BUFFALO (WBEN) - While it's likely to be a hard fought and contested mayoral race in the City of Buffalo come the November general election, that race may be of major help to other Democrats in county-wide races such as sheriff and comptroller.
The theory is that the race between India Walton and Byron Brown will drive up voter turnout in the heavily blue city.
"Now you're going to have a very lively race for mayor, turning out literally thousands and thousands of Democrats," said former Erie County Democratic Chairman Len Lenihan. "Once they're done voting for their choice for mayor will have to vote for other candidates, and in that they're Democrats, that portends well for the Democratic candidates for sheriff and comptroller."
The 2017 election for Erie County Sheriff that pitted Republican candidate Tim Howard against Democratic candidate Bernie Tolbert was an extremely tight race, as Howard was victorious by roughly 3,500 votes with 220,000 votes cast.
In Buffalo, however, Tolbert received 22,000 more votes than Howard of roughly 43,000 votes cast. If the voter turnout in the city increases like many expect it will, that 3,500 vote margin may be a major concern for Republicans.
"It's a concern," said Karl Simmeth, the current Erie County Republican Chairman. "We're early in this campaign; we're going to develop a strategy and we're going to move forward.
"There's 12,000 Republicans in the City of Buffalo, 27,000 unaffiliated voters, and we have I believe a lot of Blue Dog Democrats that live in the City of Buffalo, and those are the people we're going to appeal to," Simmeth continued.
Lenihan also noted the typical strategy for local Republicans to not run their own candidate for city elections backfired in this case because this November election may have been the party's best opportunity to win mayor of Buffalo, though it still would have remained unlikely.
If Republicans had decided to run a candidate, that candidate's name would be on the ballot, and along with hoping Walton and Brown would evenly split Democrat votes, a slight door of possibility could have opened.
But of course, that's no longer an option.
"It's a missed opportunity - I'm not going to debate that issue," said Simmeth. "We are where we are, and we're going to move forward."
"It doesn't mean they're automatically going to win, but boy it certainly helps," added Lenihan. "It's a big factor, and it's something I don't think Republicans expected when they played out their strategy for the fall."
