Category: Local Politics

On the Eighth Day of Preetsmas

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The Money Orders

An article appeared in the Buffalo News on Saturday that confirmed rumors that had been swirling throughout town almost all last week.

On 8/19/13, the WNY Progressive Caucus—the “AwfulPAC” that is at the center of the current law enforcement investigation—reported receiving $4,000 from Frank Max’s Progressive Democrats of WNY. AwfulPAC reported that $4,000 as one lump sum, but for some reason Max’s group didn’t. AwfulPAC also says that it received money long before Max’s group says it contributed it, which is truly magical and prescient. Or just a bunch of BS.

The News wrote:

Now, questions center on the three postal money orders purchased on Aug. 14, 2013 and made payable to the WNY Progressive Caucus, according to the sources.

A name appears on the postal orders as the purchaser. But nobody familiar with the case can say if the person named on the money orders actually purchased them.

Kristy L. Mazurek, treasurer of the WNY Progressive Caucus, endorsed the postal orders and deposited them, the sources said. Yet state Board of Elections campaign finance records indicate no corresponding contribution.

The Postal Service maintains no requirement to show identification when purchasing or sending postal money orders under $3,000, according to spokeswoman Karen L. Mazurkiewicz.

(UPDATED: see editor’s note at bottom.) The person whose name appears on the money orders is Matthew Connors, the son of prominent attorney Terry Connors. Sources close to the investigation confirm this information, though other sources indicate that Matt Connors is a victim of fraud: We are told that law enforcement is satisfied that Matt Connors did not put his name on these money orders.

In any case, the money orders represent the missing $2,500, which was lumped into the $1,500 from the Progressive Democrats to show a $4,000 August 2013 deposit.

Matt Connors works for developer Nick Sinatra a Republican fundraiser with ties to Pigeon. It also bears mentioning that, although it’s not publicized on Sinatra’s website, Erie County Legislator Peter Savage III also works for Sinatra and was until recently the treasurer of the Committee for Change PAC, which Steve Casey now controls and generously contributed to Conservative Party candidate Joe Lorigo. Savage used to work for Casey and Mayor Byron Brown and it goes without saying that he has a relationship with Pigeon.

So many entities, so little time

In August 2013, Kennedy for Senate spent $39,500 for “consulting” with Niagara Frontier Business Solutions, which is a front entity for Jack O’Donnell. He is its registered agent, and the corporate address is his house. This underscores the fact that Kennedy for Senate participated in the primary election that year, triggering the obligation to file pre-primary and post-primary reports under Election Law 14-102.

The AwfulPAC shows an inexplicable liability owed to Marketing Tech—the company whose representative identified Steve Casey as its contact for all of AwfulPAC’s literature—which dates to May 9, 2013. That’s odd, since Mazurek and Pigeon claimed that the entity didn’t exist until August. Had it existed in May 2013, it would have been required to file a July periodical report to the state Board of Elections, and a 32-day pre-primary report. It did neither.

Mazurek’s Status

Mazurek is reportedly singing like a canary, having been questioned by federal and state officials. She and her attorney are now pretending that Mazurek had nothing to do with anything having to do with AwfulPAC. Right. Why, then, in September 2013 would she say she “started” the AwfulPAC?!

She started the PAC. She said so, and it was in all-caps, so you know it’s true.

AwfulPAC Isn’t / Wasn’t a PAC

Finally, the AwfulPAC and all of these other “PACs” aren’t really PACs, because no such thing exists under New York State election law. There are really only two recognized legal categories: party committee and political committee. Under the category of political committee, a PAC is simply a political committee that only donates money to other committees—either to a party committee or to individual candidate committees.  It does not participate in the campaign and does not buy goods or services on behalf of such a committee/candidate.  It is also bound by the campaign finance contribution limits as provided for in election law 14-114.

Contributions to such a (PAC) committee aren’t limited, but the PAC itself is bound by the same maximum contribution limits an individual. A PAC merely has to file a statement of its treasurer, depository, etc.; it doesn’t need to file the CF-03, where a political committee must swear under oath whether it is authorized to support certain candidates and then list them, and to state under oath the candidates whom it is supporting,but is not authorized by the candidate(s) to support.

For a standard political committee, whether it is authorized or unauthorized, the key is that the CF-03 makes them declare their hand, under oath, as to which candidate(s) they are authorized to support and which one(s) they are supporting without authorization—that is, as an “independent expenditure” committee (IE). Under election law 14-100 (9), such expenditures are exempted from the statutory definition of “contribution”—and thus not subject to the limits imposed by Article 14. Pigeon has always declared that his committees are PACs, as they clearly announced and called themselves initially, when they were discovered. And while they even filed their CF-02 late, they never filed (at least initially anyway) a CF-03—whereby they would have had to state who they were supporting and whether they were authorized or not authorized.  They simply hid behind the CF-02 PAC filing throughout August and to the date of the primary.

Mazurek then re-filed her CF-02 stating hers was a regular political committee (not a PAC) and claiming to be an IE.  Unbelievably, it was now dated onpPrimary day and received the next day by the state Board of Elections—after all the damage was done and no publicity could be had about the committee’s mission and who the candidates are that it was supporting.

Had its CF statements also been filed before the primary, the media, the public, and the opposition could have publicized those behind the committee. But it was all kept in the dark until the voters had been duped.

It gets worse. Though prodded by the state board of elections, Mazurek still never filed the CF-03 statement required for an unauthorized committee and naming the candidates that the committee was supporting until long after the board’s investigation was begun—sometime in early 2014. Most likely, Pigeon instructed Mazurek to just file as a PAC, and they figured they could skate past the primary. They succeeded in doing just that.

Now, however, if Mazurek rolls on Pigeon and tells this story, there is a possible conspiracy charge for filing a false instrument—possibly more—even before you get to coordination. Since Mazurek didn’t change the filing to an IE committee until the date of the primary election, all the time they were raising and spending money in August/September 2013 before the primary, they were filed as a political committee with no CF-03.  Can they file later and claim to be in compliance and legally—retroactively—an IE committee? Or maybe they are stuck being a PAC, thus having violated the campaign contribution limits on their face—with no recourse to claiming to be an IE, because they hadn’t yet filed for it properly. To allow them to retroactively gain status after the war is over would be a total perversion of the law.

We have to assume that prosecutors know about all of this, and the question is whether a jury would find the requisite intent with respect to the allegedly fraudulent filings, missing donors, hiding the names of the true donors, and, of course, the issue of coordination. That’s before we get to kickbacks and money-laundering.

EDITOR’S NOTE: At 3pm, June 8, the paragraph noted above was amended to reflect information from new sources, confirmed by original sources, suggesting that Matt Connors was not the source of the donations or the money orders in question.

On the Seventh Day of Preetsmas

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preetclaus

 

In case you missed them, here are the Preetsmas posts so far:

It’s more likely than not that the investigation into the Western New York Progressive Caucus – or “AwfulPAC” has spread into other areas, and the feds are following their own investigation and not just helping out state and local investigators.

‘Sup Frank Max?

New York’s election law is an overcomplicated morass designed to guarantee full employment for anyone with the herculean patience to figure it out. For instance, the maximum allowable campaign contribution in the 2013 Democratic primary election must be calculated based on the number of Democrats enrolled in the district under NYS Election Law 14-114(1)(b).  When calculated, the Board of Election posts it to its website. For instance, the maximum anyone could contribute to the (AwfulPAC-backed) Rick Zydel and Wes Moore 2013 Democratic primary election campaigns was somewhere around $1,100 – 1,200, for a single contributor.

