Gaffetober (Updated)
Close on the heels of Chris Collins’ epic Shelly Silver fail come reports that Michele Iannello is embroiled in a sensitivity issue of her own. The Buffalo News reported this morning on charges coming from the Working Families Party and Buffalo Teachers’ Federation President Phil Rumore that Iannello ordered a couple of black canvassers off her campaign.
I contacted Michele for comment, and she directed me to the statements she made in Bob McCarthy’s report.
She said she objected to Working Families requests by door-to-door canvassers asking voters to sign a pledge promising to vote for her, prompting a split with the party.
“It’s just a difference of opinion,” she said…
…
“I’m an independent and don’t answer to the Democratic Party or the Working Families Party,” Iannello said.
She said she did not know where Rumore’s accusations originated.
“If they interpreted this in a different way, I’m sorry,” she said.
I didn’t call Collins an anti-Semite, and I’m not going to call Michele a racist. I don’t think either person is any one of those things. But in politics, perception can trump reality, and this definitely looks very, very bad indeed. If you haven’t been following the thread at Colin’s page, you should.
This raises a couple of points, not just for Iannello, but for Collins as well. Firstly, beware whom you piss off, because you may find yourself thrown under a bus sooner rather than later. Secondly, if you say or do certain questionable things, expect to find them in the paper. Finally, to my mind I find that this whole things is a cautionary tale about candidates courting and doing business with minor parties under our system of electoral fusion. Once you turn over even a portion of your campaign to people with whom you’re in a relationship of mutual convenience, you’re going to have to play ball – whether that means accepting canvassers to whom you object for some reason, or putting up with aggressive canvassing tactics.
I distinctly recall the Mayor of Buffalo saying that blockbuster charges coming within days of an election are politically motivated. Certainly, that possibility needs to be considered. But if I were advising Iannello, and this wasn’t true, and the WFP was throwing her under the bus improperly, then I’d be telling her to issue a stronger response. But I’m not, and she got elected. I didn’t.
I distinctly feel like I’m only getting half the story, so alas we’re stuck with Phil Rumore calling Iannello a racist.
COLLINS HITLER NAPOLEON ANTI-CHRIST SHELLY SILVER UPDATE:
Artvoice reports that the Adam’s Mark incident was not the first or only time that Collins used the anti-Christ “joke”:
But it’s clear to me that his remark comparing an orthodox Jew to Hitler and the anti-Christ was not “off the cuff” or “unscripted”; it was not a momentary lapse in judgment. The joke is part of Collins’s repertoire. He has used it more than once, who knows how many times. Perhaps he wasn’t even aware that it was offensive until the uncomfortable silence he met at the Adam’s Mark on Saturday night. Maybe he didn’t know it was offensive until Elizabeth Benjamin exposed the remarks in the New York Daily News on Sunday. Maybe he still doesn’t believe what he said was offensive. He certainly did not recognize it to be offensive between the time he made the remark to that group of college students and the time he made the remark on Saturday. Or he did and didn’t care. The former makes him an idiot, the latter makes him arrogant and heedless.
It’s important to note the the WFP didn’t throw Iannello under the bus. They decided to remove their canvassers from her race with a generic statement about making the best use of limited resources. The party didn’t make any of this public. It was individual party members — Phil Rumore most importantly — who felt that Iannello’s racist acts needed to be made public.
And the weakness of her response is telling, isn’t it? She can’t deny it very strongly because it isn’t just the WFP that knows about her actions. When the party decided to withdraw its support, she asked non-WFP people who had a good relationship with the party for advice on what to do. In these discussions, she laid out her “no black canvassers” policy. Iannello can’t really deny having these discussion with the WFP because she’s had very similar ones with other folks, as well.
Where’s the outrage for Democrat Alan Grayson calling the Republican Health Care Plan a holocaust in America?
@ Mike in WNY – are you a true Freener or are you just a Faux News junkie? Why in the hell would you care why a Florida Congressman says unless Faux News gave you the talking point to do so? I mean….it’s not like Rep. Grayson was exchanging sexually-charged e-mails with underage teens, was it?
Collins made a gaffe by choosing an insensitive insult against a man who has done more harm to our region in the last 15 years than anyone else. At least his target was appropriate. Ianello’s indecent exposure is an entirely different and more damaging story because it shows not only does she think her constituents are racist, she doesn’t want to expose them to people whose support she would otherwise gladly embrace. Pitiful.
Seriously Kyle–great Avery Brooks imbed on this post. How’d you think of that?
Colin, how many of these “conversations” were you personally involved in? Or you simply regurgitating info 3 or 4th hand?
