Last Friday this fall’s aspirants to elected office—most of them anyhow—filed their latest campaign finance disclosure forms, detailing contributions received and expenditures made since their last filings in mid July. It is shaping up to be an expensive election season in Western New York, in large part because the open race for county executive is drawing out big donors. Democrats Paul Clark and Jim Keane each have generated substantial amounts of cash for their campaigns (though a substantial chunk of Clark’s money is his own), and Republican Chris Collins is no slouch as a fund-raiser, either.

The primary between Clark and Keane is being portrayed as a fight between utterly irreconcilable factions for control of the county’s Democratic Party, which is probably driving up the cost of the campaign as well. My prediction, for what little it’s worth, is that reconciliation follows the September 18 primary pretty quickly, at least at the county level. In the city of Buffalo, however, the wounds may not heal so quickly.

In Buffalo’s Common Council races, Mayor Byron Brown and Deputy Mayor Steve Casey, Brown’s chief political strategist, are sponsoring Jessica Maglietto in her primary challenge against incumbent Delaware District Councilmember Mike LoCurto. They are supporting assistant corporation counsel Peter Savage’s run for the Niagara District seat that’s being vacated by Nick Bonifacio, even though the district’s Democratic committee has endorsed his opponent, Buffalo police officer David Rivera.

They are doing so because they view Savage and Maglietto as allies inclined to support their agenda and Rivera and LoCurto as opponents inclined not to. That reduction may not be fair to any of those four candidates—they are all individuals, all capable of making their own choices, all well intentioned, etc.—but it appears that’s how Brown and Casey view them. Last Friday’s campaign finance disclosure reports reveal just how much financial support the mayor’s support can attract to a candidate, and how badly the mayor wants a reliably compliant Common Council.

These Niagara and Delaware districts are unusually expensive this election year, like the rest of the county, so we thought we’d look at where some of the money comes from and where it’s going. (Some of the money stirring the less hotly contested races bears looking at too, so I’ve thrown in the Ellicott District race for good measure.)

So here they are—three haves, one have-not, one who-knows-what-he’s-got and one can’t-get-enough:

Jessica Maglietto: She Has Lots

The award for the single most ostentatious campaign expenditure in this year’s high-priced campaign for the Common Council goes to Jessica Maglietto’s giant billboard at Delavan and Delaware. Lamar Advertising, the Florida-based company with a local office that controls the lion’s share of billboards in the region, charges upward of $5,000 a month for a well-placed billboard like that, with a discount for political candidates. Maglietto spent $3,913 with Lamar Advertising in July. She also spent $3,756 with a Kentucky-based company on lawn signs. She has spent close to $2,000 on campaign literature and about $1,700 on postage. She bought $1,200 worth of T-shirts.

All told, Maglietto has spent more than $16,000 since June—$12,000 in the last month. But she can well afford it. Donors have poured $22,287 into Maglietto’s campaign since May, more than $16,000 in the last month, and there is more coming in—some have said her campaign is expected to cost $40,000 in total. That’s quite high for a Buffalo Common Council race.

Maglietto’s donations include $500 from attorney Arnold Gardiner, part of Byron Brown’s transition team and a counsel to the mayor in the affair of his son’s late-night joy ride; $200 from the mayor’s communications director, Peter Cutler; $100 from Maurice Garner, with Brown as co-founder of Grassroots; $300 from the mayor’s Corporation Counsel, Alisa Lukasiewicz; $300 from Michael Seaman, the mayor’s appointee as chair of the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority; and $100 from long-time City Hall staffer David Granville, who has also been helpful walking Maglietto through the district’s neighborhoods, introducing her to voters. Maglietto has received $850 from Herb and Aaron Siegel, ardent supporters of Byron Brown, and $1,000 from Howard Zemsky, another Brown supporter. The list of Brown-connected donors goes on (and is available for perusal at http://www.elections.state.ny.us/NYSBOE/finance/contribandexpend.htm).

All of which is meant only to convey that she is the mayor’s candidate, and that he and Deputy Mayor Steve Casey are rallying money and manpower on her behalf—money for things like expensive billboards and heavy mailings and manpower to canvass neighborhoods on her behalf, to solicit and collect more money, and to make sure friendly voters come out on primary day.

