, loving spouse, and great at public relations, but the Damar Hamlin conspiracy-mongering alone is disqualifying for public office.
Although, at least she hasn’t said that “Erie County Sucks.”
As to her alleged social moderation, here is an exchange she and I had in Spring 2022 under a post that former Congressman Chris Jacobs published to Facebook touting his anti-abortion bona fides. My original comment was posted to Jacobs, who was, at the time, a big proponent of abolition of Covid restrictions.
We come back to a few things – the crumbled-up intersection between Covid denier’s “my body, my choice” and the fact that most of them would deny that choice to a woman with respect to her own uterus. We come back to the fact that no one is forcing anyone to have an abortion; that if your morals or religion compel you not to end a pregnancy, then by all means don’t. But do not impose your morals or religious commands on anyone else. Do not force victims of rape or incest to deliver the children conceived in violent crime. Do not force mothers whose pregnancies are not – and will never be viable – or who are at grave risk of injury or death themselves to sacrifice themselves to satisfy your edicts.
Now Republicans, emboldened by a reactionary activist Supreme Court, are poised to ban abortions and drag shows and to exterminate and/or outlaw transgender Americans because these are “woke” things that they do not countenance.
I repeat: local media, I beg of you, ask a Republican who utters the term to define “woke.”
Anyway, Chrissy Casilio-Bluhm is no newcomer to politics. She is the daughter of the town supervisor. Her family company is her business’ landlord. She earns PR business from Republican campaigns. The Erie County Republican Committee chairman said,
“As a mom trying to run a business, she knows the struggles that families try to deal with everyday, and certainly as an Erie County taxpayer knows we’ve got to do more to make this county more affordable.”
Clarence has among the lowest taxes in Erie County and those taxes pay for, among other things, roads, a DPW, and a great school district. Erie County property tax rates have gone down steadily for years, and sales taxes have remained the same. I am a well-off person and I would never claim to know the struggles of people who do not know where their next meal is coming from or how they will make rent or whether their kids will have a bright future. Anyone living in a brand-new custom-built home over 3,000 square feet and an estimated value of over $808,000 has been served pretty well by Erie County and its current County Executive, and can hardly be seen to complain about property taxes or other costs of living.
Republican politics right now is absolutely batshit insane, fueled by fear and hatred, triggered by anything that isn’t heterosexual, white, or a pickup truck. There is no ideology left, just an endless parade of phobias and grievances, promoted by a lying, pliant media ecosystem populated by smug performative “conservatives” broadcasting exclusively for smug performative “conservatives.” Trump broke the Republican party and what was left of small-c conservatism, and there’s no way back. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, and Paul Gosar are all of you and vice-versa.
I guess the real test is the degree to which the so-called “Reagan Democrats” – the socially reactionary registered Democrats – are attracted to this week’s WBEN talking points, but from the sounds of it, WBEN’s afternoon drive-time host has already called the County Executive race for Poloncarz.
THE LEFT
The Democratic Socialists are good at tactics, bad at strategy. It was one thing, for instance, to defeat a Byron Brown in a primary when he didn’t even try, but not much worked once he started to try. Their online presence is pretty juvenile, their positions seldom amount to little more than sloganeering, and they do not have a tendency to build consensus through cooperation or compromise, and that makes up a huge part of governing, if not politics. One cannot argue with or reason with zealots.
Erie County Democrats have, in the last 5 years or so, become quite adept at avoiding factionalism. This is a refreshing change from the preceding 25 years. Now, they need to get better at messaging. The Democratic Party is a big tent party that serves many oftentimes competing constituencies. It is messy by design. You don’t have to like any Democrat or the party committee or anyone leading it or on it. But they do the hard work that goes into growing the party and getting people elected.