Pundit – I liked you better when you were asking why this was happening. Steve Pigeon feeding overblown hype to someone more than willing to bloviate? Never happen, right?
“What better way to make Dennis Ward (Ianello’s husband) pay for asking inconvenient questions than to slime his wife?
Niagara Falls attorney and renowned “business gonnegtion” John Bartolomei filed a lawsuit today in Erie County’s State Supreme Court of behalf of the deep-pocketed political committee Responsible New York; its billionaire funder, Sabres owner and Paychex founder Tom Golisano; its director, political operative Steve Pigeon; its treasurer, failed State Assembly candidate Gary Parenti; and two political committees Pigeon controls, Citizens for Fiscal Integrity and People for Responsible Government. The suit accuses the Erie County Board of Elections and its two commissioners, Democrat Dennis Ward and Republican Ralph Mohr, of conducting an “inapporpriate, improper and illegal, fraudulent and baseless investigation” into the doings of Responsible New York and the two other committees. In a nutshell, Mohr and Ward began digging into accusations that Responsible New York—an unauthorized committee with no limits on how much it spends, so long as it does dot coordinate activities with candidates it supports—had in fact coordinated activities with at least two candiadiates, Baby Joe Mesi and Barbra Kavanaugh, during the 2008 election season.
http://artvoice.com/issues/v8n43/week_in_review/seven_days “
I considered that, but it would be mere speculation on my part. Is there a relationship between Pigeon and the BTF? It’s my understanding that the WFP and Pigeon aren’t best buds of late.
Ahh, finally good questions again… How about relationships between Pigeon, Rumore and an assemblyman who supports charter schools. Its hard to play connect the dots, Pigeon likes to weave more of a tangled web, wouldn’t you agree?
Ha ha! Interesting. Hoyt proposes eliminating charter school restrictions. Hoyt’s allied with Ward, who’s married to Iannello. Rumore goes apeshit and throws Iannello under a double-decker bus. Very good hypothesis!
All the while taking the heat off the anti-semite (problem) in County Hall, who’s supporting Iannello’s challenger. Ah, what a tangled web we weave.
If you don’t take Phil with a grain of salt, you need to. Hell, I don’t know if it’s true or not.
What I do know is that most of the people that read this blog didn’t live in WNY in the 50′s or 60′s or are just too young to remember. In the Town of Tonawanda and the Village of Kenmore in those bygone decades, “Colored People” were not made to feel welcome anywhere within the town or village limits, and the Kenmore Police would run any of them they saw out of the village before sundown. As late as the mid 70′s, Town and Village Police were the biggest pricks in WNY, and most made no bones about their racial biases. Nobody in Kenmore would have ever sold or rented a home to a black family back then. It’s different today. Most of the people who owned homes in the Town and Village 50 years ago have passed away or now live in retirement communities, and there’s black families living in both the town and the village.
Only thing that makes sense to me is perhaps Ianello thought that any black canvassers might be looked upon as members of ACORN. And since racial diversity is not spread evenly across the town, that could have been her motivation. Doubt strongly she’s a racist. However, as BP said, perception is everything.
I believe Colin that the WFP was going to quietly remove support. The bus driver is then Runmore, as agreed by all involved. I buy the tangled web theory from Pundit and sockpuppet – why else does the BTF care about the race?
You want to know the whole story?
Paid canvassers – of any race – suck. They don’t have an emotional; connection to the candidate and don’t care if they win. They’re either “someone important”‘s overprivileged private-schooled lazy ass kid, or a person who is such a failure at life that they can’t get anyone else at all to pay them $20 to do anything. Both groups have the same M.O.: They do two or three houses and then go smoke pot in an alley. Then they come back 2 hrs later and collect their $20.
Acorn used paid canvassers. Results ARE typical.
Well run campaigns don’t use paid canvassers. You know who else “fired” thousands of black paid canvassers he never asked for? Barack Obama. He pissed off corrupt machines (like the WFP) from Philadelphia to Cleveland, from Buffalo, to NYC by refusing to pay anyone to canvass.
I don’t know anything, but I know Michele and Dennis pretty well, and I’m positive they aren’t racists. I am sure though that they feel the same way about paid canvassers as I do.
Brian, Colin indicated that the BTF is speaking on behalf of Buffalo teachers living in the Iannello district. OK, I buy that.
But what I don’t fully comprehend is the rationale for Rumore to blow this thing up into high heaven, on his own, less than a week before the election. Phil Rumore gets lots of adjectives from me, but “principled” and “apolitical” are not among them. FWIW.
That’s why I’m fascinated by Sock Puppet’s hypothesis of convenient entanglements.