Last weekend, Inwood Place neighbors held a block party that was well attended by this season’s political candidates and their supporters, including Jessica Maglietto and her number one sponsor, Mayor Byron Brown. An AV staffer complimented Maglietto on the Gates Circle billboard, then asked her how much it cost and who was paying for it.

“I don’t know,” she replied.

Certainly she’d have a better answer if she’d been prepared for the question. The answer is more complicated than one might think, anyway: In a sense, Lamar Advertising paid for it too. The nationwide company donates lots of money to numerous political campaign funds, but it has donated to only two committees in Erie County since January 2006: $1,000 to Mayor Brown’s Leadership Council and $150 to Friends of Jim Keane. In the same period, they’ve received $7,108 in business from three Erie County political candidates. (The other two were Tonawanda Town Justice candidate John Flynn and Hamburg Council candidate Tom Best.)

That’s close to a seven-to-one return on the firm’s investment. Which is not bad by any measure, though an attorney for Ellicott District candidate Bryon McIntyre told him that most donors in the city expect to do even better than that.

Bryon McIntyre: He Has

What He’s Going to Get

A Buffalo firefighter, Bryon McIntyre is running a bootstrap campaign against Councilmember Brian Davis in the Ellicott District, funded exclusively by a $5,000 loan made out of his own pocket. He had received no donations as of last week.

“Raising money has been slow going, because I really don’t have a sophisticated political team,” McIntyre said.

Though McIntyre has been associated with the East Side Political Network, a new coalition of African-American politicians whose support for Paul Clark is intended to balance Grassroots’ support for Jim Keane, that association hasn’t done much for him in terms of fund-raising. His own firefighters union endorsed his opponent, the first time that the IAFF has endorsed a non-member in a race in which a member was running. Possibly the union gave Davis money, too, but you’d never know: Davis has not filed a campaign funding disclosure form this year—and apparently never has, if the state’s online database is accurate, though that database indicates he has received contributions from other candidates and committees over the years.

McIntyre remains on the ballot despite vigorous petition challenges by Davis; those challenges have been overturned in court, but the appeal process continues, robbing McIntyre of time he’d rather spend knocking on doors or photo-copying mailers. He has a fundraiser coming up next Thursday, August 30, a boat ride that costs $35 per donor, but he’s worried that, pulled every which way by the competing demands of work, the campaign and the courts, he may have to cancel it. “It does what it’s designed to do,” McIntyre said of his opponent’s ongoing efforts to have him removed from the ballot. “It kind of takes you out of the loop.”

Over breakfast recently, one of McIntyre’s lawyers explained to the candidate why donors weren’t lining up at his front door with checks and bags of cash. The attorney told McIntyre that the expected return on a campaign contribution was 10 to one.

“He told me, ‘So if I give you $10,000, you’re going to give me back $100,000.’ And, you know, I’m listening, because he’s been in this game, and he said, ‘No one is going to give you money because they already know that you’re not going to steal.’”

McIntyre paused, then said, “If you give me $10,000, I will give you $100,000 to do your business, but what I want from your business is to make sure you employ some people from the city, that you give some people in my district opportunities. I’d sell out for that.”

Mike LoCurto: He Has Enough

Why exactly Brown and Casey think LoCurto’s seat is vulnerable is not clear. LoCurto has raised a fair penny: $23,154 since April of this year, and $18,609 of that came into his coffers in the last month.

His biggest donors are unions: $1,000 each from 1199 SEIU and Building and Construction Trades of Buffalo, $750 from Plasters Cement Masons Local 111, $500 from Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers, $500 from the United Association of Plumbers and Steamfitters, $300 from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 41, $250 from the International Union of Operating Engineers, $250 from Laborers Local 91, $250 from Niagara County Building Trades, $149 from the Empire State Regional Council of Carpenters and $100 from the International Union of Elevator Constructors Local 3527. These are the sort of donations that accrue to an incumbent endorsed by the district’s Democratic committee.

LoCurto also has donations from attorneys Sean Ryan and Marc Panepinto, who are members of Assemblyman Sam Hoyt’s political consortium, and from Hoyt himself. His donors also include a typical array of politically active North Buffalo businesses and families.

