Congressman Brian Higgins was discussing the just-completed election for mayor a few days ago when the topic of Byron Brown’s strong results in South Buffalo inevitably entered the conversation.
“And do you attribute that to Council member Chris Scanlon?” the Politics Column asked.
“Oh, you mean the ‘mayor maker?’ ” Higgins quipped.
Indeed, many of those studying Brown’s big win over India Walton on Nov. 2 bestow the same title on the South District council member. South reported the city’s second highest turnout with 8,620 voters on Election Day, with the mayor claiming a whopping 84% of those votes. It was the most lopsided total in the entire city.
South Buffalo never posed a question for the Brown campaign, which seemed to plant a sign on every other lawn in the district. It’s home to lots of police officers, firefighters and other city workers wary of Walton ideas like cutting $7.5 million from the Police Department budget. Now, Scanlon looms as a big part of Brown’s victory. He assembled a force of more than 100 volunteers who knocked on doors, placed phone calls, texted and made the mayor’s case on social media.
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On Election Day, they used the same methods to make sure Brown supporters actually went to the polls. None of those plans came down from “on high” back on primary day in June, leading to Brown’s defeat. This time the troops were activated and the message was clear: Write Down Byron Brown.
“We knew we were dealing with a tight-knit South Buffalo community,” Scanlon recalled last week, detailing a plan that assigned volunteers to their best contacts.
“Who knows that voter best? Who can talk to them?” he asked. “We just used that idea of a familiar community and put together a very, very strong effort.”
Scanlon has matured into a South Buffalo figure of influence since his appointment to fill a Council vacancy back in 2012. Since then, he has survived his own primaries and general elections to establish some longevity in a revolving-door seat. But in the big mayoral election of 2021, he seems to have cemented himself as a political power.
It all comes naturally for Scanlon, a former bartender and restaurant manager. He is the son of John “Scanoots” Scanlon, a legendary figure in Buffalo politics who played a key role in the late Mayor Jim Griffin’s rise to four terms in City Hall.
“When you grow up in a household involved in all those previous campaigns, if nothing else, you learn by osmosis,” the younger Scanlon says.
Higgins, also a former South council member who maintains his base in the neighborhood, recalls John Scanlon orchestrating the same kind of South Buffalo turnout and ethnic alliances for Griffin that prevailed on Nov. 2 for Brown. Griffin’s successes, Higgins said, stemmed from “the brilliance of John Scanlon.”
“He was Griffin’s guy, the undisputed leader of his political organization – and very, very smart,” the congressman said.
If you follow the congressman’s analysis, you begin to recognize how political skills have been handed down from father to son.
“He knew where the big families were and the needs of the big families,” Higgins said of the elder Scanlon. “That’s a lost art. But Chris grew up in it. It shows how one well-organized community can make a difference. But it takes a leader to do that.”
The council member, Higgins said, “learned from the best.”
Chris Scanlon recalls that his troops convened on the morning of June 23 – the day after Brown’s stunning primary defeat – to determine “what on earth can we do to get the mayor elected?”
Part of that involved daily consultations with Scanoots on how to enlist the hard work, map out the organization, build from the ground up and push out the vote. They concentrated on South Buffalo and the Old First Ward, forming a new – and again successful – version of the old Griffin forces.
“He has a wealth of knowledge when it comes to this stuff,” the council member said, “and I was lucky to have him in my corner.”