Back during the 2013 primary season, Cheektowaga’s Frank Max was closely aligned with AwfulPAC – in fact, it was commonly referred to at the time as his & Mazurek’s. The name of his longstanding operation is the “Progressive Democrats of WNY” (all [sic]). If you take a look at that group, it gave the following to Zydel’s campaign:

  • 5/9/13     $2,500
  • 6/10/13   $150
  • 6/11/13   $600

Total: $3,250:  Nearly triple the maximum allowed.

There’s even $100 to the “Real Conservatives”, which we discussed briefly here. You always expect a “progressive” group to contribute to the “Real Conservatives” and The “Hamburg Conservative Club”

In the same document, three checks to the Wes Moore campaign from Max’s group are revealed:

  • 5/9/13    $2,500
  • 6/10/13  $150
  • 6/13/13  $350

Total: $3,000.  Over double the maximum allowed.

Frank Max should know better than that. He was until recently town chair of the Cheektowaga Committee, hoped to be the county chair – can he claim that his personal political organization didn’t knowingly and willfully violate the law?  Assuming the authorities have flagged this, it could be a useful way to encourage him to provide information on the entire AwfulPAC scheme.

Max is the treasurer for the Progressive Dems. Kristy Mazurek is (or was – the address is likely out-of-date) the treasurer for “Friends of Frank Max”.  It’s believed that Max was deeply involved with the goings on of AwfulPAC in 2013, but we haven’t heard much from Frank since the heat was turned up on the investigation.

Some History

Way back in 2009, Tom Golisano and Steve Pigeon’s absurdly named “Responsible New York (RNY)” PAC or “independent expenditure” committee had some interesting filings.

Note in its 2009 filings – the year after it attempted to bring democracy back to the NYS Legislature – on May 15, 2009, it received back as a repayment a “refunded expenditure” the sum of $120,000.  Such “expenditure” was supposedly made in August, 2008 by RNY.  And who “refunded” that $120,000 – why some entity known as “GSDP, LLC”.  A review of the Department of State website reveals that this LLC, which features Pigeon’s initials, has a registered address at Pigeon’s former law firm, Underberg & Kessler.

Good for GSDP to refund that huge sum of money to Responsible NY. There’s a problem, though – no such expenditure exists; Responsible NY never gave any money to GSDP. Maybe more interesting would be for the Tax Man to look at how GSDP “earned” that $120,000 (which is taxable) but then tried to write off a “refund” of an obligation that wasn’t GSDP’s. You can’t pay someone else’s debt and then deduct it as a business expense.

Oddly enough, the Board of Elections’ wonky website shows only two expenditures made to GSDP – from the Niagara County Republican Committee. It bears mentioning that the Cheektowaga address that GSDP lists in those disclosures matches that of “Citizens for Fiscal Integrity“, which gave money to Joel Giambra and Responsible New York. It also contributed to “People for Accountable Government“, whose treasurer appears to have been Pigeon associate David Pfaff. That group received $1000 from GSDP. In 2007, it reported $100 from Steve Pigeon and $2000 from Joel Giambra’s committee. In 2008, Pigeon supposedly contributed $20,000. That was the year of the Mesi campaign. CItizens for Fiscal Integrity was formed in 2005, and took in $13,500 from GSDP that year. It also took in $8000 from Roger Stone and his wife. It’s not clear from the disclosures whom that group was intended to help or harm.

What was this refund to Golisano’s committee all about? Golisano was drawing out a lot of the money by repaying his initial loan, so it could have been a refund not to GSDP but to Golisano himself, possibly in connection with the Joe Mesi race.

David Pfaff

Pfaff is a longtime Pigeon associate, and is currently employed in the office of State Senator Marc Panepinto. In 2013, Pfaff was living off the “consulting fees” of $800/bi-weekly, being paid by Frank Max’s “Progressive” Democrats while he was working for the Dick Dobson for Sheriff campaign and AwfulPAC – all at one time. In his 2015 bankruptcy filing, Pfaff claims not to have earned enough money to file tax returns for 2013 and 2014. But he had the cash to contribute $25 to Dobson?

Sources report that Pfaff petitioned in 2013 for candidates supported by the AwfulPAC, and assisted Dobson in Board of Elections proceedings.

Wes Moore

Moore was the beneficiary of thousands of dollars’ worth of expenditures by AwfulPAC against his primary opponent Wynnie Fisher, and on his behalf. It bears repeating that the smear campaign that Moore helped engineer with Kristy Mazurek against Fisher on the eve of the November election was thanks to information sent to Moore c/o Mazurek’s address, despite the fact that his Treasurer was shown at the BOE as being first in Buffalo and later in Clarence. The stench of illegal coordination is overpowering.

It, therefore, bears mentioning that Moore is reported to have contributed $300 on August 21, 2013 to the AwfulPAC making supposedly “independent” expenditures on his behalf. That is bizarre; practically unprecedented for a candidate who is the beneficiary of an independent expenditure to actually contribute to that very committee.  Was there a fundraiser for AwfulPAC that he attended? Did he speak with anyone there?

Amendments and Oddities

It appears as if AwfulPAC has amended its filings to eliminate what had originally been reported as a $25,000 fee to Landen, LLC – you can see it referenced in former Assistant District Attorney Mark Sacha’s complaint to the Moreland Commission. It appears here as an outstanding loan, but the original “loan” itself is nowhere to be found. Note that Landen, LLC is now listed at the same 101 Reo Ave address as GDSP and “Citizens for Fiscal Integrity”, as shown above.

Pigeon also used that Reo Ave address for many of his own contributions. For instance,

If you look at this article I wrote at the time, I reported that Landen had given Dick Dobson $200, but now the link shows an additional $400. I don’t know that financial disclosures were allowed to be so … fluid. Likewise, in Dobson’s first post-primary report, “Democratic Action” donated $9,000. That’s fine – that’s what a PAC is legally empowered to do. Except Democratic Action hadn’t filed a single disclosure during that cycle, its last being a “no activity” report in July 2013. Its last reported fund balance? $2,400. If you’re going to BS people, at least do so credibly.

A.J. Pierce Again

Aaron Pierce filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court against three trucking companies that supposedly lost or converted $785,000 of untaxed cigarettes that Pierce was trying to transport from WNY to another Native American on Long Island. Pierce accused the trucking companies of stealing the cigarettes, and Justice Marshall dismissed the complaint because you can’t enforce an illegal contract.

Order Dismissing Complaint


It looks like Mr. Pierce and AJ’s Wholesale, LLC is out $785,000, and if the state Department of Taxation requires that state taxes be paid and stamps affixed to the cigarettes when they were placed on trucks for shipment through New York State to a different Nation, then he may also owe state taxes. Remember that one of Pierce’s companies was already in big trouble, with a big civil forfeiture for what amounts to a conviction for bootlegging cigarettes.  Did he really wire that $20,000 to Buying Time, as the AwfulPAC claims?