All of which is meant only to convey that LoCurto is no pushover. He may not kowtow to the mayor, but he is not an independent. He has backers. Last month he spent $1,500 on campaign literature, but generally he has spent comparatively little—less than $12,000 in eight months, the same amount his opponent has spent in the last month. His biggest single expense has been $2,500 in rent for his district office on Hertel, which is marked with a quirky, handpainted sign.

As a result of his thrift, as of last Friday LoCurto had nearly $20,000 in reserve. Compare that to Maglietto’s $6,000 and, notwithstanding her powerful sponsors and that impressive billboard, the incumbent LoCurto would seem to hold a big advantage.

Peter Savage: Early Money

In keeping with his early bead on the open seat in the Niagara District, Peter Savage raised money quickly, right out of the gate. So far the assistant corporation counsel has raised more than $28,000 and spent about $19,000. Of that $16,000 came in and $11,000 went out the door before mid July, buying Savage a huge head start on his opponent, David Rivera; Savage’s signs had been dotting the West Side for a month before Rivera received his first shipment of them on August 10. Savage had spent more than $3,000 on literature by then and has spent another $1,800 since then, plus a total of $4,000 on postage to get it in people’s mailboxes. The Savage campaign has spent $1,500 on T-shirts and souvenirs. He’s thrown a couple big fund-raisers, too, which cost about $4,000 and brought in about $11,000 in cash. The first, at Casa di Pizza in the first week June, garnered about $8,500—which by itself was far more than Rivera had at his disposal even a month later.

The fact that Savage had a head start is a sore point with Rivera’s supporters, who believe that Savage was anointed by Brown, Casey and Bonifacio before the district’s committee had a chance to offer its two cents on who Bonifacio’s successor ought to be. Bitterness about the process is one reason some Niagara District committee people give for risking the wrath of Casey and Brown to endorse Rivera instead of Savage.

A look at Savage’s donations suggests he probably doesn’t need Brown and Casey’s support; his family connections and his own pedigree in city government have drawn lots of financial support, most prominently from former Mayor Tony Masiello, who opened up his still ample war chest and gave Savage $1,000 right off the bat. And, indeed, if half the list of Savage’s earliest donors reads a lot like Jessica Maglietto’s, the other half reads like a primer on the Masiello network. The gang’s all there, from Perla to Tomasulo, from Uniland Construction to Ellicott Development. (There are a lot of Savages on that list too, of course, which also recalls the Masiello days.)

As of Friday, Savage had about $9,000 left to spend before the primary, and he’ll raise much more if he needs it. He’s qualified in a way Maglietto can’t claim to be. He has a broad network of supporters and powerful financial backers. He’s had a huge head start.

What he doesn’t have is the Democratic district committee’s endorsement, though you might be confused about that from his lawn signs. And, judging from the way Rivera’s signs have begun to proliferate in the yards of the less well-heeled neighborhoods on the West Side, he might not have the support of the district’s Latino community. The question will be whether that community will turn out for Rivera.

David Rivera:

How Much Is Enough?

Money can help create a good turnout in a community like the Lower West Side, where Latinos and other minorities often stay home on election day. Money pays for canvassers to stir up the electorate in the months before an election and it pays for workers on election day who can telephone registered voters, knock on their doors and, if necessary, give them a ride to their polling places.

Rivera has raised only about half the money that Savage has: $14,635 as of Friday. Like LoCurto, he got big contributions from a smattering of unions. The county’s Democratic committee sent him $2,000, and his other donors include Sean Ryan and Marc Panepinto, of Sam Hoyt’s inner circle. He has spent very little, so he has about $10,000 left to spend in this last month before the primary. He’ll raise more as well, of course, but Savage’s financial backers have deeper pockets—and there appear to be more of them.

We’ll soon see how strongly Erie County Democratic Party Chairman Len Lenihan feels about the candidate his party’s district committee people endorsed this spring. Money isn’t everything in a an election, especially not on the scale of a Common Council race, but it helps. If Lenihan commits more money to the endorsed candidate, the Niagara District race may become the proxy battle it has been billed. If he decides to cede this one to the Brown/Casey candidate and start the reconciliation here and now, then Rivera is on his own.