Kryzan beats Powers, Davis
Stages one of biggest upsets in primary history
Alice Kryzan won a come-from-behind victory Tuesday in the battle for the Democratic nomination for Congress in the 26th District, as party voters turned their backs on two better-funded candidates — Iraq War veteran Jonathan Powers and millionaire maverick Jack Davis — who spent their money attacking each other.
With 88 percent of election districts reporting, Kryzan had 43 percent of the vote, followed by Powers at 35 percent and Davis with 23 percent. Kryzan will face Republican businessman Christopher Lee in the November race to replace retiring Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds, R-Clarence.
“I feel like the little engine who could,” Kryzan, an Amherst environmental lawyer, said before a crowd of supporters at her Williamsville campaign headquarters.
Kryzan, 60, said her positive message resonated in a race dominated by the negative advertising war between Powers and Davis.
“I believed I had a message that was resonating with voters, and the proof of the pudding was what happened today,” she said.
Kryzan, who represented Occidental Chemical as an attorney in the Love Canal fiasco but nevertheless won wide support from environmentalists — including the lawyers for the Love Canal residents — pulled off one of the biggest upsets in local primary history.
Powers and Davis spent more than twice as much money as she did — but they used it all to attack each other, much to Kryzan’s benefit.
Kryzan said she thought the race turned two weeks ago, when she released a memorable advertisement that featured a Davis look-alike scuffling with a Powers look-alike.
“Boys,” Kryzan said in a voice drenched with irony, “take it somewhere else.”
Asked about the ad Tuesday night, Kryzan said: “I think what happened when we put that ad on TV, that crystallized for a lot of people what the race had become.”
Powers lost despite the support of local Democratic party committees and labor unions.
Davis, who nearly beat Reynolds in the 2006 general election and who had vowed to spend up to $3 million in his third race for Congress, finished a disappointing third.
That finish, combined with the fact that his Save Jobs and Farms Party was removed from the November ballot last week, could spell the end to the 75-year-old Akron industrialist’s political career.
Powers did not respond to requests to comment. Joy Langley, Davis’ campaign spokesman, said the candidate would have no comment until today.
Kryzan now will square off against Lee, former president of the Automation Division of International Motion Control, his family company.
As a candidate who escaped the primary largely unscathed, “Alice Kryzan is Chris Lee’s worst nightmare,” Canisius College political scientist Kevin Hardwick said on WBEN radio. Hardwick called Kryzan the only candidate who could possibly beat Lee.
Lee, of Clarence, is thought to have the upper hand in the Republican-dominated district, which stretches from Amherst and Wheatfield eastward to the western Rochester suburbs. It’s a largely conservative district where Kryzan’s liberal pedigree, including her activity with Planned Parenthood, could prove to be unpopular.
Lee issued a statement congratulating Kryzan, but he also gave a hint as to what his main argument to voters will be.
“My real-world experience of building a manufacturing business and creating jobs in our area is exactly the kind of leadership Western New Yorkers want representing them in Congress,” he said.
But Kryzan also may have gained an edge throughout the fierce Democratic primary battle, which saw her to be a scrappy campaigner who built support on the ground while Powers and Davis flooded the airwaves and mailboxes of the district with ads accusing each other of all sorts of improper behavior.
In recent months, the Davis campaign leaked news of a 2004 incident in Ohio where Powers was cited for disorderly conduct. In addition, The Buffalo News revealed that Powers’ charity, War Kids Relief, failed to come close to fulfilling its promise of building youth centers in Iraq. Instead, $15,000 of the $41,738 that War Kids Relief raised last year went to Powers’ salary.
Nevertheless, the campaign’s revelations about Davis may have been even more damaging. Most notably of all, Davis hired the wives of the Independence Party chairmen in Erie and Monroe counties in an effort to garner the party’s endorsement — a move that the Powers campaign likened to bribery.
Meanwhile, Kryzan quietly campaigned in all seven counties in the district and delivered strong performances in the campaign’s two debates, which Davis shunned.
An endorsement last week from retired Rep. John J. La- Falce, D-Town of Tonawanda, was another key to the primary victory, Kryzan said.
And Davis might have given her an unwitting boost through two fliers that went out to voters last week — both of which appeared aimed at damaging Powers’ standing with women voters.
One of the fliers trumped up the $2,300 donation Powers received from Rick Snowden, owner of Rick’s Tally Ho striptease club. And the other trumped up Powers’ early confusion on the abortion rights issue and inaccurately portrayed him as an abortion opponent along the lines of President Bush.
“My opponents were busy getting headlines about their fighting, and I was just out there talking to the people,” Kryzan said.
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