AwfulPAC’s Money

Here’s a handy chart of all the money that went into and came out of the WNYPC “AwfulPAC”. There is the aforementioned “loan” of $25,000 from Landen, LLC which is completely unaccounted-for. Also not the discrepancies in terms of the dates of money coming into AwfulPAC from Frank Max and Tim Kennedy. How was AwfulPAC able to account for $4000 in donations from the Progressive Democrats that didn’t come in until days – or weeks – later? Friends of Frank Max supposedly gave $1750 on 9/3/13, but it only had $100 on hand in the most recent previous filing, and there appears to be no entry for that sort of outflow.

WNYPC Money

As for Tim Kennedy, he contributed $85,000 to AwfulPAC and $10,000 to Democratic Action – which promptly turned around and donated it back to the favored candidates of the AwfulPAC – Dobson, Miller-Williams.  So Kennedy gave a total of $95,000 to the two committees, which he had to know were backing candidates in the September 2013 Democratic primary election. Under Election Law 14-102 (1), Kennedy for Senate (as did Democratic Action) “participated” in the primary election and had a duty to file pre-primary and post-primary campaign finance reports with the New York State Board of Elections.  However, neither did.

Under no circumstances is it legal or proper for a campaign or committee to participate in a primary election,  but make people wait until the following January to find out what they did. This may be a crime pursuant to Election law 14-126 (3). 

As to Democratic Action, all of a sudden in mid-2013, it received $10,000 from Kennedy and another $2,000 from Nancy Krzyzanowski, an employee of Collucci & Gallagher. That seems like an odd donation from to an obscure and largely inactive PAC. Then again, she’s also given $500 to Chris Collins, $1000 over time to the Tonawanda Democratic Committee, and – oddly enough – $3000 to the New York State Republican Committee in 2004. 

More to come as the Preetsmas gifts get hung on the chimney with care.

On the Sixth Day of Preetsmas

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Courtesy Chris Van Patten

Courtesy Chris Van Patten

As a consumer of information, you should be appalled.

As recently as May 24th, the Buffalo News’ political columnist, Bob McCarthy, dutifully did Steve Pigeon’s bidding, producing an opinion piece that amounted to faithful stenography of a longtime source’s spin. In this case, it was Pigeon spinning about why he had ended what had until recently been a likely mutually beneficial relationship with a Rochester-based law firm. Pigeon told McCarthy it had nothing to do with any investigation – but the state and federal raids came literally four days later.

At the conclusion of the piece, McCarthy took a story that should have been about Erie County Democratic Committee chairman Jeremy Zellner being one of only about 250 party leaders nationwide to meet with Hillary Clinton at her New York City HQ, but instead became one that disrespected Zellner as just another Lenihan henchman.

But it’s worse than that. A simple search of the Buffalo News’ website reveals ample droppings of Pigeon-sourced or Pigeon-puffing material. Some of it was so empty – consider Pigeon releasing to the press (PoliticsNY.net also had it) that new Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie had joined some local pols – including a couple who are now under investigation – at Pigeon’s house to watch a boxing match. Releasing it is one thing – McCarthy including it in his Sunday column is straight-up TMZ garbage.

Here, McCarthy gives equal time to the investigation into the WNY Progressive Caucus and a totally bogus claim that former Board of Elections Commissioner Dennis Ward ripped up someone’s nominating petitions in a fury. One resulted in a federal and state probe; the other one doesn’t exist.  Or how about quoting Pigeon in connection with a completely unrelated obituary note, thusly:

Few travelers along the campaign trail have made more friends than Tom Fricano, the former UAW leader and 1996 congressional candidate who died Feb. 14. Former Erie County Democratic Chairman Steve Pigeon, a longtime associate, recalled him like this: “He was a gentle person who was a true believer and did not demonize his enemies.”

Oh, how heartfelt, coming from WNY’s king ratfckr.

Here, we have McCarthy treating Zellner like a guy who somehow didn’t deserve the 69% of votes cast for his re-election as party chair. Note the headline and theme – it’s not about Zellner’s victory, it’s about Zellner’s foes and what they might do. Say what you want, but for a guy who the Mayor, the Governor, labor, and a bunch of Pigeonista malcontents apparently wanted out of the party chairmanship, Zellner crushed it.

Here, we find out that Pigeon opposed cross-endorsements by Zellner of Republican judges.

Pigeon will run his own slate of judicial nominating delegates – and will appeal for support from the seven smaller counties of the Eighth Judicial District.

A close political adviser to the governor, Pigeon’s efforts will encourage as strong a Democratic turnout as possible for Cuomo and his effort to sweep the western counties he lost to Republican Carl Paladino in 2010.

That’s nice. Pigeon’s slate failed miserably, and what does Pigeon’s efforts as a “close political adviser to the governor” – which is likely taken verbatim from Pigeon’s gob – have to do with anything? Where is the article about how Pigeon and his crowd backed Republican Deana Tripi over Democrats Carney and Crapsi in 2013? Where is the article about how Maurice Garner and Mike Darby were put in charge of the Pigeon effort to promote Tripi and defeat the Democratic slate? I hear Grassroots has since been embarrassed by its support of Tripi, and am waiting for confirmation of a story about something that happened in connection with a protest over the Eric Garner case. Where is the article about how this year, Pigeon’s people are helping Republican family court candidate Brenda Freedman?

In addition to this, we have this new phenomenon of candidates or political figures attempting to prove something to journalists by showing them documents purporting to be tax records. In 2015 it was “political heavyweight” Steve Pigeon showing something to Bob McCarthy, and in 2012, it was Chris Collins (R-Clarence) showing a portion of the records from three tax years to Jerry Zremski.

With respect to Pigeon, McCarthy wrote,

Pigeon opened his tax returns from the past several years to inspection at The News’ request in an effort to quell speculation that his contributions to the Progressive Caucus stemmed from anywhere but his own bank account. His records over the past three years indicate a mid-six-figure income, which he says proves his ability to spare $100,000 even for a fund supporting relatively low-level candidates.

He can afford big donations to a political cause the same way others could contribute to a church, he said, especially because he has no wife or children to support, takes few vacations, has no real hobbies and lives a non-extravagant lifestyle.

“It sounds odd, but when you look at how I live and how much I make, it really isn’t,” he said.

The questions were mild and hardly probative. Mostly because, upon information and belief, Bob McCarthy isn’t a CPA or a tax attorney and is no more or less knowledgeable than you or me when it comes to assessing someone’s purported tax returns .

But Collins was even more blunt with Jerry Zremski,

“My federal return is probably 25 pages long,” Collins added. “It’s too much for the public to absorb.”

It is journalistic malpractice to report on the alleged tax returns that some politician shows to a reporter. Jerry Zremski, like Bob McCarthy, likely has no more or less experience vetting and examining someone’s tax records than any other layperson. For the Buffalo News to arrange for a political figure to simply bring in and show off some paper purporting to be tax returns, and not having a CPA or a tax attorney on hand to provide analysis and guidance is simply shocking. For the News to do this repeatedly and report on it as if they had actually obtained some sort of information is incredible. Anyone can waltz into anywhere with a 1040 and some schedules and make-believe that it represents a tax return. It’s no wonder that McCarthy’s reporting on Pigeon has turned someone sharper since he realized that his longtime source didn’t disclose almost $250,000 in federal tax liens, which would have certainly been relevant within the context of Pigeon’s ability or willingness to fund a PAC in 2013 to the tune of $100,000.

