FOCUS: POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS
Golisano plans to remain a high-profile political player
Buffalo Sabres owner, with deep pockets, vows to help upstate
After spending about $4.4 million on Senate and Assembly races around the state this election season, Buffalo Sabres owner B. Thomas Golisano says there’s lots more money where that came from.
His Responsible New York committee may not have hit a home run, he said, but winning roughly half of his statewide efforts puts runners in scoring position.
“I would say it was a solid double; maybe a triple,” the Rochester billionaire said in his first postelection assessment of his performance.
Win or lose, Golisano emphasizes he is not going away, and he intends for Responsible New York to continue as a major statewide force.
“People in the world of politics in New York State need to understand we’re going to be here for a long time,” he said. “We’re going to be an influence.”
Golisano’s re-emergence on the state political field after three unsuccessful runs for governor, however, is far from welcomed by every hometown fan.
He antagonized former Republican allies in the Senate by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on each of several Democrats around the state.
He prompted at least four allegations that he violated election law by coordinating his big spending with individual campaigns.
He even caused Erie County’s Democratic and Republican elections commissioners to demand a criminal investigation.
Opponents insist that his nearly bottomless pile of money is aimed not so much at reform but at his lust for power. They say he basically wrote a multimillion-dollar check to his political point man, G. Steven Pigeon, to spend lavishly on candidates favored by the former Erie County Democratic chairman.
“Their motives have nothing to do with their stated agenda,” said Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, who was one of the targets of Golisano’s efforts during the September Democratic primary.
“It’s just a power play for Tom Golisano and Steve Pigeon to have some influence in state government for political purposes rather than for policy,” he added.
Sen. Dale M. Volker, another Golisano target, was just as blunt about the organization he calls “Irresponsible New York.”
“They finagled and played around with the election law,” the Depew Republican said. “Golisano’s reputation, as far as I’m concerned, is badly marred with Buffalonians.”
The postelection scorecard reads like this:
• Golisano won with four of nine major candidates he backed in Senate elections around the state, while losing his effort to oust Hoyt in the Assembly primary.
• Locally, he lost two high-profile campaigns, for Democrat Joe Mesi (where he spent about $700,000) against Republican Michael H. Ranzenhofer, and Democrat Kathy Konst (almost $600,000) against Volker.
• He won with a local mail campaign estimated to cost $200,000 for incumbent Democrat William T. Stachowski against Republican challenger Dennis A. Delano.
• Pigeon claims Golisano’s spending contributed to the Democrats’ takeover of the Senate by forcing Republicans to divert millions into races where Responsible New York was active.
• Golisano says his main objective of changing the Senate leadership was accomplished, with corresponding benefits for upstate.
Indeed, Golisano is used to opening his wallet for politics, spending about $74 million when he ran for governor in 2002, the last of his three Independence Party efforts. He has always advocated political and governmental reforms, including impartial reapportionment, ending unfunded mandates, equitable distribution of economic development funds and limiting the power of authorities.
Only those who embraced that platform, he said, received his backing.
Now he believes he has helped upstate because the new leadership will take on special interests like public employee and health care unions.
“Our major goal is to improve the plight of upstate New York, and we’re now in a much better position to do that,” he said.
Stachowski, one of those helped by Golisano mailings, said he had no problem accepting assistance from the billionaire founder of Paychex Inc.
“He seemed to want to help people who wanted to help other people,” he said. “I had no trouble with it.”
When asked about Responsible New York, the Senate’s incoming majority leader, Malcolm A. Smith of Queens, would say only that “a number of organizations played a role.”
But John E. McArdle, spokesman for the Senate Republicans, said Golisano’s goals and those of his conference have always coincided. The situation changed, he said, with “Steve Pigeon thrown into the mix.”
“I don’t know whether Tom Golisano doesn’t understand or he relies on Steve Pigeon too much,” he said.
But Pigeon maintains that upstate benefited because Golisano’s policy and political objectives both prevailed. Republicans were forced to spend millions in Western New York alone, he said, because of Responsible New York activity.
“We forced them to spend heavily in Western New York, and then they couldn’t spend downstate to protect their seats there,” he said. “If Western New York wasn’t happening, everything would have been Delano here.”
In addition, Pigeon said Golisano dropped anywhere from $500 to $9,500 — totaling $150,000 — on members with less-competitive races. That role will continue, Pigeon said, adding that the committee has opened an office in Albany and registered with the state as a lobbying entity.
“We’ll spend time on the issues and policies we believe in,” he said. “This is just Round One.”
Republicans like Volker disagree with Golisano’s contention that his committee is good for upstate.
“We’ll see,” the senator said. “I think they are a force that is anti-Western New York and anti-upstate.
And Hoyt said the direct mail campaign centering on his extramarital affair with an Assembly intern ended up “backfiring.” He said that it stemmed only from Pigeon’s need for political revenge and that Golisano’s credibility evaporated with the call of Republicans and Democrats alike to seek criminal charges against him.
“He uses his resources irresponsibly by handing them over to a discredited and disgraced political hack — Steve Pigeon,” Hoyt said.
Golisano said he is “neutral” about the rough tactics of the Hoyt campaign but thought they were necessary.
“It bothers me that people thought it was sort of vicious,” he said. “But what he did was pretty bad and should exclude him from public office.”
He said he has no plans to use his money to indirectly challenge New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg next year, adding that he wants to stay close to Bloomberg and to Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown. He also said he still plans a new national campaign through a federal committee he calls Responsible America.
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