By Matthew Ricchiazzi:
Governor Andrew Cuomo is considering appointing Mayor Byron Brown to serve as his next Lt. Governor.[1] Mayor Brown has already indicated that he is unlikely to pursue another term as Mayor. If the Mayor’s office becomes vacant, then the Common Council President would then serve simultaneously as both Mayor and Council President — an obviously powerful executive posture that we haven’t seen since 1927.
That’s what makes this week’s political maneuvering within the Common Council so interesting.
The Buffalo News is reporting that first term Councilmember Darius Pridgen, representing the Ellicott District, has approached three Councilmembers requesting their vote to oust Council President Richard Fontana.[2] Five votes are needed secure the Presidency of the nine member Council.
Former Council President David Franczyk was ousted by Fontana shortly after a 2010 redistricting process in which Franczyk and Pridgen drew themselves racially motivated districts lines[3] that should irk all of us:
Both men wanted to represent communities in which they don’t live – and neither had that shame that would prevent normal people from doing something so egregious and flatly racist.
For Franczyk, who has overseen the utter collapse of his Broadway Fillmore neighborhood while on the Council for the last 30 years, the process was a desperate search for white voters and an even more desperate exclusion of black voters, which he architected block by block. For Pridgen, the process was about drawing a district that would allow him to represent the poorest and most challenged district in the city from his Waterfront Village condo.
Together – and with the endorsement of the rest of the Council – they were successful. At the Council’s public hearing on the redistricting, activists asked for a district that would represent Allentown and the Elmwood Village[4]. Other activists were angry that they had been arbitrarily drawn out of the Fillmore District, which rightly should have become a majority African American district, if not for Franczyk’s maneuvering.
Today, Franczyk is ready to return the favor for Pridgen, and settle an old grudge with Fontana simultaneously.
Franczyk, who is not aligned with the Mayor, is attempting to oust Fontana by throwing his vote behind Pridgen, who is backed by the Council majority aligned with the Mayor, and therefore instigate the current leadership fight.
My view – for whatever it’s worth – is that neither Pridgen or Franczyk should hold leadership roles in the Council or be allowed to position themselves to fill the expected Mayoral vacancy that may emerge. The redistricting that they are responsible for is too egregious and too indicative of their values and ethics for us to turn a blind eye to the dysfunctional ways of their politicking.
We are a city yearning for leadership and thirsting for change.
Please consider reading the following article by Dr. Russell Weaver, a University at Buffalo trained demographer, who had staffed the Common Council’s redistricting effort until he was pushed out by Franczyk, when the Councilman’s behavior became too racially motivated to ignore. Dr. Weaver left Buffalo shortly thereafter, and currently resides in Northern California with his wife, Michelle:
Gerrymandering Politics Gerrymandering Politics Out of the Redistricting Process: Toward a Planning Revolution in Redrawing Local Legislative Boundaries[5]
The Berkeley Planning Journal / Urban Fringe