I’m sure the feds are pleased that Pigeon reportedly has $100,000 to blow on obscure legislative primaries, but can’t pay his own taxes.

And what of that – the 2011 arrearage is pretty small – $14,000, but Pigeon’s tax debt for 2013 – the year of the Western NY Progressive Caucus – is over $112,000. How did this come to the IRS’s attention? An audit? Was it part of the forensic accounting that’s likely taking place behind the scenes in conjunction with this investigation? Let’s say Pigeon was right about reporting about $400 – 500k in income on the returns he showed McCarthy – did he underpay? Under-report? His effective tax rate is probably between 10 – 20% after deductions, so that’s a significant under-payment, to say the least. Was there “income” that came to – or through – Pigeon’s accounts that he didn’t report as income, but should have been? Questions abound.

In the meantime, it’s come to light that in 2010 Pigeon and his associate and fellow lobbyist Jack O’Donnell bought the “Front Page” group of newspapers, including Lackawanna’s Front Page and the South Buffalo News from former Conservative Party guru William Delmont. The entity that bought the paper is “South Park Ave Properties, LLC“, which shares an address with the Arab-American Society of WNY in a UPS Store in Blasdell. Delmont has since died, but his estate has filed suit against O’Donnell, South Park Ave Properties, Pigeon, and Sadeq Ahmed for an alleged debt of over $125,000, plus accrued interest. It’s alleged that O’Donnell, Pigeon, and Ahmed were all members of the LLC, and each of them executed a document personally guaranteeing all payments under the promissory note, and by January 2014 were accused of being in default.

Demand Note by Alan Bedenko

The action was brought as a motion for summary judgment, and Pigeon opposed it, claiming that Delmont had vastly overstate the papers’ viability and circulation.

Affidavit of Steve Pigeon by Alan Bedenko

Supreme Court Justice Walker denied the motion for summary judgment, and the case is proceeding in the usual course. Perhaps significantly, Pigeon and O’Donnell are represented by Ed Betz, who was until recently an attorney for the Erie County Water Authority, and before that for the City of Buffalo. Philips Lytle is representing Mr. Ahmed.

The papers themselves feature columns by SCOPE’s Budd Schroeder and articles by Tony Farina. As of January 2014, the papers have a new publisher – Frank Parlato of the Niagara Falls Reporter. Parlato announced that his acquisition is, “in joint venture with its current owners”, O’Donnell and Pigeon.

Next, we are hearing rumors that prosecutors have granted immunity to someone who is – or was – reasonably high up in Byron Brown’s City Hall. If true, it further speaks to the growing breadth and depth of this investigation.

Finally, Channel 2 interviewed Tim Kennedy on Thursday, who denied having lawyered up in connection with the Preetsmas probe. But here’s the thing:

1. Tim Kennedy filed an order to show cause relating to primary day vote counting on September 9th, but the attorney wasn’t Terry Connors – it was the aforementioned Ed Betz, who is also representing Pigeon and O’Donnell.

2. Although Kennedy claims that no one has spoken with him about the WNY Progressive Caucus or any investigation surrounding it, that defies credulity.  We already know that investigators interviewed everyone who gave or received any money from that PAC, and that its victims – like Wynnie Fisher and Lynn Dearmyer – were also questioned. We also know that Kennedy gave $85,000 to that PAC, so he had to have been paid a visit by state investigators.

3. Kennedy’s campaign finance disclosures show over $60,000 paid to Terry Connors’ law firm between August and November 2014. It wasn’t for election law stuff, since Betz was handling that. So, why so much and why then? What for? $60,000 is 200 hours’ worth of work at $300/hr, and that’s pretty much what it would cost to get a case tried. By contrast, in 2012 when Kennedy was in the fight of his political life against a Betty Jean Grant write-in insurgency, Kennedy paid Connors just $25,000.

Speaking of Terry Connors, his law partner’s bid to become a federal judge is moving right along. The Senate Judiciary Committee just this week approved Lawrence Vilardo’s nomination to be the newest federal judge in WNY. Yet, consider,

There is concern in the local legal community, however, over the prospects for approval of Denise E. O’Donnell, Schumer’s recommendation for Buffalo’s other vacant district judgeship. Even though Schumer submitted O’Donnell’s name to Obama in June of last year, seven weeks before he recommended Vilardo, the White House has not yet nominated her.

Why do you think that the White House hasn’t nominated Denise O’Donnell – Jack O’Donnell’s mother – to the federal bench, despite Chuck Schumer’s recommendation? I don’t know, either. Seems very odd.

A Preetsmas Story

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BAK

It bears repeating that the WNY Progressive Caucus was merely the latest iteration of a common Steve Pigeon modus operandi. He had been Pigeoning Democratic candidates for years while manipulating or cutting deals with whomever was convenient. Part of my antipathy for electoral fusion stems from Pigeon’s deft manipulation and marshalling of minor party lines.  He has conspired with Ralph Lorigo to steer the Conservative fusion Party line to his various candidates, and enjoys a close relationship with Tom Golisano, the founder of New York’s especially corrupt Independence fusion Party.

That’s why, for instance, Pigeon associate David Pfaff shows up as a vendor for the “Real Conservatives” PAC, which is controlled by Lorigo and based out of a funeral home in Hamburg which has contributed to Lorigo’s committee and also to Mickey Kearns.  That’s why a flush pro-Byron Brown PAC controlled by Steve Casey and based out of Casey’s home contributed to only one candidate – Conservative fusion Party candidate Joe Lorigo – in 2014 and 2013. So query why it took in $6,000 from Byron Brown’s campaign fund in the 11-day pre-General 2013 and another $6,000 from Brown in October 2013, while it only supported one Conservative fusion Party candidate.

None of this was new in 2013, but there was one major difference that tripped up Pigeon’s usual M.O. It was late August and early September that anonynous, no-attribution literature blasting then-incumbent county legislators Betty Jean Grant and Tim Hogues hit mailboxes throughout Buffalo. The mailers risibly accused Grant and Hogues of being right-wing Republicans, and praised their challengers, Joyce Wilson Nixon and Barbara Miller-Williams. I wrote at the time, “so long as people aligned with the breakaway Steve Pigeon faction of disgruntled nominal Democrats exist, there will be nonsense. It is ever thus.”

Under New York’s weak and usually unenforced election law, there is no requirement that the groups sending these sorts of mailers out reveal their identity or funding. “Paid for by” isn’t a requirement, and it protects shenanigans, instead of informing the voting public.

Generally, a PAC like the “WNY Progressive Caucus” would need to disclose to the Board of Elections where its money was coming from. But when these mailers hit in late August 2013, it hadn’t yet filed anything. The reason we found out about it was a FOIL request:

[Betty Jean] Grant on Friday charged that a rival wing of the local Democratic party is behind the anonymous ads. A request made under the Freedom of Information Act to the Postal Service has identified the permit holder on the mailings as the Western New York Progressive Caucus, headquartered on Doris Avenue in Lancaster.

