Sep 12
2024
And the next mayor of Buffalo is …
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Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown hasn’t yet accepted his job offer from Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp.
He hasn’t submitted a letter of resignation from office. I asked the city clerk on Tuesday, just to be sure.
But smart money says he’ll have vacated the second floor of City Hall before Halloween, leaving Common Council President Chris Scanlon as acting mayor.
As acting mayor, Scanlon will be a quasi-incumbent when voters choose a new mayor next year. That may not be much of an advantage, given the city’s financial issues, and there will be many candidates vying for many different voting blocs.
Candidates to succeed Brown — to be just the fifth mayor this city has had in 50 years — are already filling the ring with their hats. Here are the names I’ve heard so far, in alphabetical order:
Ryan Caughill
An emergency preparedness consultant, Caughill has been tweeting that he’s running for mayor since July.
Caughill is a registered Republican, according to an elections board database, and the only recorded political donation I could find from him is $126.73 in June to Democrat Tim Kennedy’s congressional campaign.
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Every open-seat election deserves an outsider candidate with no connection to any political organization. Caughill is the first to occupy that space, so he makes this list. There may be more like him to come.
Zeneta Everhart
Lots of people say the first-term Masten District Council member might run for mayor. Those same folks say she is likely to defer to whichever candidate is backed by the Erie County Democratic Committee.
Masten District Council Member Zeneta Everhart. Photo by Garrett Looker.
Which, of course, could be Everhart. Her star has risen quickly. She’s tight with her ex-boss, Congressman Tim Kennedy. Her advocacy on gun violence — her son was injured in the Tops massacre — provides her access to national fundraising networks.
She voted to make South District Council Member Chris Scanlon the Council president in January, setting him up to be acting mayor when Brown resigns. That doesn’t mean she’ll back Scanlon now.
Leah Halton-Pope
The Common Council majority leader says she’s “exploring it.”
Like Everhart, Halton-Pope is just nine months into her first term as an elected official, having won the Ellicott District seat last November, after its previous occupant, Darius Pridgen, declined to seek a new term.
Unlike Everhart, she has been in politics and government for more than a decade, working under a number of titles for Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes, in addition to running her reelection campaigns.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomShe too helped make Chris Scanlon the Council president in January. But her support for Scanlon was lukewarm then and doesn’t mean she’ll support a South Buffalonian for mayor.
Both Everhart and Halton-Pope are also considered candidates to succeed Peoples-Stokes if she retires in a couple years.
Terrance Heard
The Buffalo Board of Education at-large member also said he’s “exploring it.”
Heard currently is running for reelection to another term on the school board. Because at-large seats are citywide elections, and because this is the first time in decades that city school board elections are being held in November, city voters are going to see and hear from Heard’s campaign this fall.
Buffalo Board of Education Member Terrance Heard. Photo by Garrett Looker.
That’ll help if he decides to jump into the mayor’s race, since school board members typically don’t enjoy a lot of name recognition.
Tim Hogues
Hogues since 2022 has been commissioner of the state Department of Civil Service and president of the state Civil Service Commission. He was an administrator for Erie County before that, and served one term on the Erie County Legislature a decade ago.
(He beat incumbent Barbara Miller-Williams in a newly configured city district in 2011, then lost a rematch to Miller-Williams two years later.)
Folks close to Erie County Democratic headquarters have talked up Hogues for mayor. His potential candidacy has been used to try to coax other candidates out of the race.
But he makes a lot more money as a state commissioner, for a lot fewer headaches, than he would as mayor of Buffalo.
Sean Ryan
The candidate tightest with Democratic Party leadership is state Sen. Sean Ryan.
Ryan is playing coy about running for mayor while he seeks a new term in the Senate this November, but it’s no secret he’s had his eyes on the job. He has over a quarter million dollars in his campaign account and is raising more. He’s got a big fundraiser at the Saturn Club next Tuesday.
He has lots of support on the city’s West Side, which is part of his Senate district. His draw on the East Side, Black Rock and Riverside is more tenuous.
As for vote-rich South Buffalo, that belongs to our next contender.
Chris Scanlon
The Common Council president — South Buffalo’s first in more than 70 years — won’t say anything about running for mayor until Brown has resigned. But of course he’ll run.
Scanlon put himself in position to win the Council presidency and make a run for the mayor’s office by delivering a sea of South Buffalo write-in votes for Brown in the 2021 general election. His payback for winning Brown a fifth term is he’ll be acting mayor — a quasi-incumbent — during next year’s election cycle.
Common Council President Chris Scanlon. Photo by Garrett Looker.
That could be a curse, though: The city’s budget problems will be coming to a head just as the Democratic primary campaign is heating up. Scanlon, as acting mayor, will have to draw up and defend a budget that’s bound to be ugly and unpopular.
Plus, any strong Black candidate is likely to negate whatever East Side support the mayor and his allies have promised Scanlon. He can’t win with South Buffalo alone.
India Walton
The 2021 Democratic Party nominee for mayor has tweeted some teasers about running again, but I’m pretty sure she’s just trying to rile up folks — many of them aligned with Brown and Scanlon — who relentlessly dragged her during that year’s ugly general election campaign.
Garnell Whitfield
The former fire commissioner has been making calls for the past two weeks, letting other potential candidates know he’s considering a run for mayor. Now his candidacy is out in the open, reported first by WGRZ’s Claudine Ewing.
Whitfield was commissioner under Brown but they are not political allies — far from it. He’s a known quantity on the East Side and governmental circles. Like Everhart, he’s earned broader name recognition through his advocacy against gun violence and white supremacy movements, causes to which he committed after his mother was killed in the Tops massacre.
He’s an outsider — probably a good quality when the city’s in a financial crisis — who has insider connections. But building campaign infrastructure to run for mayor is a heavy lift for a first-time candidate.
Rasheed Wyatt
The University District Council member started talking about running for mayor in early summer. He says he’s “definitely looking into it” now.
Wyatt has become a lone wolf on the Council since his friend and ally Darius Pridgen left office at the beginning of the year. He has long been on the outs with Brown, due to his criticism of the mayor’s budgeting practices.
University District Council Member Rasheed Wyatt. Photo by Garrett Looker.
Wyatt and Scanlon don’t get along, either.
In short, he has nothing to lose, no new political enemies to make, by running for mayor. He doesn’t bring to the table much name recognition outside his own councilmanic district, but he told Investigative Post he’s being encouraged to go for it.
“I’m not worried about who else is running,” he said. “I think it’s America: If you want to run, you run.”
