10 of the most powerful WNY women
It takes two:
Erie County Legislator Chairwoman Lynn Marinelli
and Majority Leader Maria Whyte
By John Maggiore

Chairwoman Lynn Marinelli
Chairwoman Lynn Marinelli.
When Maria Whyte, the County Legislature’s new majority leader, showed up to meet me, she had tucked under her arm a marked-up copy of Good to Great and the Social Sectors, a monograph on leadership in government. One of the passages she had underlined read, “In legislative leadership, no individual leader, not even the nominal chief executive, has enough structural power to make the most important decisions by himself or herself. Legislative leadership relies more on persuasion, political currency, and shared interests to create the conditions for the right decisions to happen.” That pretty much sums up the philosophy of power internalized by the Legislature’s first all-female leadership team of Whyte and Chairperson Lynn Marinelli.

Marinelli exercises power by denying she has it. Fond of saying, “I’m one of fifteen votes,” Marinelli conveys the exact opposite image of the iron-fisted leader. Yet something changed when she and Whyte took the reins. If the 2005 legislative session was distinguished by paralysis and the never-ending quest for enough votes to pass … anything, the Marinelli/Whyte team has cobbled together an impressive array of victories in the first half of 2006. Working the phones, sharing information, and holding off on credit-seeking have produced coalitions to pass revenue sharing with the county’s cities, a finance arrangement to keep ECMC open, a pared-down borrowing package, an apprenticeship bill for county construction projects, and a program for youth services.

How powerful is the Erie County Legislature? It makes decisions affecting a population greater than that of roughly seventy-five countries, and an economy bigger than those of about 100 nations. If Marinelli were the majority party’s top legislator in most of those countries, she would be called Madame Prime Minister. Yet her nine years in office is less than a fifth that of the senior members of the State Senate and U.S. Senate. Whyte was selected as majority leader before she was sworn in to her first term less than a year ago. Barely knowing each other, the two were joined as a leadership team with days to go before having to serve in those capacities.

Majority Leader Maria Whyte
Majority Leader Maria Whyte.
Both faced competitive races last year. An election has not passed without Marinelli facing a credible opponent. Whyte won a race some called un-winnable, garnering forty percent of the vote in a field of five men. The secret to their electoral success has much to do with a strict regimen of door knocking. Both credit the activity with keeping them out of the mire of pure downtown thinking and putting them in touch with the needs of real people. Says Marinelli, “The mission of county government is to provide health and human services, public safety services, and quality-of-life areas like libraries, parks, road projects, community colleges, [and] a public hospital with a trauma center. Those are important.”

Perhaps it is ironic that these paragons of female-style leadership should be locked in a governance dance with alpha-male Joel Giambra. Giambra was much less a feature of either Marinelli’s or Whyte’s campaigns than those of many other candidates in 2005, even those not running for county office. While the two have many differences with the county executive, they keep the personalization of politics to a minimum. “Women have less ownership over any one particular idea,” says Whyte, “If it’s a good idea, we’re prepared to put it on the table to be debated and changed without having to own it and move it as our own thing.”

Is there a female style of leadership? “If there is,” says Marinelli, “we tend to be more consensus building … We tend to do priorities, we have to multi-task in life—Maria is raising a baby and she has to balance her family.” She pauses and, in true consensus-building form, added, “… but that’s not to say others—men—haven’t.”

John Maggiore (john_maggiore@hotmail.com) is Buffalo State College President Muriel A. Howard’s assistant for communications. He has many years’ experience in state and local politics, and recently served on the Erie County Charter Revision Commission.


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