That was Kristy Mazurek’s home, and she was listed as the group’s treasurer. Mazurek, at the time, had been a co-host of WGRZ’s “2Sides”, had helped direct the campaign of failed Comptroller candidate David Shenk, and then turned against Jeremy Zellner’s Democratic Committee and began running the campaigns of Pigeon-backed rogue Democrats Wes Moore and Rick Zydel in 2013. In August 2013, I called them the “emoDems”,

It should be noted that WGRZ 2Sides co-host Kristy Mazurek is [Wes] Moore’s and [Rick] Zydel’s campaign manager. Query why [her former co-host Stefan] Mychajliw would have felt the need to abandon the show when he ran for public office, yet the Democrat on the show feels no similar ethical obligation to do so, going so far as to attempt to ridicule an opponent on Facebook who wasn’t interested in going on the show.

Mazurek had taken to Facebook to ridicule Moore’s opponent Wynnie Fisher for refusing to appear on 2Sides. Yet why on Earth would a candidate appear on a show to be interrogated by her opponent’s campaign manager? It’s an insane proposition. Furthermore, Mazurek did leave 2Sides just days later. (There’s David Pfaff again, BTW):

And so, Mazurek Palinistically took to Facebook to issue a non-denial denial about the WNY Progressive Caucus’ literature:

Translation: After Shenk lost, Zellner didn’t hire/get me hired for something-or-other, and so I’m going to align myself with the people who are working to undermine and unseat him. Note that Mazurek doesn’t deny that she or her PAC sent out the anti-Hogues and anti-Grant mailings. She simply says the complaints “don’t have merit”. So, I replied:

Reply, (right under one from Erick Mullen, who did all of Jack Davis’ ads that relentlessly went after endorsed Democrat Jon Powers in ’08):

I have no idea what that means. So,

There was no reply, natch; I don’t think Ms. Mazurek knows what “meritless” means. Ditto her apparently erstwhile ally Pigeon, who said that the charges against him related to Mazurek’s PAC were “frivolous“.

These types of anonymous mailers come out all the time, and when anonymous, you can bet that the people behind it want to keep you in the dark. You should be insulted by them – they figure you’re an idiot; an ignoramus. Yet there’s no law that says they have to disclose who they are. So, if you’re outraged when your candidate gets anonymously and unfairly slammed by anonyms, you’re going to have to lobby Albany to demand that the Election Law be amended to (a) require that all campaign advertisements and literature clearly disclose who paid for them; and (b) institute a hefty penalty for any violations – penalties that are confiscatory deterrents.

Nasty people with unclean hands legally get to make electoral politics dirtier than it has to be. If Mazurek and the people behind the group for which she is treasurer think that Tim Hogues is a closet Clarence Republican and that Barbara Miller-Williams is the reincarnation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then they should disclose who they are.

The disgruntled nominal Democrats in league with Steve Pigeon might consider this, for instance: instead of working with Republicans and the fusion parties actively to undermine endorsed Democrats, why not convince the various and sundry committee members why they should vote for Frank Max or Mark Manna over Jeremy Zellner for party chair next time around? If you’re in league with the Conservative Party, why even pretend to be a Democrat?

But this time – in 2013 – the Pigeoning was discovered far earlier than Pigeon and Mazurek had expected, on August 30th. Because they were outed via FOIL request, they were forced to file disclosures just 11 days before the primary, and the disclosure was, at best, packed with fiction. Think about it – they clearly didn’t want to disclose who they were on the reams of literature they produced, and so long as people didn’t know who was behind it, they could defame opponents with impunity. This time, however, they were outed and came under a media microscope. Hogues and Grant filed complaints with the Board of Election, bolstered by former Assistant District Attorney Mark Sacha, and that complaint was referred to the state, which then referred it to state investigators, and it came before the Moreland Commission and into the hands of Preet Bharara.

And that’s the story of Preetsmas.

On the Fifth Day of Preetsmas

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IRS (1)

Let’s try something new. We’ll establish a story about campaign finance irregularities, media laziness/bias, and frauds perpetrated on the news-consuming public of Buffalo almost exclusively through screen captures.

From a Bob McCarthy article dated February 21, 2105: Does Pigeon earn enough to make these huge 6-figure contributions and loans to quixotic PAC efforts?

Now, just four short months later, one has to imagine that hell hath no fury like a mustachioed columnist scorned:

Click to enlarge

So:

and:

and

More specifically,

and

On the fifth day of Preetsmas, my true love gave to me, five CPAs

Former Clarence Councilman Weiss Issues Threat Outside Elementary School Event

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Joe Weiss is a ThugHanding out palmcards outside of a polling place is one of the less controversial things one can do within the context of a campaign. Unless you’re in Clarence.

On several occasions, a pro-school group was given a stern talking-to because people were leaving palmcards around inside the polling place. Well, that’s nice, dear, but that’s not the problem of the people handing out the palm cards – it’s a problem for the people running the vote and they should be on top of that sort of thing.

Handing out palmcards is pretty much standard operating procedure outside of any polling place in any competitive race, and is explicitly permitted by law outside the 100′ exclusion area. It is incumbent on the people receiving the cards to follow the rules inside the polling place, but no one was electioneering inside or within 100′ of the polling place. Perhaps it’s time for the legislature or the Board of Elections to clarify the rule affecting a clearly protected 1st Amendment activity.

But the highlight of my day came as I was passing out palmcards as families were making their way from an elementary school track meet next to the polling place. I was chatting with two 15 year-old student volunteers when a taller man dressed like a fake lumberjack ambled his way right up to me. I asked him if he was on his way in to vote and he said that he wasn’t, and asked me what my name was.

I told him, and he came even closer – his body touching mine, ever so tenderly, and got right in my face. He declared that I had once told him to “go fuck [him]self” in an email a few years ago. I responded, “Did I?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Are you [former Clarence town councilmember] Joe Weiss?”  He replied, “Yeah. and I want to tell you to go fuck yourself”. I thanked him, never backing down from where I stood, and as he skulked away I added, “nice language around the kids.”

He stopped, turned, and said, “You know, I really should kick the shit out of you right now”.

I replied, arms outstretched, “Really? Go for it. Because I can’t wait to own everything you own.” His best reply was, “Yeah, it’s a lot more than you own.” and I replied by calling him a true treasure for the community.

This morning, I went through all of my email accounts. Not only have I never emailed Joe Weiss, I never sent an email about Joe Weiss telling him to “go fuck” himself. I never wrote anything – ever – to or about Joe Weiss suggesting that he “go fuck” himself. Here is a link to the only blog posts naming Joe Weiss that I have ever written. Here’s one more. None of them tell Joe Weiss to do anything to himself. I did call him “sinister” and that he was behaving in one instance like a “wanna-be mafioso”. Sort of like how he comported himself outside the elementary school track meet.

Clarence is lucky to have disinfected itself of this horrifically noxious juvenile – a despicable weasel who believes the rules don’t apply to him.

Pursuant to the Clarence Central School District’s code of conduct,

All persons on school property or attending a school function, including athletic events, shall conduct themselves in a respectful and orderly manner.

No person, either alone or with others, shall:

1. Intentionally injure any person or threaten to do so.

…All visitors are expected to abide by the rules for public conduct on school property contained in this Code of Conduct

It’s amazing that a grown man attending an elementary school event at a high school track would – like some street thug – threaten another adult with physical violence. Joe Weiss once famously said that the “masses are asses”, but I guess he was really just projecting all that time.

