Jul 17
2024
Brown’s raising money as if he’s running for office
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Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has a fundraiser today at the Diamond Hawk golf course in Cheektowaga, with tickets starting at $100 and sponsorship packages ranging up to $5,000.
Brown also held a fundraiser earlier this month at a Bisons game and another in April at The Atrium @ Rich’s. His Brown for Buffalo campaign committee has raised $58,500 since January, according to campaign finance disclosures filed on Monday.
That’s $22,000 more than Brown raised in the first six months of 2020, as he prepared to run for a fifth term. The mayor’s committee had $192,545 in the bank as of July 11. That’s nearly $80,000 more than he had on hand four years ago.
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown. Photo by Garrett Looker.
And yet rumors persist that Brown will step down before completing his term to take some other job. The latest gossip from South Buffalo is Brown will leave office on or shortly after Aug. 6, which is significant for two reasons:
- If the mayor were to step down on or after Aug. 6, there would be no last-minute election to fill his seat this November. Instead, Common Council President Chris Scanlon would become acting mayor for the next 16 months, making Scanlon the de facto incumbent when city voters choose a new mayor in regularly scheduled elections next year.
- Aug. 6 is Scanlon’s birthday. What better present for the man who has been positioning himself to run for mayor ever since he helped to deliver South Buffalo to Brown in 2021?
If Brown were to step down before Aug. 6 — which seems less likely with each passing day — there would be a special election for mayor this November. Scanlon would be acting mayor until then. Democratic and Republican Party leaders would choose the candidates.
That circumstance likely would favor state Sen. Sean Ryan, who plans to run for mayor. Ryan is much closer to party leadership than Scanlon or Brown. Plus, Ryan vacating his Senate seat to become mayor would give Erie County Democratic Party Chair Jeremy Zellner a vacancy to fill. Zellner might seek to take Ryan’s seat himself.
Assuming Ryan were named the Democratic candidate and beat whomever the Republicans put on the ballot, he would have the advantage of incumbency in next year’s primary and general elections.
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All this rumor-mongering and political game theory may be for naught. It might be that Brown finishes his term. Maybe he’ll run for a sixth term.
He’s still raising money like a candidate, but that’s an old game: Elected officials around here like to leave office with lots of campaign money left over.
Brown’s predecessor, Tony Masiello, left office in January 2006 with more than $800,000 in his campaign accounts. Former Erie County Executive Joel Giambra had more than $700,000 when he left in January 2008. Former Assemblyman Robin Schimminger left office in January 2021 with $410,665 left in his campaign account. Schimminger had spent less than $30,000 of that as of July 11.
Former state Sen. Tim Kennedy — the fundraising machine who is now a congressman — still has $1,272,069 in his state campaign account, according to the latest campaign finance disclosures. Federal election law prohibits Kennedy from using that money for future federal campaigns, but he’s free to distribute that money as he sees fit to community groups and other local candidates and party committees.
Brown has a long way to go if he hopes to keep company with those guys.
The mayor took in about $40,000 in April, when he held a cocktail party at The Atrium@ Rich’s on Niagara Street. So far in July he’s raised a mere $7,000.
Brown for Buffalo still owes Partners Press about $21,000 for work done during his 2021 reelection campaign, according to the committee’s campaign finance disclosure filing on Monday. Under state law, that debt became a contribution — far in excess of state limits on political donations — as soon as the 2021 election was over.
Brown for Buffalo had $185,000 in unpaid debt in July 2022, eight months after the mayor’s reelection. The contribution limits that year were $7,800 for the general election and $5,300 for the primary, for a total of $13,100 over the entire election cycle.
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