BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) – There are several takeaways from Tuesday’s election from political science professors. Many takeaways are simply a reinforcement of traditional campaign values that have lasted throughout the years, though there are new lessons that have crept into the spotlight.
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“Defund the police is politically toxic pretty much everywhere in the country,” Shawn Donahue, a professor at the University at Buffalo, said. “It tarred democrats in a lot of places with that label. Even if they weren’t for it and were strongly opposed to it. We saw republicans do very well in Long Island this year in elections.”
Donahue also wonders if India Walton’s endorsements by downstate lawmakers, which included progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, may have actually worked against her.
“Buffalo may be a democratic city, but Buffalo is not Brooklyn,” Donahue said.
Some of the traditional elements of the campaign rang true in this year’s election, such as dominance of the news cycle and labels. Mayor Byron Brown was painted by Walton as being at the behest of developers in the city, which Brown leaned into to say he was business-friendly and a proponent of things like affordable housing. Walton embraced the term “democratic socialist” but also committed self-inflicted wounds such as her parking tickets controversy.
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“Candidates and campaigns do matter,” Jacob Neiheisel, another UB political science professor, said. “The candidate who was the better candidate ran a better campaign walked away with the win. We can interrogate what makes a candidate better than another, but I think that was the broad message I took there…This could have very easily gone a different way with a different candidate at the helm.”