Perhaps as a perfect coda, the Clarence Republican Committee voted last night to endorse councilmember Pat Casilio for supervisor over incumbent David Hartzell, whom Weiss helped defeat Supervisor Scott Bylewski in 2011. I mean, that was quick. It also endorsed newcomer Chris Greene over incumbent Bernie Kolber. Evidently this is because Kolber, who had a Kathy Weppner sign in front of his office and has peppered his truck with all manner of anti-Obama bumper stickers (including, but not limited to, “Got a Birth Certificate?”) isn’t Republican enough.

As for Weiss, I will refer the matter to the authorities and the school, in the hope that Weiss is held accountable for his unreasonable and puerile conduct.

5 Years Later, Tea Party Wants to Re-litigate Carl’s Emails

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news_0The tea party have decided to come after me. Bereft of ideas, strategy, or success, this ragtag grouping of political nobodies have decided to accuse me of a “fraudulent email scam”, going on to suggest that I “admitted” to having “fabricated” some emails way back in 2009 in order to do some sort of political harm to then-Deputy Mayor Steve Casey.

All of this is so outrageous and untrue as to be defamation per se, insofar as it specifically accuses me of fraud.

It’s quite odd that this is coming up now, and I can only attribute it to the fact that Jul Thompson is friends with the woman who is running the effort to kill Clarence schools. The post accuses me of perpetrating a fraud; i.e., that I somehow manufactured and concocted Carl Paladino’s XXX-rated and racist emails from 2010. The post was posted Monday to a tea party blog run by Jul Thompson, the wife of Carl’s driver, John “Rus” Thompson.

Immediately after the post was brought to my attention – around 1pm Monday – I called Rus’ cell phone and left a message. I have not heard back. I also left a comment at the blog post; it remains unpublished, stuck in the moderation queue, (note that the time stamp is wrong, and I likely posted it at 1:27 pm).

I posted a quick response yesterday to buffalopundit.com, but let me be clear: I am a lawyer. To fabricate emails and accuse anyone else of sending them would, frankly, put my license to practice law at jeopardy. I don’t put my livelihood at risk for anyone or anything – not to bring down Carl Paladino or Steve Casey or Byron Brown or Steve Pigeon or anyone. So, let’s operate under this singular assumption:  Jul Thompson is a liar. While I may be a public figure, she is accusing me of fraud – a crime – and that is libel per se.

Here is my reply to the false and defamatory blog post: 

Have you ever known someone who leaves a wake of destruction behind them? Case in point, Alan Bedenko, liberal blogger, formerly wrote for ArtVoice, then left with Jeff Kelly and other staff to write for The Public, another liberal rag.

*Geoff Kelly. But never mind.

I sat with a friend today and shared with her my frustrations over my inability to persuade Carl Paladino’s Campaign for Governor in 2010 to answer the ridiculous charge that he was a racist, which were predicated upon emails Bedenko fabricated to “take him out” of the race against Andrew “2nd-Amendment-be-damned” Cuomo. As I attempted to provide her with some documentation to that effect, I found this little gem below, that I had never seen before. I had, at the time, shared the article from the Niagara Falls Reporter in which Bedenko had admitted to having fabricated some emails to sully the reputation of then (real) Mayor of Buffalo Steve Casey.

Let’s be 100% clear here. I have never fabricated any emails to sully the reputation of Steve Casey, or of Byron Brown. I have never fabricated any emails to anyone, anywhere, and I have never fabricated any emails about – or from – Carl Paladino.  Anyone suggesting that I did (or that I would) is a liar. 

I am prepared – at any time – to produce the emails in question to anyone, provided that my source’s identity remains protected. 

I don’t know the author but he is spot-on.

[I omitted here a lengthy paean to Carl Paladino, the savior and messiah of the Buffalo School system].

If I had a million dollars… I would sue the pants off of Alan Bedenko, challenge him to take a lie detector test and let him perjure himself in a court of law. Carl Paladino is one of the finest men I’ve ever known, and he, students and families of the Buffalo Public Schools and the people of New York deserve far better than being lied to by a nutcase on a liberal jihad and held hostage by the race-baiters of the School Board and the Buffalo Teachers Union. It’s a rare bird with “intestinal fortitude” that would subject himself to the outrageous and unrelenting bogus accusations of racism. We who know Carl, know that he is making an enormous sacrifice committing himself to this otherwise impossible task. He has given up his precious time, reputation and personal comfort because he cares so deeply for raising the level of achievement and providing a better future for the residents and families of the City of Buffalo. Jul Thompson Founder, TEA New York

Jul: Presumably Carl can provide you with the filing fee to sue me. I mean, you wouldn’t have standing to sue me, and Carl’s well past the one-year statute of limitations to do so. If I had fabricated those emails – you know, the racist, pornographic emails that Carl had sent and forwarded, including the one showing a horse having anal sex with a human female – why didn’t Carl go ahead and sue me back in 2010? 2011? 2012? 2013? Go ask any of Carl’s bigshot buddies whether he sent them. Ask Jamie Moses. Ask Larry Quinn. I can give you more names, if you want – names of people who might not necessarily be public figures. Email me at buffalopundit[at]gmail.com and I will give you a list of the names of people who received the pornographic and racist emails that Carl sent. Any time.  The reason why Carl never sued me? He sent them. They’re his.

Mrs. Thompson went on to regurgitate a 5 year-old blog post from a guy I contacted on Twitter yesterday. Here is the relevant exchange:

Could some of the Paladino e-mails been forgeries? This, and other questions, that the Albany press refuses to ask by Jerry Myrle Fuller Sunday, April 18, 2010 (Note: Most of you know that I am not a reporter by trade or training, and that my area of expertise is meteorology, so if this reads like a first-person journal entry, that is part of the reason. It seems to flow a little better that way.) By now, most of you have heard about the e-mail leak from a liberal blog known as wnymedia.net that purports, in big letters, to be displaying the scandalous “racist and sexist e-mails” put forth by Buffalo developer and Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl P. Paladino. Immediately I became suspicious. The article asserted that the e-mails were real with all the authority of a Facebook chain message. So, I did some research. Initially, this article was going to be a plain old rant about how this state seems to treat upstate politicians with a lot less respect than downstaters, pointing out the curious parallel between this and Chris Collins’s alleged “lap dance” comments that were unverifiable and blown way out of proportion, killing his proposed campaign for governor. It is no coincidence that both came from Buffalo, and it is also no coincidence that it has been decades since the state of New York has had a governor from the upstate region. However, I began to notice something: while for a few days, it appeared that Paladino’s campaign would indeed go down in flames, as would-be supporters ranging from Curtis Sliwa to Mark Williams disavowed him over the controversy, something funny happened: Paladino’s die-hard supporters rallied around him harder than ever. Paladino has a strong cult following, with passionate and outspoken supporters– something I really don’t see outside the political class for Lazio or Levy. They began to see the outrage over the e-mails as over the top. This led to wnymedia.net trying to push its rebuttal and insist that Carl Paladino was a dirty racist unfit for the office of governor of New York. So, I looked into wnymedia.net– specifically Alan Bedenko, the man who portrays himself as “buffalopundit–” to see who this guy was. To put it bluntly, he’s an ambulance chaser (i.e., an auto injury attorney) who joined the Democratic Party in 2003. Having sporadically read his commentary, he’s always been fairly strongly liberal. This was relatively mundane information, but then I stumbled on a little item from the Niagara Falls Reporter (a local alternative tabloid in the Niagara Falls area) that had something eerily familiar. The article dates to February 2009 and stems from an unrelated e-mail feud between Sam Hoyt and Buffalo City Hall (my emphasis added):

Well, let’s get one thing clear. The author admits that he’s no reporter, and boy is he right. I defend people against whom lawsuits have been brought. I am not an “ambulance chaser”, and haven’t done plaintiff’s personal injury work since 2001. Indeed, even accused drunk drivers know this!

