Write-in campaign caps unusual election
Demler picks up 800 votes for Wheatfield supervisor
Published: November 05, 2009, 12:30 am
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WHEATFIELD — Deputies at the polls. Mysterious graffiti. A write-in campaign that garnered more votes than any in recent memory.
The election for town supervisor was anything but ordinary.
A rough-and-tumble race that ousted 14- year Supervisor Timothy E. Demler brought out the ugliest of campaign tactics — and more.
“I think it wasn’t run right,” said John Painter, a retired Wheatfield resident, after he voted Tuesday in the Wheatfield Community Center. “There was just too much dirt brought up about everybody.”
Official election numbers out of Wheatfield won’t be finalized for days — write-in and absentee ballots still need to be counted — but it’s clear that former Town Justice Robert B. Cliffe will take office in January, and Demler will have to leave his job in Town Hall.
Demler, who lost his Republican endorsement and then a bruising GOP primary to Cliffe, will leave knowing that he gathered about 800 write-in votes on Election Day.
He also will depart amid allegations that he had a romantic relationship with a married woman who works in Town Hall, and after several strange incidents in the final days of the campaign, some of which were designed to help his write-in effort.
The number of write-in votes Demler received was almost 1,100 fewer than Cliffe and 400 fewer than Democratic candidate Samuel Conti Jr. got Tuesday, but they still were impressive, considering his name wasn’t on the ballot.
“In my tenure, the largest [write-in total] I had seen was conducted in the Town of Lockport, and I believe that was around 150 votes,” said Niagara County Board of Elections Commissioner Scott Kiedrowski, who has overseen more than 20 elections since 2002. “I have, at least, never seen a write-in of this magnitude.”
Kiedrowski said the decision to place an off-duty, uniformed sheriff’s deputy at each of Wheatfield’s six polling places also was unprecedented in his seven years at the Board of Elections.
Concerned about the potential for problems with the supervisor’s race, the county Board of Elections hired deputies to man each polling location.
Kiedrowski said the decision to hire the deputies — at a cost of about $25 an hour per deputy— was made because of concerns about what tactics Demler supporters might use at the polls.
Demler has maintained the deputies were placed at the polling sites to protect his supporters.
“The reason that we did this was because of Mr. Demler’s campaign,” Kiedrowski said. “However he tries to spin it — that it was another campaign that was the reason that we did it — was completely false.”
Few problems were reported Tuesday at the polls aside from voters who complained that they were not given adequate instruction on how to fill out write-in ballots.
The same could not be said of the days leading up to the general election.
Anonymous fliers papered mailboxes accusing Cliffe of wanting to house sex offenders at the Summit mall. Cliffe called the flier “totally untrue.”
“It was clearly just something that somebody threw out there just to make a mess of things,” Cliffe said Tuesday afternoon. “I don’t think it had any effect. Anybody who read that has got to see it’s unbelievable.”
Also in the days before the election, neatly stenciled letters appeared on a CSX bridge on Niagara Falls Boulevard with the words “writing in.”
Demler and his campaign manager, Tom Stevenson, denied they had anything to do with the fliers or the sign, and Demler said he was also the “victim” of anonymous fliers spread through town.
Stevenson, in an e-mail sent out Saturday, raised concerns that tactics used in the election would be like those used in “Afghanistan, Iraq and other middle east countries.” On Wednesday, he said those fears did not play out.
“It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be. It was a bit disturbing that you have to have deputies at all the polling places to make sure all the rules are followed,” Stevenson said. “I think they were there to keep everybody on the straight and narrow.”
Now, as Cliffe prepares to take office in January, he and Demler on Wednesday assessed their political futures.
Cliffe will spend the coming weeks reviewing the town budget and meeting with community and business leaders after winning the supervisor’s office with more than 1,870 votes.
“I think the focus has to be, where do we go from here?” Cliffe said.
Demler said he plans to open Town Hall to Cliffe to ease the transition.
He does not plan to drop from the public eye.
Buoyed by the write-in votes — about 20 percent of those cast — Demler said he is mulling a potential jump into state politics next year.
“To have an outpouring of support like we got yesterday on a write-in was certainly a message to stay active and stay involved for me,” he said.
“I think my options are going to be looking at where I can be helpful in potential state elections next year, in 2010, or kind of wait and see how things develop in town government and see what options may be available again in 2011.”
djgee@buffnews.com
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