When she toppled four-term Mayor Byron Brown in the Democratic primary in June, India B. Walton showed herself to be one confident democratic socialist.
“This victory is ours, and it’s the first of many," she said. "If you are in an elected office right now, you are being put on notice. We are coming.”
By "we," Walton meant democratic socialists like her were coming for establishment Democrats in Buffalo and beyond.
But did Walton really help her cause that night? Or did she sabotage it?
The results of Tuesday's election – which showed the number of write-in ballots outstripping the number of votes for Walton by 18 percentage points or so – boded well for the write-in mayor, Byron W. Brown.
And some political pros said the seeds of Walton's disappointing performance were those she sowed on primary night and in the weeks afterwards, when she failed to broaden her base of support beyond the most progressive of progressives.
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Instead, some political insiders said last week that Walton did just the opposite of what she should have done. She alienated established Democratic council members and others who could have helped her, but who instead happily joined Brown's write-in campaign.
Among those enraged by Walton's primary-night statement was Masten District Council Member Ulysees O. Wingo.
"It's not good for you as a novice neophyte freshman elected official in any capacity to think that you have the the capacity to come after a (Council President) Darius Pridgen or a Ulysees Wingo or a (Assembly Majority Leader) Crystal Peoples-Stokes," Wingo said. "How dare you make these statements?"
History was made in the Buffalo mayoral election Tuesday, just not the one that seemed destined five months ago.
North District Council Member Joseph Golombek Jr., a centrist, is no natural ally of Walton's. But he, too, took her "we are coming" comments seriously.
"I think that she spoke the truth, which is what her fringe organization desires: a very, very left-wing, everything in the city and in the region," Golombek said.
But in doing so, Walton didn't take the traditional path of traditional primary winners: reaching out to the loser's supporters to try to unify the party.
With 98% of precincts reporting by 11 p.m., nearly 210,000 ballots had been counted in the sheriff's race. Four years ago, 219,067 people voted for sheriff.
"I think she should have reached out on primary night," Golombek said. "She didn't. "And I think that she let the cat out of the bag: what her real intentions are."
But Walton's failed efforts to broaden her support go beyond her primary night comments.
Her coming failure could be seen in a campaign that, according to some observers, remained an undisciplined, undirected effort for weeks after the primary – weeks in which Brown dominated the discussion with his write-in bid and an ill-fated but much-publicized effort to get his name on the ballot under the newly created "Buffalo Party" banner.
And it could be seen in a campaign that often seemed more comfortable preaching to the choir rather than seeking converts. She attracted the same faces to rallies all over the city where she repeated the same message she had preached for months: that she was a different kind of Democrat.
"It's never going to work if we just keep electing Democrats who are beholden to the lobby, to the corporations," she said to a tent full of her fellow travelers in South Buffalo in mid-October. "Who would have thought that in the sleepy City of Buffalo, where nothing exciting ever happens, that we would be the epicenter of the rising of the working class."
Brown celebrates returns with supporters. "We couldn't have done this without you," mayor tells cheering crowd.
Except they weren't that. In working-class South Buffalo, write-in votes outnumbered those for Walton by more than 5 to 1.
"You know, there's a lot of police officers that live in this community," said South District Council Member Christopher P. Scanlon, an ardent Brown supporter. "And for the better part of all last year, Miss Walton was walking around yelling through a blowhorn to defund the police ... It makes people uncomfortable."
In other words, Walton never worked to meld her vision of the working class with the reality of Buffalo's working class – a diverse polyglot of city employees and immigrants, factory workers and gig workers, baristas and barkeeps who don't necessarily agree on much of anything politically.
But even if she never reached out to all of that diverse polyglot, there's no doubt she thinks that in her heart, she's right.
Refusing to concede her apparent defeat Tuesday night, she said: "I will continue to fight for everyday Buffalonians who are struggling to make ends meet."
