Electoral Hijinx of ’23 and the #NY26 Dems

Mark Poloncarz coasted to re-election by a wider margin than in his last outing. This despite all of the hatred and scorn hurled at him for daring to carry out Covid restrictions to keep people well and alive. This despite a desperate, viscerally negative campaign from a woefully unprepared and unqualified opponent. This despite accusations thrown his way about county handling of the December 2022 blizzard. In and through all of it, he offered Erie County calm and steadt competence in contrast to wild and extreme unpreparedness.

As usual, Ken Kruly has a great run-down of election 2023. Also worth a gander is this analysis from the team at the Buffalo News, which shows how Mark Poloncarz grew his base of support as compared with 2019, especially in the suburbs.

The history of Poloncarz’s opponents for County Executive is colorful indeed. One went on to become a congressman, a shill for Trump, and a convicted felon – later pardoned. Another became a Supreme Court Judge. Chrissy Casilio can go back to Clarence, where her father is Supervisor, landlord, benefactor, and rainmaker. She will be just fine, and maybe even see some political reward for taking one for the team.

In private life, Ms. Casilio-Bluhm has mostly resumed her Twitter/X musings about various and sundry right-wing tropes of the day. She is free again to pine for the day when Donald Trump can finally end the American experiment in self-governance and implement the “conservative” dream of authoritarian dictatorship where immigrants are thrown into camps and political rivals are shot, or dropped from helicopters.

Brian Nowak squeaked out a win in Cheektowaga, despite being subjected to a malign barrage of literal libel. Accused of bribery, support for Hamas, and supposedly “defaming” a person who flew a Confederate flag outside her home by pointing out that she flew a Confederate flag outside her home, he nevertheless stayed above the fray and wore out his soles by speaking directly to voters. Brian is a great guy who truly has his community’s best interests at heart, and he will undoubtedly do a great job.

The biggest news, however, came after the election itself. Congressman Brian Higgins announced that he intends to retire, which will trigger a special election. So far, Senator Tim Kennedy has announced that he will run for that seat. Others have dipped their toes in the water, with varying degrees of credibility. Byron Brown is going to stay put as Mayor until some better exit plan emerges. Poloncarz just handily won re-election, so he’s not going anywhere.

So, we’re left with Plan D for dumb: Nate McMurray is running. For Congress. Again. I’ve seen a lot in the last 20-odd years, but never have I seen a once-credible political figure so quickly and dramatically devolve into self-parody. He tells the Buffalo News’ Charlie Specht that he has “to be in the race. I couldn’t sit still with nobody talking about Trump. This isn’t rhetoric or this isn’t Democratic talking points. This is a danger to the country.”

As McMurray lurches between his claimed saintly outsider status, his animus for anyone and everyone who has not reflexively followed his orders or done his bidding, and his professional Tweeting, the thing that really crystallizes is that Nate McMurray has to be in the race for Nate McMurray. His ever-waning relevance runs counter to his supreme sense of self-importance as the multilingual better-than-you savior of western New York.

McMurray is just a small-town, leftist mini-Trump. Everything all about him and his greatness and how all of his opponents are evil or dumb. While Trump wishes for an economic crash in the next twelve months, McMurray has already told us that “Erie County sucks“. And it’s not just that he felt comfortable enough to express that in public, where people could hear him – it was that he said it within the context of him having the audacity to stand before a group of people whom he had spent the previous months demeaning, insulting, and denigrating all while asking them for an endorsement that he knew would never come. He said “Erie County sucks” because these people did not fall in line behind him. Because they saw through his bullshit. Because they questioned him. They were critical of him. Because after lending monetary, logistical, and boots-on-the-ground support to him in three previous races, he was little more than a loudmouth ingrate. As the chairman of the party committee said,

“McMurray’s behavior at last night’s Executive Committee meeting was appalling,” Zellner said. “Despite past support for Congressional runs from this committee and its rank and file, McMurray was inexplicably hostile to committee members throughout his presentation, insulting leaders and committee members alike with outbursts previously unseen at our meetings. McMurray claims to love Buffalo and WNY, but his uncalled-for outbursts demonstrate that he is temperamentally unfit to govern a county of nearly 1 million people. You cannot successfully lead this community if you take shots at it when things don’t go your way,” Zellner added. “By declaring that ‘Erie County sucks’ simply because he faced questions he did not like and could not answer, Nate McMurray has shown that he is simply wrong for the office of Erie County Executive.”

WIVB

McMurray is going to have to seek money and support from his Twitter stans. How any of that translates into actual people collecting petition signatures or contributions is anyone’s guess. I suspect he’ll have to pay people to do it.

Tim Kennedy has been around a very long time. He dabbled in the dark arts, aligning himself with Pigeon and Collins in a brazen coup some 15 years ago, but that catapulted him eventually into the Senate, where he is respected if not for his legislative, then his fundraising prowess.

Because again, for people taking notes at home, there is governing and there is politicking. Mark Poloncarz has proven himself adept at both. He is a competent and skilled executive, and also a shrewd and effective politician. McMurray aligned himself with Rus Thompson, got elected to a town supervisorship and hasn’t been elected to anything else since. As I said almost a year ago, right here:

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.

Nate will get the attention he’s ordered, and that’s about it.