Dems Gone Wild	by George Sax

...And it’s not even Spring Break!

“I’m not a member of any organized political party, I’m a Democrat.”

—actor-humorist Will Rogers

Over the last year, the Erie County Democratic Party seems to have been increasingly hell-bent on dramatizing Rogers’ famously ironic characterization of the way Democrats operate politically. Two major party factions—one centered on Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown, the other headed by county chair Leonard R. Lenihan—have been creating another chapter in the often fractious history of the party. Last Saturday, the Brown forces either heightened tensions or alleviated them slightly—depending on who one talks to—by boycotting the meeting of the party’s committee, held to select a chair, in this case to reelect Lenihan.

Brown’s faction had been waging an unacknowledged campaign to prevent, or at least impede, Lenihan’s election to a fourth two-year term, in the view of most observers by backing the effort of Cheektowaga party head Frank Max to replace Lenihan. Even after it became apparent after this month’s Democratic primary that the defeat of many of the Brown-backed candidates in committee districts made the prospects for that effort seem dubious, Max mailed out a flyer repeating the charges of Lenihan’s nepotism and self-dealing that he’d been circulating.

But by the Thursday before the party meeting, even as the Buffalo News was distributing its political reporter Robert McCarthy’s speculation that Saturday’s gathering was “expected to be anything but peaceful,” and his report of “a party insider” who expected an “undetermined amount of fireworks” at the meeting, Max had already sent out a public letter informing Democrats that he had decided to “end the divisions” and his campaign.

So, no fireworks went off Saturday morning at the Hearthstone Manor in Depew. A feeling of angry triumphalism did fill the meeting hall’s atmosphere. McCarthy had quoted an unidentified individual “with knowledge of Brown’s thinking” who predicted the mayor would mount a floor fight that “will leave Lenihan in a weakened position.” But His Honor, having announced his intention to boycott the meeting on Friday, kept to his word the next day.

In an interview with Artvoice last Friday, Max claimed that his vote tallying had indicated to him that “…we had [the potential for] a substantial floor fight.” He withdrew he said, to avoid damaging “dissension.”

If Lenihan felt weakened or threatened by recent events, he didn’t convey those feelings Saturday. Nor did the more than 1,000 committee members and guests, who seemed enthusiastically behind him, rising for ovations in tribute to the chairman several times. Speakers supporting Lenihan’s reelection, like county legislator Betty Jean Grant, extolled the party unity he’d achieved, but cross-factional amity didn’t always seem uppermost in a lot of people’s minds.

Art Eve, Jr., a compliance manager in Buffalo’s Office of Strategic Planning, referred darkly to city employees whose jobs had allegedly been threatened if they supported Lenihan. “Trust me,” he told his audience, “I need my job,” going on to exhort them to “do the right thing” no matter the pressure exerted. (Actually, informed observes say that Eve’s job is among the most secure in City Hall because of his father’s political eminence, and Lenihan’s control of a job at the Board of Elections that’s filled by a Brown supporter.)

When Lenihan came to the mic to speak after the voice vote reelecting him, he too stressed the achievements of party members working together under his leadership, but he interrupted this celebration of accomplishment to denounce the tactics employed by Barbra Kavanaugh’s unsuccessful campaign to unseat 144th District Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, efforts portraying him as a sexual predator, based on allegations of an affair with an Albany intern. This race was widely regarded as the dirtiest in recent Western New York history, and Lenihan sternly told his audience it should “never again permit someone to be attacked as Sam has been attacked.”

Hoyt, much of the rest of the party, the editors of the Buffalo News, and, judging by a sampling of opinion, many of those assembled Saturday morning place the blame for these attacks on an alliance of Brown, First Deputy Mayor Steven Casey, former county chair Steven Pigeon, and Sabres owner Tom Golisano, who has been bankrolling Pigeon’s efforts to gain influence and control in the county party.

At least a couple of well-placed Democrats claim Pigeon first approached North District Buffalo Councilmember Joseph Golombek about running before he turned to Kavanaugh, but that Golombek wouldn’t agree to a campaign he believed would be distastefully low-minded.

In a phone conversation after Saturday’s meeting, Golombek declined to comment on this story, saying only that he was “flattered” if anyone thought he’d have been an effective candidate against Hoyt. (He received 47 percent of the vote in his previous run against him.)

To many people familiar with party affairs, the origins of the intensifying internecine battles lie in two areas: Pigeon’s long-running drive to again wield power in party councils and circles and the mayor’s concern to outflank challenges to his reelection next year, and any later pursuit of higher office he might undertake. (An effort to succeed Representative Louise Slaughter, for example. It’s thought there are a number of people in Erie and Monroe Counties interested in that one.)

One Buffalo civic leader who formerly held high elective office says he believes that Casey is the key figure in the recent factional turmoil. “He never liked Lenihan, in my opinion,” he says. The deputy mayor has found a ready and well-financed ally in Pigeon, according to this man. He thinks Brown has made a judgment, with Casey’s encouragement, that the mayor doesn’t need Lenihan to get reelected. In his view, the next battleground will be over the election of the 160-member party executive committee, although the Brown forces may be handicapped by their lackluster results in the committee races.

Casey isn’t having any of this. In a telephone interview earlier this week, he disclaimed any part in Max’s aborted challenge to Lenihan. “We never supported Frank Max publicly,” he said, in a perhaps tellingly hedged assertion. “I don’t think the mayor ever spoke to Frank.”

And he denies published reports that last week Brown told state party leader June O’Neill that he couldn’t work with Lenihan: “We made it clear to her that working on the [county] chairman’s race and working in the general election are different.” He predicts a coming-together in the party to support Barack Obama’s presidential campaign: “At the end of the day, we’re all Democrats.” Casey also says that Brown has agreed with Lenihan’s choices—state attorney general Andrew Cuomo, for example—“the majority of the time.”

Attorney Jeremy Toth, a Hoyt campaign aide and long-time friend of the assemblyman, has his own more skeptical, fatalistic-sounding take on these matters. Standing at the side of the meeting hall Saturday morning, he said, “Steve Casey’s quest for 15 years has been to take over the party.” The Brown-Casey people, he said, “never stop and they never forgive.” Despite losing twice, Toth believes, “They’ll ‘primary’ Hoyt again in two years, if they can.”

—george sax