Bryon McIntyre

Buffalo fireman Bryon McIntyre lost his tenuous lead in the three-way race for the third and final at-large seat on the Buffalo school board today, when absentee ballots were tallied. Incumbent Florence Johnson won the seat; McIntyre fell behind both Johnson and incumbent Catherine Collins.

So it’s John Licata, Chris Jacobs, and Florence Johnson in the at-large seats.

McIntyre stopped by the Artvoice offices after the voted were counted. You can watch Buck Quigley’s interview with him on AVTV in the morning.

Over at the Buffalo News, Peter Simon keeps insisting that the election was a referendum on Superintendent James Williams. I guess there’s an argument to be made there, though I think that’s simplistic.

This, though is puzzling. Simon writes:

The chances of Buffalo Schools Superintendent James A. Williams retaining majority support on the Buffalo Board of Education brightened today when incumbent Florence D. Johnson captured the board’s third at-large seat…

With Johnson, Williams has four supporters on the board. With Licata, he’s got five critics. Are things really so bright for Williams?

In which Buffalo Rising regurgitates statements from the Buffalo Niagara Partnership and Grassroots.

If this post is, as its title would indicate, simply a “Reminder to Vote,” then why not mention the names of the challengers? Why quote only two organizations that are endorsing the incumbents?

Even Peter Simon’s fairly tepid piece in today’s Buffalo News—which openly endorsed the three incumbents on its op-ed pages—acknowledges that there is opposition to those three, and even perhaps some nebulous, hard-to-report controversy about the way the Buffalo Niagara Partnership (“business interests,” Simon writes vaguely) pumped money into their campaigns. (Hard-t0-report unless you’re us, who took them to court, or Channel 4’s Rich Newberg, who picked up on it yesterday.)

Come on, BRO. If you’re endorsing a candidate, just say so and tell us why. Not someone else’s reasons. Your own.

A QUICK AFTERTHOUGHT: One of the commenters on the BRO post suggests the same critique could be made of Artvoice: Our coverage of this school board race has been good, the commenter says, but biased; we clearly oppose the three incumbents but have not explicitly endorsed.

Fair enough, I guess, though I would add that we are not biased for anyone. Most of our coverage has been about finances and process; it just so happens that that coverage (so far) has reflected badly on the incumbents and their supporters. We tend to think a change would do the school board good, but we’re not endorsing any one or any two or three of the challengers.