I’d also add in that, if this is an ancillary part of the Hoyt-Casey-Pigeon bloodfeud, this could very well be payback for the anti-Byron push in the waning days of the primary viz. One Sunset and Stokesgate.
Adam makes an excellent point.
@Humanist, I heard it on the radio while driving in my car, googled the story for a link and came up with FOX news. Yes, I do watch FOX and CNN, MSNBC etc., there is BS on all of the news outlets, the key is to delineate fact from opinion. If you do not expose yourself to a variety of news sources, you can’t possibly form well-thought opinions.
Chris-
I worked Michele’s State Senate campaign last year. We used, off the top of my head, at least 6 different black canvassers and at least a few more hispanic canvassers. Dennis is a freaking hippie at heart, the idea that he’s a racist is ridiculous. He’s not. In fact, he just like 6 months ago hired a black man as his Deputy Commissioner (his highest paid employee) at the Board of Elections, replacing his first Deputy Commissioner, who by the way was also black.
Get a clue
Good to see the focus back where it belongs.
“COLLINS HITLER NAPOLEON ANTI-CHRIST SHELLY SILVER UPDATE:
Artvoice reports that the Adam’s Mark incident was not the first or only time that Collins used the anti-Christ “joke”:”
“They do two or three houses and then go smoke pot in an alley. Then they come back 2 hrs later and collect their $20.”
Now how exactly do I get this job again?
@ Alan: I guess I buy the “representing teachers living in Iannello’s district” line too, but I find that interesting as well. Is it not the BTF’s job to represent the school-related issues pertaining to teachers living in Tonawanda? Their salary, their health insurance, their overpaid benefits, etc? Also, doesn’t the BTF represent the interests of City of Buffalo – not Tonawanda – students (at least, that’s what the union claims when calling for more $$$). Where does a teacher’s county legislator fit into that mix? What effect does Iannello have on union negotiations between the city and BTF? Or does the BTF claim to represent ALL the political interests of its members, where ever they live? I wonder if the union members themselves know that. I know its off topic, but the power (or perceived power) of unions in all facets of life, not just their stated interests, really bugs me.
Here’s the hypothesis as I’ve constructed it here and in conversations with others:
- There was some sort of dustup between Iannello and the WFP. No one needed to know about it since it was a dispute either about paid canvassers or pledge-signing.
- The Collins thing happened.
- Byron/Casey/Pigeon and Collins have a secret nonaggression/mutual assistance pact. The Pigeonistas are not running candidates in the city (unlike 2007). This helps Kadet and Howard. Republicans, for their part, aren’t running anyone for Mayor or any other city of Buffalo race. This helps Byron. Patronage was enjoyed by all.
- Most of the suburban leg races have been pretty quiet, with the exception of Iannello/Hardwick.
- Sam Hoyt is politically aligned with Ward and Iannello. Sam Hoyt recently came out in favor of lifting limits on charter schools
- This pissed Phil Rumore off
- In an effort to deflect the Collins/Silver issue, and cause problems for Hoyt’s friend in Kenmore, Brown/Casey/Pigeon prompted Rumore to go public with “Michele is a racist”
- It was also handy payback by the Brown crew against the Hoyt crew for Stokesgate hysteria in September.
The parts of this hypothesis that I’m not sure of: Is Rumore politically aligned with Pigeon, Brown, or Casey at all? If not, what was Rumore’s political motivation for running with this? I don’t buy even for a moment that Rumore did this out of some sense of decency. It had a political motivation.
I don’t understand the need to look for some kind of baroque conspiracy. Steve Pigeon isn’t God, or even Keyser Soze. Lots of stuff happens that has nothing to do with him
There are a couple important points that people seem to be missing or not fully grasping. First, the “dispute” between Iannello and WFP was about the race thing. That was confirmed in print by a party official. The party called an emergency meeting of its steering committee on Monday night to discuss the Iannello situation. I KNOW this. Rumore (a member of the committee) went public with the story on Tuesday. His only connection to the incident is making it public knowledge. It’s not of his making.
Second, the WFP were strong Iannello supporters up until last Thursday. They were running a paid canvass on her behalf. The WFP’s local organizer had trouble making meetings to plan the party’s fall fundraiser — the most important fundraiser of the year — because she was so busy working on Iannello’s campaign. The WFP was fully invested in Iannello — in fact, her race was the party’s top priority this Fall. To think that they would ditch that investment over anything but a matter of principles is just silly.
As for Phil’s motivation to go public, I think I can shed some light on that by discussing my own motivation. Now, my little blog post isn’t even in the same league of importance as Phil going to the Buffalo News, but we both did what we did at roughly the same time and independently of one another.