Anyhow, here the author embedded the text from Mike Hudson’s Niagara Falls Reporter:

Big catfight in Buffalo last week between amateur bloggers Alan Bedenko of Buffalo Pundit and Glenn Gramigna of New WNY Politics, precipitated by the self-important Bedenko’s decision to publish what he even said was a series of fraudulent e-mails purporting to have been sent between some top aides to Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown last summer. Clearly, the e-mails were meant to slander and defame the people at Buffalo City Hall. Why Bedenko, who is an attorney in real life, chose to publish them is anyone’s guess. Enter Gramigna, who openly speculated that — since Bedenko was the only one to publish the lurid e-mails — perhaps Bedenko in fact had been their author. Actually, the theory makes a lot of sense. The e-mails were shopped to various news outlets last summer, and my impression was that they were created in response to the publication by the Niagara Falls Reporter of another series of e-mails between the married state Rep. Sam Hoyt and a young and comely Albany intern he was carrying on with. The Hoyt camp openly accused Brown’s first deputy mayor, Steve Casey, of being behind the leaking of the Hoyt e-mails — which were genuine — and Casey, perhaps coincidentally, figures prominently in the admittedly fraudulent e-mails published by Bedenko. Also perhaps coincidentally, Bedenko was a strong supporter of Hoyt during the last election cycle, has been a consistent critic of the Brown administration and was, after all, the only one to publish the garbage. Anyway, he phoned Gramigna “in a rage” and, being a lawyer, claimed his rival to be guilty of defamation. For his part, Gramigna is every bit the clueless lump comedians make fun of when discussing bloggers, and immediately posted a retraction. One question remains: Who did write the slanderous and potentially damaging e-mails Gramigna ascribed to Bedenko? Bedenko vehemently denies he wrote them, of course, but who knows?

Glenn Gramigna was being paid by one Syaed Ali, who is widely thought to have been the author of the emails in question, and had no proof other than “open speculation” that I wrote the emails, because Chris Smith published them. Makes perfect sense, right? It’s logic for idiots! But be clear: nowhere in any of these articles have I “admitted” to having forged anything; on the contrary, I vehemently denied that I wrote them then, and I vehemently deny I wrote them now, because I didn’t write them. I didn’t even publish them.

Alan Bedenko has a history of questionable e-mail “leaks” that pre-dates the Paladino e-mail flap. As I understood it, reporters are supposed to check the reliability of their sources before quoting their allegations as fact– something that did not appear to happen when these e-mails were leaked and subsequently went viral. Considering that I’m pretty sure wnymedia.net isn’t on most of the Albany press members’ must-read lists (their articles rarely show up on the major blogs), I’d venture to say there was also some shopping going around with the Paladino story as well.

What “history of questionable e-mail “leaks”? The Syaed Ali stuff? Hell, you can go right here and read all about that, from that time. Here is the article I wrote about Gramigna immediately after he published his “speculation”, and I expressly threatened to sue him. It should also be noted that I never published the emails in 2009 – it was Chris Smith who did so.

From that article: UPDATED: Gramigna has retracted what he wrote, and what his source told him. That’s appreciated, but still horseshit. Apart from this morning, when I called him in a rage, I can honestly say that I’ve never exchanged a single word with Gramigna, despite having helped him promote his dreck-laden site when he started it. His business model is: get local politicians to buy ads, print positive crap about them and negative crap about their opponents. Look for an alternative to completely decimate that business model, coming soon. If I had written the offending emails – which I didn’t – I would have reprinted them last summer, when they were originally sent. They are alleged to have been sent by Mr. Gramigna’s newest advertising client, Syaed Ali. But I didn’t print them last summer. Indeed, I alluded to them a couple of times only in an off-handed manner. I had theories as to who might have been sending them, but someone in law enforcement somehow landed on Mr. Ali, and he alleges that he was subsequently placed into custody and that his belongings have been confiscated. I’ve gone on record saying that, if what Ali said is true, it’s a grave injustice. Furthermore, if I had sent them, I wouldn’t have pimped them to mainstream media – I would have posted them on my site contemporaneously so that the TV and other reporters would give me linkage and credit. But I didn’t write them, I wouldn’t have written them, I have nothing to gain from writing them, and never in my wildest dreams would ever conceive of writing something like that about anyone, much less an elected official. For Gramigna, acting apparently as a conduit for the flailing Ali, to even suggestthat I was behind those emails is a disgrace – and a defamatory one, at that. I have my disagreements with the Brown administration – I don’t like their secrecy, I don’t like their sense of entitlement, I don’t like their Machiavellian machinations to try and upset ECDC and its endorsed candidates, and I don’t necessarily think that they do the best job for Buffalo. That doesn’t mean I would ever stoop so low as to spread vicious, defamatory rumors about him or his officials.

I am not trying to claim that the entire thing is an absolute hoax. Paladino himself has acknowledged that at least some of the e-mails in question were in fact authentic. Many of them, knowing Paladino’s public persona and admitted racial insensitivity, aren’t even all that surprising. However, there is the question that if Paladino in fact did not author some of these alleged e-mails, why did he not come out and deny them? The best answer that I can give is that Michael Caputo didn’t even try to do so. Caputo, after the e-mail controversy broke, stated repeatedly that “We’re not sure about the authenticity of the emails, and we don’t care. I’m not even going to comment on the emails. It’s not something I care to look at.” He has characterized the leak as a “liberal Democrat blog smear” and has declined to delve into the details.

Carl is a lawyer. It doesn’t matter what Caputo did or didn’t say. Carl had until 2011 to go ahead and sue the crap out of me if the emails were frauds. I’m just a middle-class lawyer/blogger and he’s a multimillionaire. Why didn’t he just sue me if it was false?

There could be lots of reasons. The biggest is that they’re provably genuine. Next would be that bringing that lawsuit would have opened up Carl’s own reputation to scrutiny. He knows better than to subject his reputation to the discovery process. Lots of reasons.

As for Syaed Ali, the idea that I wrote emails accusing Byron Brown of being gay is so palpably riduculous and false that Gramigna himself retracted the allegation. Mike Hudson didn’t because Mike Hudson knows how to write a story without crossing over the lines of libel, and didn’t directly accuse me of anything. Jul Thompson is a liar, and “Tea New York” is liable for her defamation. 

I don’t know yet whether I will pursue legal action, but I do know that I now – after 5 years – have to establish, once and for all, the authenticity of Carl Paladino’s emails. That means I now have to produce the emails in an unredacted format, and journalists and laypeople will be perfectly free to inquire of these judges, appointed bureaucrats, elected officials, prominent businesspeople, and developers whether Carl Paladino sent these racist, pornographic, and offensive emails. Given Mr. Paladino’s current status as an elected member of the Buffalo school board, and given the controversy over his ongoing battle with a predominately African-American minority on that board, I don’t know that the timing of this is something that he welcomes, but either way, he has the Thompsons to thank.

