Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - In the race for Erie County Executive this November, incumbent Mark Poloncarz and his Republican challenger Chrissy Casilio took part in a debate on Thursday hosted by the students of St. Joe's Collegiate Institute in Buffalo.
Both Poloncarz and Casilio addressed a number of pressing questions and concerns in Erie County for more than an hour, with a few subtle instances of the candidates taking shots at one another for how they have or would handle certain situations in their seat in local government.
If there was one thing that was presently clear between both candidates for Erie County Executive on Thursday was the stark difference between the two running for office.
"I've been talking about what we're doing and our plans going forward, and my opponent just pointed the finger at me for every problem under the sun, including those that are national and international in nature," said Poloncarz on Thursday following the debate. "The St. Joe's debates are always the toughest debates. The students always ask very in depth questions, and I want to thank Mr. [Ted] Lina and his team for the work they put in. But there was a noticeable difference between myself and my opponent."
Poloncarz feels Casilio doesn't have solutions for the future of Erie County, and just points fingers when something happens to go wrong.
When it comes to his strengths, Poloncarz pointed back to his experience over the last 11-plus years in office as County Executive, and the work he has already put in to make Erie County a better place for all who reside here.
"Her experience just doesn't match up," Poloncarz said. "I ran for County Comptroller and the Chief Financial Officer to learn the books of Erie County, to get in there and clean up the mess of the Red-Green fiscal crisis, which I did. Everyone has different experiences, but when you put them side-by-side, hers do not match up. And I believe the people of Erie County are going to say so when they reward me with another term on Nov. 7."
While her experience in government may not match that of Poloncarz's, Casilio feels she has an upper-hand to her opponent with a relatability factor with the community.
"As a mother, as a business owner, as somebody that is meeting and talking to Erie County residents, I know what the true issues are, and I know what needs to be addressed," said Casilio following Thursday's debate. "I think that Mr. Poloncarz, has lost touch with the Erie County families and the struggles that we're facing. I don't think he's doing enough to address the issues. That's going to change Day 1 when I'm in office."
Among the various discussion points on Thursday surrounded the response to the Buffalo Blizzard this past Christmas Weekend that killed 47 people.
Casilio went on the offensive going after her opponent, saying the response to the storm was so bad, she was surprised the incumbent Poloncarz decided to run for re-election. She added that the county was unprepared for the storm, and that leadership had failed residents.
Poloncarz felt disappointed that his opponent was pointing the finger and blaming him for everything relating to the blizzard, including the deaths of all 47 individuals.
"She's blaming for deaths that really the county can't have any role in. There were individuals who died of heart attacks four or five days after that she's saying, 'They'd be alive today if Mark Poloncarz wasn't the County Executive,' and that's just not fair," Poloncarz said. "We were out there all the time. I know the media was constantly talking to us as I was at our operations center early in the morning and was there for two days in-a-row. It was the worst storm of our lifetime."
Looking back, Poloncarz feels the message to residents ahead of the blizzard to better avoid people from heading out into the storm was, 'This is a storm that will kill you.'
"We've faced blizzards before in which we've had no deaths through blizzards. We ended up having the 'Category 5' blizzard in which no one could do anything. Our emergency services couldn't respond, because they couldn't get anywhere. And yet, I'm the problem of it," Poloncarz said.
Poloncarz also went as far as throwing Casilio's criticism of Poloncarz with the blizzard back in her face by bringing up how her father, Clarence Town Supervisor Pat Casilio, was part of the Zoom calls with the storm response and how he thought the county did a great job of opening up Clarence and the other suburbs.
Another talking point from Thursday's debate included Casilio's handling of social media when it came to the Jan. 6 Capitol Riots, the Damar Hamlin situation this past January, and her deleting her account.
Casilio says she deleted her Twitter account in order to avoid career politicians like Poloncarz from twisting anything she has posted and using it against her.
Despite that, Casilio believes in her discussions with voters across the county, people are not finding her past social media posts to be a concerning issue.
"The voters aren't talking about it," she said. "What they're talking about is the affordability. What they're talking about is the concerns with the migrant crisis. What they're talking about is what's going to happen during the next blizzard when we have incompetent leadership. He's using that as a distraction, and the voters are seeing through it."
On the flip side, Poloncarz says he has heard from the community about the past posts from Casilio being a concern. He believes her past tweets are a reflection of her credibility as an individual, and should be a learning lesson for everyone what the consequences of posting content such as that on social media.
"Now I've said some controversial things in the past that I posted on Twitter, but I've never deleted them, because once you say it, you should stick with it. And her responsive of, 'Well, I was just trying to have fun with social media,' that's not appropriate for someone who's considering running for office. She deleted her account because she didn't want the public to see it," Poloncarz said. "She was surprised when we were able to find it, and that's what I told the students here. If you post something on the internet, use this as a teachable moment. Even if you delete it, it's never going away, it's going to be on some server somewhere. The hundreds of students here at St. Joe's understood it, but she didn't. So hopefully others learn that lesson as well."
Another significant talking point from Thursday's debate at St. Joe's was the ongoing migrant issue in Erie County. While Poloncarz continues to believe it is "morally repugnant" to not welcome these individuals into the community, Casilio still criticized the County Executive for a lack of communication with who has come to the region, where they are from, and no further plan on how to solve the issue.
So what does Casilio plan to do with the ongoing migrant issue if she is elected as County Executive?
"We're going to reverse course. Day 1, we are suing New York City, we are suing Albany, and we reversing course," she said. "We were told they were vetted, and that was a lie. We were told this was not going to cost Erie County taxpayers our resources, and that was a lie. We have been lied to, we are having our schools affected by it, our safety is affected by it, and we need to reverse course. This was wrong, it's going to be fixed."
Also debated and discussed during Thursday's County Executive debate at St. Joe's included mass shootings and gun safety, mental health and the opioid epidemic, cutting of Erie County taxes and more.
You can listen to the entirety of the debate in the audio player below, or you can watch the debate in the player above: