re: #117 Belafon

Does anyone know what’s going on in Buffalo, NY regarding the mayoral race? I got an email about a judge deciding that an independent candidate was to be included on the November ballot, which seems out of the norm according to things I’m seeing, but I don’t see any history on the topic. wivb.com

Hi from Rochester, an hour east. Both here and in Buffalo, the establishment D candidates lost in the primaries, and the D primaries in the cities are essentially the elections.

In Rochester, the incumbent D was mired in several scandals and a lousy response to the police killing of Daniel Prude. Voters wanted someone cleaner and got it. Malik Evans, who won the primary, is still relatively establishment Dem and will have no challenger in November.

Byron Brown in Buffalo had some lesser scandals but wasn’t expected to lose… especially not to an actual socialist, India Walton. So when he did, not just the D establishment but some of the business community freaked out, and some Republicans approached Brown about running a write-in campaign to save his seat. (An early supporter was notorious RWNJ developer Carl Paladino, who then pulled back when it was clear he was actually hurting Brown’s chances.)

There’s no sore loser law in NY, so Brown supporters launched a longshot attempt to get him a third party ballot line, and have now persuaded a R judge to approve it. And so Buffalo now has a Brown-Walton rematch for November.