February 25th is here. It’s the start of election petitioning for anyone wanting to run for public office in New York State in 2025. Let the games begin!
The petitions are due on April 3. For the most part petitions will be gathered the old-fashioned way, door by door. Winter obstacles are everywhere and are likely to be with us through a good portion of March. Orthopedic medical staffs are on standby.
The Erie County Democratic Committee this past Saturday endorsed State Senator Sean Ryan for Mayor of Buffalo following a series of party committee member conventions. Ryan has been one of at least ten candidates who have expressed an interest in becoming the next mayor. There will be a Democratic primary for the office.
You need a minimum of 2,000 valid Democratic enrolled voters’ signatures to qualify for the ballot. To avoid having your petitions disqualified it is usually a good idea to get many more than the required number of signatures. A mayoral candidate might want to have at least 2,500 signatures.
With potentially eight or nine candidates out there in the snow securing signatures it is quite possible that some registered voters might not know that you can only sign one candidate’s petition for the same office. The overlapping of signatures this year might be real problem. The date on which someone signs a petition is important too, so the earlier a candidate’s team gets started the better. So prepare the circulators with both clip boards and a shovel.
Some candidates may try to get signatures at a location where many people are passing by such as a store or a church. No harm in trying, but history shows that such signatures may not help much because of signatures overlapping with other candidates; signers being affiliated with the wrong party; someone not being registered to vote, etc.
With the support of the party Ryan will have no problem with the required signatures. Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon’s team demonstrated their prowess in the 2021 write-in campaign for Byron Brown, so I expect that they will meet the 2,000 threshold with ease.
As for the other announced candidates for mayor, we will see what we will see. The petition challenge may be too much for some of the other seven or eight candidates. Filing 2,000 signatures or thereabouts will not necessarily put someone on the primary ballot given the above noted potential problems of signature validity.
For a review of the past five mayoral primary elections and information about what portion of the city electorate the candidates represent in their present office you can check out a recent post. The money, bases of support, and voter turnout history that will impact the Buffalo mayoral election | Politics and Other Stuff
Then there is the question about what the Republican, Working Families, and Conservative parties might do. One of the Democrats will likely turn out to be the Working Families candidate, which could be the golden ticket to qualify for the November ballot, regardless of the primary results. The Republicans and Conservatives may circulate petitions with a placeholder’s name which could possibly be vacated and replaced with another candidate, again possibly one of the losing primary candidates. Will former Republican district attorney candidate James Gardner be in that placeholder mix?
And then there is one other option. A candidate for mayor could choose to circulate petitions as an independent candidate for the office. The starting date for independent candidate petitions is April 15; the snow should be gone by then. Petitions would need to be filed no later than May 27. Independent petitions are also tricky because someone previously signing a petition for mayor of any party could not sign an independent candidate’s petitions. This is a tough process, but then who would have thought that you could elect a mayor via a write-in campaign?
There is also, of course, the matter of how successful the candidates will be at raising money for the election. Ryan and Scanlon both had about one-half million dollars cash on hand in mid-January. Look for them to raise at least another half million each between now and June 24th. Only two other candidates as of mid-January had campaign committees in place and the amounts available were small. The next campaign financial reports are not due until May 23rd.
So if you live in Buffalo, get out and shovel your sidewalk and the walkway to your door. The future of the city might depend on it.
But in other races…
While over the next four months local political attention will be focused on the Buffalo mayoral race, there will also be more than 100 public offices in Erie County on the ballot in November.
There are four available Erie County and state Supreme Court seats on the ballot in November but there will be cross-endorsements for all four, so likely no competitive races there.
Republican Sheriff John Garcia does not have an opponent as petitioning begins. Republican Christine Czarnik, who lost a state Senate race to Sean Ryan by 24 points last November, might be the challenger to incumbent Democratic County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick.
At this moment some of the eleven incumbent members of the Erie County Legislature do not have an opponent. It is likely, however, that there will be a Democratic primary in the second district.
There are dozens and dozens of local town supervisor, councilmember, town clerk, and justice of the peace positions that will be on the fall ballot but the majority of those offices will have only one candidate. There will be Republican primaries in Amherst for supervisor and the town council. Might there be Conservative primaries as well?
The lack of interest in running for office is probably the result, in part at least, of the divisions that exist and are being promoted throughout the country. Public sessions of local legislative bodies are often very contentious and elected officials are often under attack.
Given the problems that exist in Buffalo one might wonder why anyone wants to be mayor. Poverty, housing, crime, poor infrastructure badly in need of repair, among other things, are all daunting tasks. Solutions might cost lots of money. The city’s massive impending financial crisis is scary.
I would love to hear from the candidates about why, in the face of all those issues, they still want to be mayor. No platitudes and generalities accepted; just hard and serious plans to serve the residents of the City of Buffalo.
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