Election 2008:voter breakdown for sheriff
Party color didn’t matter in race
LOCKPORT — Barack Obama isn’t the only one who changed the electoral map on Election Day.
Many Niagara County voters shunned party affiliation and backed the man they knew in the race for sheriff on Tuesday.
That led to some upside down-looking results. Democrat James R. Voutour, who won the race
with 52 percent of the vote, carried several rural towns where Republicans have large enrollment advantages.
Republican Ernest C. Palmer, the Niagara Falls chief of detectives, carried the Falls, even though the Democrats have a 3-to-1 edge in enrollment.
County Democratic Party Chairman Daniel Rivera said the close finish, with Voutour taking the prize by some 2,600 votes out of 80,000 cast, was to be expected, given the backgrounds of the can-
didates.
“The conventional wisdom is, in a countywide race, you want a Democrat from the central or eastern side [of the county] and you want a Republican from the west end,” Rivera said.
“Palmer works in the Falls,” Democratic Election Commissioner Nancy L. Smith said. “Voutour’s from this [eastern] end of the county. He has Wilson ties, his wife works in Barker.”
Voutour grew up in Wilson, where he was a high school baseball star. He said in his victory speech that he entered the law enforcement field only after professional baseball didn’t work out.
His wife, Pilar, is a teacher in the Barker Central School District. They live in the Town of Lockport.
The towns of Lockport, Newfane, Somerset and Wilson returned big majorities for Voutour, despite the Republican enrollment edges in those towns.
On the other end of the county, Palmer carried Niagara Falls by 1,100 votes. His hometown of Lewiston, where he’s a town councilman, also turned out a heavy vote for him, with a 1,400-vote majority. He also carried Porter, which includes Youngstown, where he was once police chief.
Wheatfield and the Town of Niagara, both bordering on Niagara Falls, also went for Palmer.
“I wanted to get 35 percent in the Falls. That was my goal. I knew I’d be strong in the towns,” Voutour said.
He met his Niagara Falls goal, and then some, with 46.5 percent of the city vote, according to calculations by The Buffalo News from figures posted on the Niagara County Board of Elections Web site.
Those figures were missing one precinct in the 2nd Legislature District, the heaviest concentration of Democrats in the entire county, whose other precincts all returned whopping majorities for Voutour.
“Winning in North Tonawanda was huge,” Voutour added. He beat Palmer there by more than 1,100 votes, neutralizing Palmer’s Niagara Falls advantage.
But it was the City and Town of Lockport that really put Voutour over the top. He crushed Palmer by nearly 2,000 votes in the city and more than 1,400 in the town.
Add in majorities of 800 votes in Wilson, 600 in Newfane and 136 in Somerset, and the keys to victory were in the Democrat’s hand.
Voutour ran far ahead of President-elect Obama, who beat out Republican John McCain by less than 400 votes countywide.
“Jimmy Voutour won based on Jimmy Voutour. No one can say he got an Obama bounce,” Rivera said. “No coattails in this race. He can be, not only very happy with a victory, but very proud of a victory he won himself.”
A lot of voters weren’t interested enough in the sheriff’s race to cast a vote. In all, some 9,000 people who voted in the presidential contest left the voting booth without voting in the sheriff’s contest.
Although Voutour’s lead was less than the number of absentee ballots that have yet to be opened, Palmer concluded that victory wasn’t in the cards for him.
“He would have needed to win almost all of them,” Republican Election Commissioner Scott P. Kiedrowski said of the absentees.
Instead, Palmer drove to Voutour’s headquarters at the United Auto Workers Local 686 hall in Lockport and conceded the race. The two policemen shook hands and embraced.
“Ernie’s a classy guy,” Voutour told reporters.
Rivera was impressed.
“In Niagara County politics, people sharpen their elbows and it gets a little rough, but the fact is, these are two gentlemen who for the most part conducted themselves well. I thought it was very refreshing,” Rivera said.
County Legislature Chairman William L. Ross agreed. He said at Wednesday’s Legislature meeting, which Voutour attended, “That race will go down in Niagara County history as the fairest and best race ever.”
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