Republicans, Democrats, and Whores

There is no longer a single, functioning Democratic Party apparatus in Erie County. The Erie County Democratic Committee exists, of course, and Len Lenihan is strong and healthy, but turncoats have been stabbing him in the back repeatedly for years now. Lenny and his allies have tried time and time again to bring the Brown/Casey folks back into the fold, but no dice. Why would they agree? They don’t want to work with him – their aim is to replace him, full stop.

The party heirarchy has bent over backwards to accommodate the wishes of the Brown/Casey coterie several times. See, e.g., : Keane, Jim. When you add Steve Pigeon to the mix, together with Tom Golisano’s millions, you’ve now poisoned the process beyond help. (See “Independence Party”)

And so it is that turncoat Democrats will lump in with the six Republicans and Chris Collins in the county legislature. Barbara Miller-Williams is touting reform? No, she isn’t. She was bought and paid for with a $300,000 county donation to the Colored Musician’s Club – the only funding Chris Collins didn’t screw with or veto last year.

When Collins took his stand on cultural spending, he said he would protect the $300,000 that Democrats included for a project at the Colored Musicians Club. The spending was promoted primarily by Legislator Barbara Miller-Williams, a Buffalo Democrat in line to become chairwoman next year with support from Republican lawmakers in league with Collins.

Collins did not veto that money, even though it was approved by a narrow majority, 8-7, too few to override a veto. Legislator Betty Jean Grant, D-Buffalo, said the frugal Collins should have seen it as “low-hanging fruit.”

Grant, who does not support Miller-Williams’ quest to become chairwoman, said that during the summer, Collins signaled he would not veto the Colored Musicians Club money if Democrats added it to the budget.

“He didn’t have the courage to let the people in his community know that he supported it,” she said.

Why was this particular entity so important to Miller-Williams? Well, it’s certainly a Buffalo landmark important to the African-American community. Also, her husband is the Vice-President of its Board of Directors.

When you hear the name “Barbara Miller-Williams”, which reform agenda item comes instantly to mind? Yeah, me neither.

This coup is a win for the forces of transactional, bad politics and poor government. This coup is a win for those who would replace the current ECDC regime with people allied with Steve Pigeon and Steve Casey. Reverting back to a period when the Democrats routinely lost elections, and the party’s finances were disarray would seem to me to be misguided. The fact that Pigeon and Casey so casually and routinely ally with Republicans for no other reason than to maximize power and dole out patronage jobs is beyond troubling.

Say what you want about Lenny, but he backs Democrats.

Yesterday, Ellicott District committeepeople selected the Rev. Darius Pridgen to replace Brian Davis in the common council. Although he’s a man of the cloth in a poor neighborhood, Pridgen is a millionaire, and he flaunts it. I don’t know whether Pridgen is the best choice for political office, and I acknowledge that his church does a lot of good for a lot of people. But the Grassroots organization that backed Pridgen over Bryon McIntyre held a meeting late last year that devolved very quickly into a bullying, bordering on fisticuffs. Ask someone who was there about the way in which McIntyre’s small children, who were present for the meeting because McIntyre couldn’t find someone to babysit, were treated by the Grassroots thugs trying to strongarm the process.

When you resort to physical intimidation to promote your political candidate, that too smacks of a coup.

Pridgen narrowly won, and that’s another loss in a week of losses for the Democratic Party in Erie County. People like Pridgen, whose surrogates physically intimidated the county chair and screamed at a candidate’s small children, making them cry, is a Democrat in name only. So are the thugs who helped him. So is Steve Casey. So is Steve Pigeon.

And that’s what it’s down to here. All those people who wanted a third party, you’ve got one now. I’m not talking about the corrupt minor parties that rely on electoral fusion for their existence and their patronage jobs. I’m talking about the fact that we have three distinct parties that actually run candidates.

On the one hand, we have the Democratic Party, currently in disarray and with decreasing fortunes. Democrats hold a minority in the Legislature, and only one countywide seat.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the Republican Party. It believes in notions like party unity and loyalty. It is ascendant in Erie County despite the fact that, when you get down to it, they are fundamentally no better than the Democrats when it comes to taxing, spending, reform, and patronage.

In the middle, we have the political whores. This is the loose grouping of opportunists who may have major party labels next to their names, but their allegiance is for sale to the highest bidder. Barbara Miller-Williams sold herself out for $300,000 for her husband’s organization. She talks about reform and transparency, but can’t be expected to fill out a financial disclosure form accurately. Tim Kennedy sold himself out for Golisano’s money so he can run against Stachowski. Christina Bove is tight with Pigeon and the detestable corruption pit known as the “Independence Party”, so she’s a longtime resident in this camp.

The primary aim of the politicians and hacks in the Whore Party is to amass political power, mostly by handing out jobs to their close associates. The pretense of good government and transparency is thrown out there because people like to hear it, but it never happens. And the Republicans are all too happy to ally themselves with the Whore Party because they only have isolated pockets of political power, and the Whores can weaken the real Democrats while simultaneously assuming their mantle.

My only hope in all of this is that the people of Erie County wise up and start demanding better. Because this ascendancy of the Republican-Whore coalition doesn’t bode well at all for progress, growth, or reform in this region.

{Photo by David Torke via Flickr. See his blog at FixBuffalo)