The Buffalo Paradox:
Stand and Deliver
How dysfunctional politics and disengaged citizens stand in the
way of Buffalo's progress
By Anna Geronimo Hausmann
When we ask the question, how can we reconcile the energy and enthusiasm of community-based and neighborhood-driven projects with the morass that is our city hall, with the financial ruin and systemic dysfunction that pass for government in this city, we have to look at the two images of Buffalo and ask, what is the crucial difference between these two pictures?
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The success of the Elmwood shopping district
can be traced to citizen activism, led by such groups as Forever Elmwood. Photo by Jim Bush. |
So why aren’t some of these visionaries throwing their hats into the ring and trying to change things from the inside? The answer is, they are, but their experiences with running for public office illustrate that Buffalo politics itself may be the single biggest obstacle to changing the way public policy decisions are made in this city.
Of course, politics is a rough-and-tumble game in any city. But while every city has its dynastic political families and its equivalents of Tammany Hall, Buffalo politics, for a number of reasons, remains so parochial as to be almost tribal. It is, in fact, an in-bred, warlord-like system that has successfully stifled nearly all dissent.
Turf wars and inbreeding
One huge contributing factor to the static nature of Buffalo politics is the loss of population over the last few decades. Jeremy Toth, president and one of the founders of the New Millennium Group, is one person who has tried to break into this closed system by running for an at-large seat on the Common Council two years ago. “One problem is demographics,” he explains, “there’s no infusion of new people here. The political pressures that a growing community would feel don’t happen here. It’s a thirty year old dynamic still at work.”
Elissa Morgante Banas, a teacher and lawyer who also ran unsuccessfully for the Erie County Legislature two years ago, completely agrees with this assessment. “Party politics is so entrenched here, it’s all who you know and who you can pay back. If you look historically, politics was never meant to be a career. In Florence, in the Renaissance, it was rotated like jury duty. It wasn’t perks and prestige and power, and being treated like a special person. It was your civic duty. You give a little back, become a public servant, because it makes your community better, not because you want a lifelong job.”
Public Service - more than a job at the Housing Authority
Jeremy Toth echoes the importance of individual involvement. “People have to take responsibility for the mess we’re in. The people of this city aren’t empowered because they don’t put in the effort, they won’t even attend a block club meeting. It’s not that difficult to have an impact; this is an easy town to make an impact, it’s just up to more people to get involved.” Ultimately, Toth says, we get the politics we deserve: “our politics reflect our own values. People need to be engaged beyond wanting to get a job at the Housing Authority.”
State Representative Sam Hoyt, a voice for political reform in his own party in recent years, agrees with this assessment: “Buffalo politics are a mess, but rather than rising up and taking control, there is resignation and disengagement. ... There are exceptions, but for the most part politics is viewed as distasteful business for somebody else.”
You Say You Want a Revolution
It’s a fine line, between getting a place at the table and getting co-opted by the establishment. As Karl Marx put it, you’re only a revolutionary until the day after the revolution. When, presumably, you become the establishment.
Denise Herkey says the New Millennium Group has struggled a bit with this issue since gaining its place at the table of local public policy decision making. “We formed because we felt we weren’t at the table, we had no voice. But it’s a double-edged sword ... you can find yourself falling into step with a certain camp or faction. You have to step back every so often and reassess. Our group went through a process of re-evaluation last year with facilitators to help us to refocus and re-identify our goals and what we stand for.”
Jeremy Toth points to the example of the Grassroots political club. Grassroots also formed as a reformist voice to challenge Arthur Eve’s hold on power fifteen years ago, but now they are part of the established political scene, with several current and former Common Council members coming up through the Grassroots ranks. In fact, the club is seen by many as part of the problem of entrenched politicians, as a prime example of reformists being co-opted.
Like many, Sam Hoyt cites public engagement on issues such as the Peace Bridge, the Erie Canal restoration, Children’s Hospital, as a possible model for reforming the political process from within. One way to do that, he says, is to run for county committee and gain leverage over the process of recruiting and endorsing candidates. In the two years since his defeat, Jeremy Toth has been engaged in just such an endeavor with the formation of a new, unaffiliated political club, the Good Neighbor Democrats.