Groanfest ’15

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PoloncarzWalter

We thought that Ray Walter taking on Mark Poloncarz would be fun, right? They’re each of them snarky, smart, partisan, and combative. But it’s already become supremely annoying.

Nothing substantive has been debated or discussed yet, and I doubt anything ever will be. Walter can hit Poloncarz on issues at DSS, and Poloncarz can hit Walter for a lack of accomplishments as a minority member of the legislatures he’s been elected to, and they’ll each try to string that out as much as possible. In the end, though, Poloncarz’s tenure has been deliberative, fiscally responsible, intelligent, inclusive, and – above all – looking to the future rather than skulking about the past.

Not to say Ray Walter would make a bad County Executive – just that Poloncarz hasn’t committed any act or omission that would adversely affect his overwhelming re-election.

What’s annoying about it is this: rapid campaign response is important; I get it. You can’t simply let some lie or nonsense stand, hoping it will just go away.

But did we really need a biting rapid response to each candidate’s campaign kickoff? In terms of setting the tone, it doesn’t bode well.

With Poloncarz’s kickoff, Walter pounced. The County has experienced some very good years lately, so Walter’s third sentence, “Myself, who understands the reality and challenges facing Erie County, its taxpayers and its businesses; and the incumbent who ignores reality and twists numbers for political gain“, is as eye-rollingly overaggressive as it is awkwardly worded. Furthermore, Walter is making an issue of horrible road conditions literally a month after one of the coldest and snowiest winters in WNY history. He is right that the DPW was unable to click its collective heels to fix all the roads instantly.

Likewise, when Walter held his campaign kickoff, during which he had to assail Poloncarz because Walter has little name recognition outside of Amherst, and because Poloncarz is running on a strong record, the Poloncarz camp sent this:

Poloncarz Campaign Counters Republican Claims

ERIE COUNTY, NY – Today, as a Republican announced his candidacy for Erie County Executive, many exaggerations and untruths were stated in an attempt to misrepresent and distort Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz’s proven record of job growth, fiscal discipline and strong leadership for the people of Erie County.

Not as aggressive as Walter’s, but also completely unnecessary.

Mark Poloncarz is proud to run on his record of accomplishments from the past four years, and is looking forward to a fact-based, spirited campaign that leaves aside petty political attacks while focusing on the issues that matter most to the people of Erie County.Poloncarz will detail his accomplishments, the issues that matter to the people of Erie County and his goals for the future when he announces his candidacy for reelection on Tuesday, April 21, 2015.

Then ignore the taunting. We all want a spirited, fact-based campaign, so if your opponent is making stuff up, deal with it with rebuttal, not simply by making the accusation.

This campaign has only just begun, and it’s already cringeworthy. Sometimes I wish political campaigns would tell it like it is, and that every ad was replete with profanity. At least then, this sort of hypersensitive overreaction would be fun.

We’re about 3 days in, and I’m already getting the sense that if one said the sky was blue, the other would blast the media with a press release heavy on insults, light on facts, insisting that the sky was red and anyone suggesting any differently was just repeating right-wing Koch Brothers / left-wing Soros talking points.

Make it stop.

 

Winter Storm “Re-election”

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walter

A few weeks ago, the Poloncarz camp did some internal polling regarding its chances (they were good) against a potential challenge from Comptroller Stefan Mychajliw or County Clerk Chris Jacobs. The latter’s numbers were better than the former’s, but Poloncarz still held a commanding lead. We can presume, based on Mychajliw’s and Jacobs’ rapid-fire exits from the County Executive’s race, that the Republicans conducted similar polling, and that its results were not dissimilar from Poloncarz’s own.

In their stead, it appears that Assemblyman Ray Walter is going to challenge Poloncarz. Jacobs sort of let the cat out of the bag yesterday by pledging his support for Walter, who hasn’t announced yet. Walter released a statement yesterday, indicating that he’s still thinking about it, but that he thinks it’s a winnable race.

(By way of full disclosure, I consider both Walter and Poloncarz to be friends, and I have donated money to both. The firm where I work defends Erie County in lawsuits, and Poloncarz recently appointed me – with unanimous legislative approval – to the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library board of trustees.)

I don’t think Ray has much of a shot, and he’s taking one for the team. Both Jacobs and Mychajliw enjoy more crossover appeal, yet neither of them are ready to mount a countywide challenge to Poloncarz. When he was in the legislature, Walter played the role that Joe Lorigo has now – that of snarky right-wing eye-roller. Ray’s nickname among Democratic legislators was “Rush”, as in Limbaugh. He’s more of an outspoken doctrinaire conservative Republican than Mychajliw or Jacobs, each of whom has carefully crafted an image and perception of being above partisanship, regardless of the reality.

For sure, Ray is well-known and liked in his Amherst home-base, but outside of there, he doesn’t come close to the name recognition that Mychajliw or Jacobs enjoy, nor has he really taken on an issue in the Assembly in such a way that gets him a lot of attention outside his district. Think DiPietro and guns. In recent weeks, Walter has been heard on WBEN and seen on his Facebook page taking on Governor Cuomo’s dubious education reforms, but the wheels are still spinning, and there’s not a lot of traction yet.

When Walter last ran he was challenged by Steve Meyer, a young newcomer Democrat who evidently gave him enough of a scare that Mike Caputo excoriated Meyer as a kid who should get a job. Another website, which has a habit of being wrong, wrote that Meyer had a real shot and that the race was a toss-up. In the end, however, Walter’s win was lopsided, as the incumbent received 20,852 votes to Meyer’s 14,641 – about a 60/40 split. Still, Walter’s not a charismatic cross-over candidate with crazy name recognition or deep pockets, and Poloncarz’s tenure has been, if not warm and fuzzy, then careful, responsible, and competent.

With the understanding, then, that Ray is a substitute for Chris and Stef – choice 3 of 3 – bullet-taking such as this can, for instance, earn people cush promotions like judgeships. I know that Ray has to say it’s a winnable race, but that’s unlikely. It’s a steep climb, and Ray has less than $5,000 in his campaign account against Poloncarz’s $422,000. Ray’s climb is also steep because he can’t – at this time – attract Democrats like Stef or Chris. We can’t really assess what Walter might do substantively as County Executive as compared with Poloncarz, mostly because the incumbent’s tenure has been effective and people are generally satisfied with the results he gets.

On Twitter last night, people were joking:

That seems about right.

But here’s a thought: where’s Ed Rath? He’s got money, and his name is already hanging out on the county shingle.

Dino Fudoli: Redskin 4Evah!

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fudoli

God bless Dino Fudoli, the Lancaster town supervisor. Having solved every other problem that exists in his town, he’s taken on the very important work of protecting a racist school mascot name. He even went on the air at WBEN, that brave enabler of anachronistic racist ignorance, to put his foot down about this critically important issue.

For the uninitiated, Fudoli is a tax evading caricature of a WBEN caller, who spouts nonsense about the government being your “enemy“, an accused former drug pusher, an anti-democratic Collins stooge, and a former county legislator who is apparently ignorant about procedures for town requests for county resources during natural disasters.

Fudoli wants a referendum on the critically important, existential “Redskins” crisis in Lancaster because, well, the town elected him, so chances are it might vote to maintain a patently racist team name.

On Wednesday, I was in meetings from about 12:45 until 6pm. During that time, people baited Fudoli on Twitter, and he clearly doesn’t know how to use it. But he sure is feisty!

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