Tim Whalen, the former Erie County legislator, is dropping out of the contest to succeed Mickey Kearns as the South District representative on Buffalo’s Common Council.

Whalen was one of the top three contenders in the race to fill the vacancy left by Kearns, who won a special election in April for the Assembly seat vacated by Mark Schroeder, the Buffalo’s new comptroller. The other two are Matt Fisher, who has been a neighborhood liaison for Kearns, working especially on housing issues; and Bryan Bollman, a legislative aide to Council President Rich Fontana of Lovejoy.

The eight sitting members of the Council will choose a temporary councilman from a list of candidates who have submitted resumes; they’ll interview the candidates Monday morning. The South District Democratic Party committee of meets on Saturday to recommend a candidate to the Council. Though most often the Council, consisting entirely of Democrats, has followed the recommendation of the district committee, that precedent was ignored in 2010 when a majority that included Kearns filled a vacancy in the Ellicott District office with Curtis Haynes, despite Darius Pridgen having won the recommendation of the Ellicott District Democratic committee.

Whalen says he’s withdrawing because he feels the time the job demands might be too more than he’s prepared to commit to; he also acknowledged that the councilmembers with whom he’d met seemed less indisposed to support him. He earned the enmity of some while serving as a county legislator (he filled the vacancy left by Tim Kennedy when Kennedy went to the State Senate) by joining with Republicans to re-elect Barbara Miller-Williams, an ally of Mayor Byron Brown, as chair of the Legislature; he earned the enmity of others by abandoning that coalition during last summer’s reapportionment process, a move that ultimately ended Miller-Williams’s tenure on the Legislature.

Whalen has been affiliated with the South Buffalo political faction headed by Congressman Brian Higgins, a camp consistently at odds with Kearns. (Kearns beat Higgins’s aide, Chris Fahey, in the special election.) Fisher is quite popular in the district, but the members of the South Buffalo Democratic committee lean toward Higgins.

So Whalen’s withdrawal creates an interesting scenario: Will the committee members choose Bollman, who most will assume to be aligned with the majority that elected Fontana president, a majority supportive of a mayor they don’t really love? Or will they choose Fisher, a largely popular neighborhood figure whose principal shortcoming in the eyes of some committee member is his affiliation with Kearns?

There are five members in the current majority; with Kearns gone, the minority comprises three, all of whom are likely to support Fisher. If the South District committee goes with Fisher, how will Pridgen vote? To vote against the South District committee’s choice would seem a contradiction to the things he and especially his supporters said in reaction to the Council’s rejection in 2010.

Whalen is a South District committee member with a lot of weighted votes; so are many of his friends and extended family members. He believes that if Fisher makes a strong effortover the next two days, he can win the committee recommendation on Saturday, despite the rift between the Higgins and Kearns camps. “Maybe this neighborhood is ready for a healing,” he said this afternoon.

Click here to read the new food truck ordinance passed by the Common Council today. Note the issue will be revisited, since the amendment will sunset on April Fool’s day next year.

1. Hopefully, the WNY Food Truck Association will have something to celebrate later today, as the Buffalo Common Council is set to vote on proposed food truck permitting and regulations at 2pm today (Tuesday the 24th).  Buffalo Place, which governs much of the downtown CBD, has said it will follow the same guidelines the city sets forth, although trucks may have to pay a separate fee for a Buffalo Place permit. Follow along at #BUFTruck on Twitter.

Tweet #BUFTruck

2. The Boston Bruins traveled to the White House yesterday as part of a traditional ceremony where the President congratulates the winner of last season’s Stanley Cup. All the Bruins attended, except for one. Goaltender Tim Thomas is a Glenn Beck “conservative” and decided to skip the ceremony, issuing the following statement (verbatim, all SIC):

I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.

This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government.

Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL.

This is the only public statement I will be making on this topic. TT

Setting aside for a moment the statement’s inherent inconsistency, no one is disputing Thomas’ right as a “Free Citizen” to opt to skip the White House event. But what, precisely, did it accomplish? I’m not aware of a similar snub taking place during George W. Bush’s administration, and if it had I’d have been critical of that, as well. Because the White House event wasn’t a political one. It wasn’t a Bruin endorsement of Barack Obama and his policies.

You don’t have to agree with the President to attend a ceremony honoring you, and I think it’s somewhat indicative of a complete breakdown of fundamental civility in our society. Regardless of your thoughts on the current occupant of the White House, the office and what it stands for deserve a certain degree of honor and respect. If the President wants to congratulate you for an achievement, I think it’s better form to go, rather than to stay home and make a political point about why.  Although the Presidency is a governmental post, it needn’t always be a political one, and this wasn’t a political event.

Again – not because Thomas isn’t free to do whatever he damn well wants to do. But I think it was a childish and self-centered move that reflects poorly on him, and is deserving of criticism.

