Tag: Politics

Nov 12

2023

Monday Morning Read

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Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll receive our latest reporting and Jim Heaney’s commentary in your inbox Sunday mornings. Brian Higgins has confirmed he’s leaving Congress in February to take over the reins at Shea’s Performing Arts Center. The move has been in the works for a while, as our Geoff Kelly reported back in September. Higgins, in an interview with The Buffalo News, said Congress is “in a very, very bad place right now.” Yeah, Congress is a mess, but he’s known that for a long time. If he didn’t want to continue, he shouldn’t have run for another term. Once[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Nov 8

2023

Poloncarz wins big; mixed bag for parties in town races

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Election Day was good to Erie County Democrats, especially in the top-ticket races. In the year’s marquee race, Mark Poloncarz beat Republican Chrissy Casilio by a resounding 18 points, winning an unprecedented fourth term as Erie County executive. And Democrats preserved their 7-to-4 majority in the Erie County Legislature, as incumbents in three competitive districts handily fended off Republican and Conservative challengers. In town and village elections, however, the results had a more purplish hue, as Democrats and Republicans alike made gains in areas that once were single-party fiefdoms. “In the suburbs, the towns that are flipping are continuing to[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Oct 11

2023

More misdeeds involving Niagara Falls candidate

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Guns gone missing and an order to stay away from a former girlfriend are included in the past of Carlton Cain, GOP candidate for Niagara Falls mayor, who once was a top official in the city’s police department.  Cain said he doesn’t recall signing an administrative order of protection issued by Acting Police Superintendent Michael Trane in 2019.  “I guess if I signed it, it happened,” he said.  The woman in question, who was cooperating with an Internal Affairs investigation of Cain, did not return a phone call from Investigative Post. Trane has not responded to an interview request.  In[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Oct 6

2023

Misconduct allegations against ‘Falls mayoral candidate

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Carlton Cain, the Republican candidate for mayor of Niagara Falls, was investigated at least twice on charges of misconduct while serving on the city’s police force before retiring in 2019. Charges that are a matter of public record include his efforts to retrieve his stolen police weapon and allegations that he removed files on him compiled by the department’s Internal Affairs unit. Cain, in an interview with Investigative Post, denied removing his Internal Affairs records. The department’s investigation of the allegation reached no conclusion.  He was docked three days pay involving the gun incident. A third matter involved a woman[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Sep 10

2023

Monday Morning Read

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Subscribe to WeeklyPost and get a leg up on Jim Heaney’s take on what’s in the news. For whatever reason, political reporters at The Buffalo News keep treating Chris Grant of Big Dog Strategies with a lot more respect than he deserves. I mean, Grant and his company employ the type of election tactics that give politics a bad name, often works for toxic candidates, including George Santos, and often spins without regard for the facts. Grant should be treated as a pariah, not a sage. Yet The News based a story Sunday in large part on his analysis that[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 7

2023

What’s news in government and politics

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A digest of noteworthy reporting — some local, some state and some national — from the last week in government and politics:   Campaign finance shenanigans New York Focus reports on a new dodge for candidates who feel constrained by the state’s limits on campaign donations: Accept services from political consultants as loans, then never pay them back.  New York Focus highlights an example from Rochester, but Byron Brown’s 2021 mayoral campaign pulled the same trick. Brown for Buffalo listed more than $38,000 owed to the Atlanta law firm that represented the campaign in court as an “outstanding loan or[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Sep 6

2023

Political domino theories

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This past summer, speculation has run amok regarding exit strategies for longtime elected officials:  Will SUNY Buffalo State hire Mayor Byron Brown, or perhaps Congressman Brian Higgins, as its next president?  How about Erie Community College? That financially beleaguered institution, too, is seeking new leadership, having run through three presidents — one of them carrying the prefix “interim” for two years — since former Congressman Jack Quinn left the post in 2017. Or perhaps Higgins, who began his 10th term in January, will land instead as the head of Shea’s Performing Arts Center, which lost its president last fall, amid[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jun 28

2023

Primary elections: Progressives strike out — again

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So much for the revolution.  Hopes ran high among Buffalo progressives after India Walton won the Democratic mayoral primary two years ago, shocking four-term incumbent Byron Brown. Walton lost to Brown’s well-funded and often vicious write-in campaign in the general election, but the coalition of progressives who supported her seemed poised to start winning smaller elections.  Our City Action Buffalo, or OCAB, played a key role in Walton’s mayoral run. The coalition of progressive activists didn’t run candidates for Democratic Party committee seats last year, opting to fight the party establishment from the outside. It endorsed incumbent Jen Mecozzi’s successful[...]

Posted 2 years ago
Investigative Post