I first met Mark Poloncarz in 2003 when he was campaigning for John Kerry and I was campaigning for Wes Clark. The party coalesced around Kerry for the 2004 election, and Mark’s interest in politics, his leadership skills, his intelligence, and his ability to talk to people from any town, any class, any race propelled him to elected countywide office as Comptroller. And a damn good Comptroller he was, getting in there in the wake of Joel Giambra’s Red/Green budget fiasco, and continuing his tenure through Chris Collins’ tumultuous, disastrous one term as County Executive.
John LaFalce and Mark Poloncarz are the only two Democrats ever to have defeated Collins in a contested election. LaFalce was, at the time, the incumbent, so Poloncarz’s unexpected win in 2011 was a true upset.
Since then, Poloncarz has been a stable and strong executive, restoring funding to culturals and acknowledging their importance to the people who live here. Every year, he has delivered a small surplus or a small deficit that is easily plugged with the use of prior years’ surpluses. He ensures that Erie County gets the Medicaid funding it needs to keep its citizens safe. He expects hard work and professionalism from the people who work for Erie County. He was an excellent steward of our public health during Covid, and worked hard – against loads of opposition – to try and prevent people from avoidable disease or death.
There exists no compelling reason to replace him.
He does not think that Damar Hamlin is dead and that a body double is running around pretending to be him.
He does not believe that Wayfair was trafficking in children or selling adrenochrome.
He does not believe that January 6th coup was an Antifa false flag.
He does not believe that elections are rigged.
In the end, what Poloncarz is good at is marshalling finite public funds to ensure that as many of the different needs of as many possible Erie County communities are served in a fiscally responsible way. That means paving rural roads and funding Medicaid. That means helping communities to pool redundant resources, making sure that health needs are fulfilled, that seniors have rewarding recreational activities, ensuring that parks are usable, that traditions are upheld, that libraries stay open, that roads are plowed and salted, that emergencies are planned for and reacted to, taxes are collected, lawsuits defended, environment protected, police and sheriffs have the tools they need to fight and solve crime, etc.
And when Erie County messes things up, Poloncarz is accountable and works to ensure that mistakes are not repeated.
The County Executive does not exist to single-handedly end poverty, but his office works to ease the burdens on our poor, and to cover heating costs, and to expedite the handling of state and federal programs that exist to provide health care, housing, and food to the poor.
The County Executive cannot turn Erie County into Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe or a Toronto suburb.
The County Executive cannot cajole Nike or Ikea or Costco into doing anything. If anything, the county will offer incentives to companies that promise to bring good-paying jobs. And if they go back on that promise, he’ll claw back those incentives because no one gets special treatment.
The County Executive did not single-handedly murder “50” people during the Blizzard of 2022, nor is he in charge of regional rail planning or advocacy. One erstwhile candidate insulted Mark Poloncarz by claiming he never “said a word” about trains. Literally read his reaction to a vote on where the Buffalo city rail station should be and tell me he never thought about it or said a word.
One person ran for County Executive for less than a month and then quit in a petulant 25-tweet statement, the subtext of which was that he knew no one would volunteer to help him obtain valid signatures of 2,000 out of the 285,000 registered Democrats in Erie County. It’s interesting how when one decides to wage war and insult an entire institution, that the rank and file who do the actual work that keeps the institution running are the ones who decide you’re not worthy of their help, time, work, and money. It’s easy to selectively edit secretly recorded audio to make your enemies look bad, but why wouldn’t you just release the whole thing? It’s easy to feign victimhood at the hands of the big bad old party which is, in your estimation, so well-organized in its malign corruption that it will prevent you even from running for office, but simultaneously so incompetent and inept that it cannot win elections or improve our region.
New Buffalo News political reporter Charlie Specht wrote,
McMurray is widely viewed as a credible force in the Democratic Party, especially among left-leaning progressives attracted by his views throughout his campaigns.
I don’t know where that’s coming from. I don’t know a single Democrat who would, after this month’s string of tantrums, give McMurray the time of day. Left-leaning progressives may agree with some of what McMurray claims to believe, but I have seen far more mockery of him than anything else.