“We wanted to create a political club to promote good government, an open and honest process, reform. We are somewhat affiliated with Sam Hoyt, but our members are free to carry petitions for whomever they want, to support or work for whomever they choose. Our goal is to encourage engagement with the process and get people involved.
“What we did was totally unprecedented. We ran sixty candidates as committeemen all over the West Side and we did it without asking anyone, without getting permission from the party. We won roughly forty-five of our races and totally shocked people in the party.”
New voices emerge
Of course, another way to do reform from the inside is to run for office. It may seem daunting, given the money needed to mount a modern political campaign and the internecine nature of Buffalo politics, but those who’ve tried say people are hungry for a change.
Jeremy Toth says of his own failed run for an at-large position on the Common Council, “it was great, except for losing. I was not supposed to run under any kind of political matrix. I had no ethnic base or political machine behind me, no party support, and I was running against incumbents. The fact that I did as well as I did is amazing.”
Elissa Morgante Banas, too, is surprised at how well she did in her run for the First District of the Erie County Legislature, which covers all of downtown, part of the west side, and south through Lackawanna, Blasdell, and into part of Hamburg. “I was running against a guy who had been in office for eighteen years, who hadn’t had a challenger in ten years. ... considering his long incumbency people felt I did really well to get thirty percent of the vote in the primary.”
Another reform-minded candidate who ran for the Niagara district seat on the Common Council two years ago, Sue McCartney, also has only good things to say about her failed run. McCartney, who is director of the Buffalo State College Small Business Development Center and a board member of Forever Elmwood, the Preservation Coalition, and ECIDA, says “I had a blast on that campaign. I went into it ignorant of the committee process, without a major party endorsement, and was up against a very strong candidate. Nick Bonifacio is beloved in the district and, in terms of our neighborhood, he’s been a great representative. He’s very in tune with the neighborhood, so who am I to say they picked the wrong guy? Considering how popular Nick is, I think it’s amazing that I lost by only one hundred and fifty votes.”
McCartney’s husband, Tim Tielman, suggests that the difficulty in overcoming the party’s stranglehold on candidates will only get worse should the Common council be downsized as is currently proposed. Tielman explains that while reducing the size of the Council will certainly save money “it’s a false economy and it hurts our representation.” Tielman feels that fewer Council seats means that candidates will have to be more dependent on party support.
“Fewer members raises the bar for people to get in without the party’s endorsement. Not only that, but the higher the threshold, the electioneering process, the less qualified candidates you’ll see, the less a chance of true reform and new ideas.” This, Tielman explains, is because the harder it is to get elected the more a candidate is beholden to the party structure and leadership and the party’s financial supporters.
In fact, Tielman thinks Buffalo needs more Council members, not fewer. “I think the size of the Council should be doubled, but that they should be part-time, they should meet at night, and their salaries should be one quarter the size they are right now.” Like Elissa Morgante Banas, Tielman envisions a citizen-council.
“A public challenge”
But even with an infusion of new blood into the political system and the prospect of new voices and new vision, the biggest stumbling block to Buffalo’s re-inventing itself is its own sorry past hanging like an albatross around its neck. If you remember the poem from which that old expression comes, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the albatross represents not just bad luck or being dogged by one’s mistakes. It stands for stupidity, cupidity, and a lack of a guiding moral code.
The biggest question for us is not who could be a better mayor, but who can inspire us as a community to think past our current problems and see the possibilities, not just the risks, in moving boldly.
Elissa Morgante Banas puts it this way: “Buffalo needs a leader with a vision of what he or she wants the city to be, someone who will make demands of the city, someone who can get everyone to follow that vision.” She points to Mayor John Norquist of Milwaukee who has led a dramatic re-invigoration of a similarly industrial rust-belt city.
Sam Hoyt adds that the people have a role in that leadership. “Leadership is difficult, but it isn’t just the responsibility of people with fancy titles. It’s everybody’s responsibility. Citizenship is difficult, especially in a pluralistic society where people disagree. The challenge of Buffalo’s future is a public challenge.”
Anna Geronimo Hausmann is a teacher and writer living in Buffalo.
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