Democrats have best chance in decades to elect an Erie County sheriff

Take it as evidence this year’s race for sheriff differs from those six straight elections in which the Republican-Conservative alliance triumphed and put its guy in charge at 10 Delaware Ave. This year, Kim Beaty could become the first Democrat elected Erie County sheriff since Thomas F. Higgins captured a third term in 1993. 

In the six most recent sheriff’s races, the Republican side of the field presented one candidate – Patrick Gallivan and then Timothy B. Howard. And in most of those races, there was no hot contest for Buffalo mayor to bring out the city’s concentration of more than 100,000 Democratic voters in November.

Not so this year. Four-term incumbent Mayor Byron Brown is fighting for his political career in a write-in campaign against democratic socialist India Walton, the upstart who beat him in the Democratic primary. The race and its ideological contrasts have grabbed nationwide attention and should stoke turnout.

It bodes well for Beaty. She is the Canisius College public safety director who held the post of deputy commissioner before retiring from the Buffalo Police Department.

Aside from the expected surge in Buffalo’s turnout, Beaty’s chances should be improved by the unusual number of candidates – three – on the Conservative/Republican side: Republican nominee John C. Garcia is a retired Buffalo police detective endorsed by Howard and Gallivan; Ted DiNoto, a detective lieutenant with the Amherst police, is a Republican who chose to run as an independent; Conservative nominee Karen Healy-Case works in private security after a career with the Buffalo police. 

Days ago, Healy-Case suspended her campaign, admitting she has little chance to win after losing the Republican primary to Garcia by almost 20 percentage points. Though she threw her support to Beaty, Healy-Case can’t take her name off the ballot and still has the potential to siphon votes from the Republican favorite. So does DiNoto, who is campaigning aggressively and hopes to run up the middle to emerge as sheriff.

Impact of mayor's race

That all means Ralph C. Lorigo, Erie County’s Conservative Party chairman, has Republican Garcia’s campaign sign posted outside his West Seneca law firm, because he doesn’t want the Sheriff’s Office going to the Democrat. 

“It’s not my position to turn the Sheriff’s Office over to the Democratic candidate,” said Lorigo, who acknowledges that Garcia faces stiff headwinds: A Buffalo mayor’s race that could bring out as many as 35,000 additional voters, and a ballot that names DiNoto and Healy-Case as well. 

Still, Lorigo thinks Garcia can win. He said Beaty will need a strong showing in Erie County’s most populous town, Amherst, but predicts DiNoto will whittle away at her support in the municipality where he has spent his law enforcement career. Finally, Lorigo sees Beaty’s race as underfunded; she had around $50,000 earlier this month. Garcia had around $190,000. The candidates will report their latest fundraising totals Friday.

Beaty said she sees the benefits that a high mayoral turnout and a split Republican field provide her campaign. But she would rather talk about "my experiences, my qualifications and my credentials."

She and Democratic Party Chairman Jeremy Zellner see a distinct difference between the depth of her resume and that of Garcia, who has never held a command rank. Says Beaty: “I don’t need on-the-job training to be sheriff.”

A Buffalo mayor’s race hasn’t captured this much attention since 2005, when Brown ran for his first term against Republican Kevin Helfer and two minor party candidates. Almost 75,000 votes were cast in that contest, the most in a Buffalo mayor’s race in this century. The turnout spilled into the sheriff’s race. Retired Buffalo homicide Detective Charles T. Fieramusca walloped Howard in the city by a 2-1 margin, or by more than 20,000 votes.

But 2005 was an unusual year in another respect: a county budget crisis threw widespread attention onto County Legislature races and turned out voters in the Republican towns, too. More than 281,000 people voted in the race in 2005, a total that hasn’t been seen in a sheriff's election since. Howard, who by then was the acting sheriff, won 52%-48%, or by about 9,000 votes.

Howard's record

Howard, who has decided not to seek a fifth term, gives Beaty plenty of fodder to throw at Garcia. Thirty-one inmates have died during Howard's 16 years as sheriff. Another inmate escaped through a known weakness at the Correctional Facility and killed a state trooper while on the run. Howard resisted outside efforts to improve the county jails and took a part-time job at a bank while the jails were under the watch of two federal monitors. He criticized the district attorney who charged a deputy for beating a Buffalo Bills fan.

During deposition testimony about the training his office gives jail deputies, Howard answered “I don’t know” 68 times. This year, he signed an agreement with the state Commission of Correction vowing to better investigate reports of sexual assault involving inmates because past inquiries, into allegations of sexual contact between his staff and inmates, had fallen short. Deputies have muttered over the years that Howard is rarely seen. During a deposition in April, the sheriff told a lawyer he spends one day a week at headquarters. The rest of the time he works from home.

Fearing a Garcia victory will continue the status quo, a group called Showing Up for Racial Justice has been dogging Garcia at fundraisers and other events. “We won’t accept another Howard,” says one of their signs.

Garcia, who switched his enrollment from Democrat to Republican before entering the race, tempers his criticism of the outgoing sheriff who endorsed him but says he won't do some of the same things Howard has done, like attend a political rally in uniform or attend the criminal trial of a deputy, as Howard did in uniform for then-Deputy Kenneth P. Achtyl. 

During a news conference, Garcia said he did not agree Howard had a difficult working relationship with the Commission of Correction, which twice took him to court, issued directives ordering him to follow the rules imposed on all county jails and called Erie County’s lockups among the state’s worst run. Still, Garcia says the Sheriff’s Office has many problems, and he will transform it into a modern agency. "I won't be an absentee landlord," he said recently.

Lorigo's 'mess'

The county’s largest police unions endorse Garcia, as do gun-rights advocates who like Howard. Among them is the 1791 Society. In June, the society’s Frank Panasuk posted this Facebook message after Garcia trounced Healy-Case in the GOP primary: “Conservative Party Chairman Ralph Lorigo needs to correct the mess he has created or resign immediately.”

It was a reference to the Conservatives’ decision to endorse Healy-Case, which prodded the county GOP to endorse her in the hopes that their unity would rebuff anyone else aspiring to be the Republican-Conservative candidate.

Garcia's primary victory put both their names onto the general election ballot – exactly what the parties wanted to avoid.

“We made a good endorsement. That doesn’t mean that there was anything terribly wrong with the other candidates, especially John Garcia," said Lorigo, before adding, "we want the office to remain in Republican hands.”