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On Sunday, attorney Sean Cooney officially launched his campaign for the 58th District State Senate seat currently held by Bill Stachowski with a press conference in front of the Donovan building downtown. But political operative and Steve Pigeon loyalist Jack O’Donnell made a pre-emptive effort to stop Cooney’s announcement. Some days earlier, O’Donnell and two men from the State Senate Democratic campaign committee—one of them, Josh Cherwin, is the committee’s executive director—strolled in the door, without knocking, at Cooney’s unmarked campaign office on Franklin Street. It was about 10 o’clock at night, and Cooney’s campaign volunteers were just finishing a meeting. (O’Donnell and company said they happened to be driving by and saw the lights on.) Cherwin and O’Donnell asked Cooney why he was running a primary against a fellow Democrat incumbent. He couldn’t win, they said. Cooney told Cherwin that he should ask the same question of his friend O’Donnell, whose boss Pigeon is supporting Erie County Legislator Tim Kennedy against Stachowski. O’Donnell denied that Pigeon was supporting Kennedy.
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