Derek Gee/Buffalo News
Sergio Rodriguez, a Common Council candidate in the Niagara District, is the only Republican seeking a city office this year.
Once there was a proud and powerful species of politics in the City of Buffalo known as the Republican Party. As recently as the late 1940s, it ruled over the city like Tyrannosaurus rex crushing its opposition. Even in its decline, it faithfully offered scrappy competition to the everstronger Democrats.
But now Buffalo’s Grand Old Party is tottering on the brink of extinction. It scraped up only one Republican willing to run for city office this year, an eager former Marine named Sergio Rodriguez in the Common Council’s Niagara District.
Few expect him to succeed, and fewer expect Buffalo Republicans to mount even token opposition again. Its leaders all agree that in Buffalo, Rodriguez represents the last of a breed.
“I hate to say it, but it’s where we’ve ended up,” said Dennis V. Ryan, the longtime chairman of the Buffalo GOP. “There’s nothing I haven’t tried — from cutting deals to endorsing Democrats to working with [former Mayor Jimmy] Griffin.”
“This city is not going in our direction right now,” he added.
It wasn’t always that way. Republicans always offered loyal opposition even in the city’s most Democratic enclaves. But Ryan says virtually no member of the GOP cares about enduring election rigors when history shows the party has no chance.
Indeed, Republicans have run spirited campaigns for Council in the Delaware District — which has 12,138 registered Democrats vs. 3,452 Republicans — over the past two elections, only to get clobbered. In 2005, the party rallied behind the well-organized, well-financed mayoral candidacy of Kevin J. Helfer only to suffer a humiliating loss of 64 percent to 27 percent.
“My job is to try to run Republicans, and I will,” Ryan said. “But nobody is calling. And nobody is knocking at my door.”
A number of factors have combined to paint a bleak picture for Buffalo Republicans:
• In 1970, the city reported 116,950 registered Democrats and 63,728 Republicans. Today, it has 105,974 Democrats and only 17,337 Republicans.
• No Republican has been elected mayor since Chester Kowal in 1961.
• No true Republican has been elected to the Common Council since William L. Marcy Jr. in 1981. (Helfer was a registered Conservative Party member in 1993 when he was elected on the Republican line to represent the University District.)
• City Republicans have closed their headquarters in Ellicott Square and even scrapped annual fundraisers held downtown on Lincoln’s Birthday and in South Buffalo around St. Patrick’s Day.
• Buffalo Comptroller Andrew A. SanFilippo, a Democrat who lost his party’s primary in 2005 but won the general election on Republican and minor party lines, declined the GOP slot when it was offered earlier this year. Sources close to him called it a political liability.
Helfer, who generated wide attention in his 2005 mayoral campaign, said he never really stood a chance, despite the hardest work of his life. A future candidate, he said, would have no practical reason to mount such an intense campaign.
“People have absolutely concluded, unfortunately, that Republicans have no chance in the City of Buffalo,” he said. “There is no doubt in my mind. We worked hard, had a decent message and raised money — and we got whomped.”
Richard E. Moot, a Buffalo attorney who ran for mayor in the 1969 Republican primary against Alfreda W. Slominski, calls the demise of the Buffalo GOP “sickening” and “terrible for the system.”
“If there is no Republican running, the Republican voters will be discouraged from going to the polls,” he said, “and we all know that low turnout is one of the city’s and country’s biggest problems.”
But this year, only Rodriguez has answered the call. That means no Republican candidate for comptroller, city judge, Council or County Legislature from Buffalo — although a handful of Council Democrats have accepted GOP backing.
Rodriguez, a Starbucks manager, says he recognizes the odds are stacked against him. But at 27, he says he is idealistic enough to try.
“I was in the Marines for five years, and the party’s values correspond with what I stand for,” he said. “I realize the odds are definitely against me, but I go in knowing that.”
Some Democrats say the retreat by Republicans, who hold less of a disadvantage countywide, is part of a strategy to suppress voter turnout in heavily Democratic Buffalo when a viable Republican — Christopher C. Collins — is running for county executive. They say fewer Buffalo Democrats will show up at the polls without local races, helping the Collins effort.
“They don’t want a race anywhere in the city, and the cynical theory is that it’s all about the politics of the county executive race,” said Donald A. Van Every, spokesman for James P. Keane, a Democratic candidate for county executive. “It will depress the vote in a very dramatic way in the city.”
Ryan acknowledges some validity in Van Every’s view.
“I’m not going to lie to you. There are many people on the county level who are not unhappy about our problem,” he said. “But it’s not conscious.”
While many political organizations would mount a registration drive or ask consultants to devise an action plan, most Buffalo Republicans accept declining enrollment as a product of fundamental changes in Buffalo’s population.
Ryan, meanwhile, says he’s proud of the way he and other city Republicans have held the organization together. While unsure about running for chairman again, he said he sticks around because “it’s what I do.” That is not getting easier.