For me this is a matter of principle. When I heard about what Iannello had done, I was angry — angry at her for her racist actions, and angry at the party for not taking an explicit public stand against what she’d done. And so I decided to do what little I could to expose what happened. I didn’t do it on orders from Steve Pigeon, or some attempt to help Byron Brown (ha!) or to hurt Sam Hoyt (whom I support).
I think Phil went public for exactly the same reasons. Whatever you think of Phil Rumore — and I have my own critique, believe me — he’s a progressive and he’s good on civil rights/race.
[...] Alan has come up with a theory about the Michele Iannello racism scandal. You should check it out — it’s a doozy, involving Steve Pigeon, Chris Collins, Byron Brown, Sam Hoyt, Leonard Stokes . . . hell, I think the Illuminati is in there somewhere. So here’s my question: [...]
The WFP was thrown off Iannello’s campaign because of objections to numerous canvassers’ choice of dress, attitude and general appearance after the complaints of numerous constituents.
@Genghis_Con – this would be enough to scare me
http://eagercolin.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/byron-thumb-505xauto-3774.jpg
@Mike in WNY:
The term “holocaust” is a general term, believe it or not. (See here.)
The problem with what Collins said is he claimed it was a slip of the tongue and a joke in poor taste. That must be why he told it twice, right?
“The term “holocaust” is a general term, believe it or not.”
Do a google search for “holocaust”..don’t cherry pick a definition…what do the top 100 results reference? That’s a hell of a lot more focused than Collins’ “anti-christ” reference….
Robert, you have proved for the nth time that liberal/progressives will bastardize the plain meaning of words in an attempt to support their failing viewpoints. Either that, or you shouldn’t comment when you’re drunk/stoned.
I don’t know why anyone took the fucking Grayson bait. Grayson’s not my problem. I don’t generally write about obscure congresspeople from thousands of miles away.
Alan-
Hoyt has bee pro-charter school for years. Rumore didn’t just find this out over the weekend.
BTF supports Kavanaugh in Hoyt’s last run. BTF endorsed Iannello in this race. I think you’re constructing an overly-complicated scenario.
It’s really effing sad that people can’t believe that anyone would take a moral stand against racism without some sort of political gain.
How do you explain the BTF, WFP, and Colin Eager have no love for Chris Collins or Kevin Hardwick?
Also, what about the cancelled labor walk? Why do you think those unions pulled out of the walk for Iannello? Because they love Hardwick? Because Pigeon told them to? Maybe it’s because they can’t tolerate racism, either…
Jon Splett- Sorry, but WFP does a lot of quality control with their canvassers. They follow-up with the voters that the canvasser says they spoke with. It pays a living wage, but you actually have to do the work.
Alan – I was at the meeting where Phil Rumore learned about this. PR and I learned about this at exactly the same time. His upset is genuine. You may not agree with everything he has ever said or done, but he doesn’t let anyone push him around and he stands up for what he believes in.
Is this really about Rumore or are we just so jaded that no one can believe someone would speak out purely for the sake of opposing racism?
The BTF has enough power that they don’t have to look the other way on one issue while supporting someone who might advance their political agenda.
During the last election two years ago I encountered a young black female Canvasser for the WFP in my neighborhood in Tonawanda. She was fairly well informed and intelligent and we had a considerable conversation about her candidate and the slate in general.
She was surprised when I told her that Tonawanda had about a 1% non-white population. Later I pondered the young ladies peril. I note many racist attitudes here and I expect that this dedicated youngster would probably encounter more hostility here than she would in Buffalo.
I also pondered that the Canvassers’ managers realize the same thing but being short handed just hope for better outcomes. I don’t know but I suspect that Michele Iannello could have over reacted to something or a complaint from a constituent and the WFP and BTF each misunderstood and also over reacted.
But I have worked with her and Dan Ward on environmental issues in their community and take it from a liberal old man and former EEO Counselor – neither of them is racist.
“I don’t know why anyone took the fucking Grayson bait. Grayson’s not my problem. I don’t generally write about obscure congresspeople from thousands of miles away.”
Especially if they’re in my Party and regularly bring disgrace and ridicule upon it. Hence, no recent BP mentions of Harry Reid or Nancy Pe-loser.
Grayson regularly brings disgrace and ridicule on the Democratic Party? For what – calling out Republicans in Congress for the obstructionist, teabagging assholes they are? I guarantee you….Michele Bachmann (R-Wingnutville) brings more disgrace and ridicule in one speech than Alan Grayson can hope to achieve in a lifetime.
Only in the liberal parallel universe would people who support freedom be called obstructionists.