COMMENTARY
Donn Esmonde: On sliminess, cluelessness, recklessness
The hands-down winner as slimiest campaign goes to both sides of the Sam Hoyt-Barbra Kavanaugh battle for Hoyt’s seat in the Assembly. It is a case study in the political hypocrisy and negative campaigning that prompt folks to stay home on Election Day.
Hoyt’s campaign ads blast Kavanaugh for taking credit for everything except the sunrise. Yet he takes bows for everything from taking down the Niagara Thruway tollbooths to the $1 billion city school reconstruction, each of which he had precious little to do with.
Hoyt’s ads label Kavanaugh as a pawn of the Buffalo teachers union (which backs her) for her flip-flop against union-despised charter schools. Fair enough. Yet Hoyt’s backers are a who’s who of the public employee unions and special interests whose Albany muscle has jacked up our tax load and frightened off business.
In a larger sense, the hand-to-hand combat turns off voters. Only 1 in 5 Democrats even bothered to vote in last year’s county executive primary.
Both Hoyt and Kavanaugh claim to be “progressive” candidates. Yet Kavanaugh’s progressive claims are contradicted by a longtime alliance with political operative Steve Pigeon and stances against, among other things, charter schools and term limits.
Hoyt’s 16 years in Albany are marked more by rhetoric than results.
The race sank to subbasement level with the recent revelation of Hoyt’s extramarital affairs a few years ago, allegedly with two Albany staffers. Although the affairs were long an open secret among political insiders, a blogger’s release of revelatory e-mails three weeks before primary day raised suspicions that the leak came from Kavanaugh’s allies (though she denies any involvement).
Meanwhile, the state is peering into a $4 billion budget hole, and folks are fleeing upstate in droves. Jobs keep disappearing under the crush of high taxes fueled by special interests in Albany. We have huge problems that cry out for creative solutions. Instead, two self-proclaimed progressives run eye-gouging campaigns that mark them both as losers. It is the sort of a race that prompts voters to long for choice C— none of the above.
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James Williams’ failure to act on the McKinley High debacle goes beyond leaving Principal Crystal Barton in charge. The Buffalo school superintendent also promoted Fatima Morrell, Mc- Kinley’s principal-on-assignment, to principal of Lafayette High.
Morrell was a minor player in the Mc- Kinley mess — unlike Barton, whose firing of the beloved girls volunteer basketball coach and retribution against the players who defended her filled an independent investigator’s report. Yet a promotion for Morrell to principal is not the sort of “consequence” that folks outraged by McKinley officials’ actions had in mind. Even Williams’ backers on the School Board may have trouble digesting his latest assault on accountability.
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If a federal judge’s recent ruling holds, the mammoth steel skeleton that was to frame the Cobblestone District casino will stand as a monument to the Senecas’ blind optimism and unbridled arrogance.
The coalition behind the lawsuit warned the Senecas two years ago that — given the strength of the legal argument and the funding behind it — they were taking a huge risk by moving ahead with construction.
Work finally stopped last week, after Justice William Skretny reaffirmed his decision that the Senecas cannot legally run a casino on the site. (The Senecas say concerns over a downturn in the casino business prompted the stoppage). The legal battle is hardly over, but it looks as if the Senecas played a bad hand.