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Bonnie Russell

In last Thursday’s paper, we wrote that University District Councilwoman Bonnie Russell enjoyed a tremendous advantage in tomorrow’s Democratic primary: Her husband, Judge Robert Russell, is also on the ballot tomorrow. Judge Russell was the lead vote-getter among city court judges when he ran in 2001, pulling 13,432 votes citywide, including 2,416 votes in the University District. The last time Bonnie Russell faced a primary, in 2003, she needed just 1,814 votes to beat Betty Jean Grant. (Russell had no primary in 2007.) Assuming the judge remains popular, and that most University District residents who vote for him will vote for his wife, too, Russell should be fine.

Still, peculiar things can happen in three-way Democratic primaries when turnout is light, as most folks expect it will be tomorrow. One of Russell’s opponents is Pamela Cahill, who resigned her seat on Buffalo’s school board in April to protest its dysfunction—and, perhaps, to prepare to challenge Russell.

Pamela Cahill

Cahill is well known and well regarded in the African-American community (she has the endorsement of Erie County legislator Betty Jean Grant) and has political experience, though winning a couple school board races with 700-odd votes is a much smaller lift than winning a council seat. Still, she has the support of Democratic Party headquarters, while Russell has been largely obedient to Mayor Byron Brown.

If Judge Russell’s coattails are shorter than one might expect, and if Russell and Cahill divide the

African-American vote, and if turnout is quite light, then the third challenger, 19-year-old Rochelle Ricchiazzi, might surprise the field. Ricchiazzi has no relevant experience but there are some seasoned political operatives helping her campaign.

Rochelle Ricchiazzi

The platforms of the three candidates are not especially distinctive: Russell says she has helped block clubs, and defends her relationship with the mayor by claiming that it has helped her gain support for her district; Cahill argues that the district has not benefited from that relationship and that Russell has had her chance to make a difference in the community; Ricchiazzi echoes Cahill’s argument, says she will make reducing crime her first priority, and thinks hydrofracking should be a crime. None of the candidates would fully reject any of the the others’ positions. The differences between them are political. (Like the Russells? Like Byron Brown? Vote for Bonnie. Don’t like Byron Brown? Vote for Pam. Don’t like either? Vote for Ricchiazzi.) Russell has the edge granted by incumbency—hers and her husband’s—but stranger things have happened.

News from midstate: Larry Adamczyk’s appeal of a decision by the appellate division last Friday removing him from the Democratic primary ballot in the race for the Fillmore District council seat has been rejected.

So Adamczyk is out, and it’s just the incumbent Dave Franczyk and one challenger, Sam Herbert.

Today, the 4th Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court tossed Larry Adamczyk off the ballot for the Deomcratic primary for the Fillmore District seat in Buffalo Commons Council. Which I suppose means this is the last we’ll hear from his campaign, unless he’s already paid for and mailed another flyer.

Adamczyk was removed from contention because, by his own admission, he had not lived long enough in the district to qualify as a candidate. He appealed his disqualification, however, and Judge Donna Siwek reinstated him, ruling that, because it was a reapportionment year in which district boundaries changed, the city charter’s residency requirement should not obtain.

The Appellate Court ruled that the charter’s requirements for candidates were constitutional and did not provide any relief regarding reapportionment years, that the Erie County Board of Election did not exceed its authority in disqualifying Adamczyk, and that in nay case Adamczyk’s prior place of residence rendered the argument moot: He lived in the Delaware District, at an address that would not have been located in either the Fillmore District, into which his new residence was reapportioned, or the Ellicott District, where it was located prior to reapportionment—where, as a sponsored candidate of Mayor Byron Brown, he certainly never would have been a candidate, since he then would have been challenging the mayor’s ally, Darius Pridgen.

The court did not rule that last part. That was me. Here’s the court’s decision.

So the two candidates left in the Fillmore District are the incumbent, Council President Dave Franczyk, and community activist Sam Herbert.

On Wednesday, the Erie County Board of Elections disqualified Larry Adamczyk as a candidate for the Fillmore District Common Council seat. Adamczyk allowed that he had not lived in the district long enough to qualify, while arguing that the residency requirement—one year since the last election—is unjust. His residency was short nearly a month.

Meantime, the other Fillmore District challenger, Sam Herbert, was knocked off the ballot on petition challenges. He was nine signatures short of the necessary 500 after those ruled invalid were discarded.

So the incumbent, Common Council President Dave Franczyk, is unopposed for now. Both candidates have three business days to appeal once the decision has been issued.

Also in trouble is the candidacy of the Buffalo School Board’s Ralph Hernandez, who aims to challenge Niagara District Councilman Dave Rivera. After challenges, Hernandez was ruled to have just 299 valid signatures.

South Buffalo legislator Mickey Kearns was a winner at the 2011 Sorrento Cheese Italian Heritage Festival Bocce Tournament over the weekend.