Buffalo’s 2021 mayoral election may sound familiar: A political heavyweight tried to strut through a mayoral primary, losing to a democratic socialist. Democratic Party leaders were split on embracing the upstart, and deep-pocketed developers and business leaders put money behind an incumbent running without a major party line.
India Walton, a first-time candidate, upset four-term incumbent Byron Brown in the Democratic Primary, garnering national attention as pundits wondered if a major city would elect a socialist mayor.
Brown mounted a longshot write-in campaign during the general election — and won.
The dramatic election has notable similarities to New York City’s mayoral race, where Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani has risen above a field of more experienced challengers. The 33-year-old socialist shocked the political establishment when he defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York City’s Democratic primary last month.
People involved in the Buffalo election said that contest offers lessons for Mamdani as well as the candidates who are trying to stop him in November’s general election. The key is to take nothing for granted and reach out beyond a traditional base of support, the people said.
“That was the most bizarre election I've ever covered anywhere, and it was because it was just so unanticipated,” said Bob McCarthy, a political analyst for WKBW who spent 30 years as a political reporter for the Buffalo News. “ It's very similar, but there's so many differences.”
Lesson 1: You’ve got to campaign
Walton was able to excite progressives — including residents of gentrifying neighborhoods on Buffalo’s west side, McCarthy said. She painted Brown, who was running for a fifth term, as an out-of-touch incumbent who was unresponsive to the city’s needs. She promised to enact stronger tenant protections and distribute city resources more equitably.
Brown refused to debate his challenger and, similar to Cuomo ahead of this year’s primary, barely campaigned. Election results showed the mayor’s longtime base returned the favor.
“ He didn't do anything. He never saw her as a threat,” McCarthy said. “In the meantime, her people were mobilizing and winning and they were able to work the dynamics of a low turnout primary and win pretty convincingly.”
Walton won by roughly 1,000 votes in a race where turnout was a relatively low 21%. She said she was as surprised as anyone, and had only drafted a concession speech.
“ Shame on Byron Brown for not taking me serious as a candidate,” Walton said.
Brown didn’t respond to a request for an interview, but his campaign said that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic hindered his ability to campaign.
Cuomo’s primary campaign has been roundly criticized for skipping candidate forums and limited on-the-ground events. But looking at the general election, the most apt comparison to Brown is Mayor Eric Adams.
He completely skipped last month’s Democratic primary to focus on defending himself against federal corruption charges. President Donald Trump’s appointees at the Justice Department directed local prosecutors to drop the charges against Adams, who has denied wrongdoing.
After the primary vote, Adams argued that there was a broader electorate that hadn’t weighed in. Brown had made similar statements during the Buffalo election, where turnout was lower than his 2009 and 2013 primary campaigns. This year’s New York City primary saw 32% of Democrats weigh in — a level not seen for 35 years.
Betsey Ball, who managed Brown’s campaign, said COVID and other election changes dampened participation. She said the mayor realized there was a path forward when support poured in after the June primary.
“What we had seen was not necessarily a weakening in the level of support for the mayor. It was just a weakening in the level of participation of support for the mayor,” she said.
Lesson 2: The backlash is real
Wealthy business people and developers in both cities responded to the different primaries with concern that a socialist would oppose new development. In Buffalo, former GOP gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino and other real estate developers contributed to Brown’s campaign.
The greater resources fueled a deluge of attacks that Walton said she was unprepared for.
“ They would find photos of me scowling behind a bullhorn to make it seem like I was such a scary person,” she recalled.
There was also fresh scrutiny of Walton’s record. News outlets in Buffalo ran stories about her unpaid parking tickets. She said the outside money fueled these attacks, adding that Mamdani is in a better position to weather this storm.
“He got out in front of the Red Scare early. He's always been a socialist candidate,” Walton said, noting Mamdani was open about his affiliation with the DSA. “I think also the electorate in Buffalo is just unfamiliar and easily freaked out by anything that's not the status quo.”
Ravi Mangla, the national press secretary for the Working Families Party, worked with both the Walton and Mamdani campaigns. He said that people like hedge fund manager Bill Ackman contributed to super PACs boosting Cuomo and are now lining up behind Adams.
“Like in Buffalo, we’ve seen a handful of wealthy CEOs and special interests try to upend the primary results,” Mangla said. “But what Zohran has built will be hard to beat, especially by an incumbent in Eric Adams who has aligned himself with Donald Trump.”
Lesson 3: Expand your base
Brown leaned on garnering support from municipal unions and started campaigning in Black churches to turn out his traditional base of support. Walton, according to McCarthy, struggled to bring in more moderate voters.
Walton said this was partly due to attack ads, and partly due to a lack of planning.
“I think that a part of what wound up being the ultimate demise of the campaign is that we were just woefully unprepared. We didn't think about what was going to happen between June and November ahead of time,” she said. “And when primary day got here, it was like, ‘Holy crap, we actually did it.’”
Mangla and other political observers say Mamdani has learned this lesson. Since the primary, he has won over key Black and Hispanic leaders, including U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, as well as major labor unions that previously backed Cuomo. Mamdani has also reached out to business executives.
“Zohran has been extremely open, extremely willing to meet with people,” Mangla said. “He's worn down the opposition a little bit, at least to a point where they seem to be entertaining what a relationship with him could look like. And I think that point was not really reached in India's race.”
Lesson 4: It’s easier to win head-to-head
Republicans in Buffalo didn’t field a mayoral candidate in 2021, so Walton was the only major-party candidate on the ballot. That left Brown with an opportunity to wage a write-in campaign.
In addition to turning out his voters, Brown had to educate them on how to properly write his name on the ballot. Palm cards showed a diagram of where to place the mayor’s name, and the campaign paid for stamps bearing his name that voters could bring to the polls.
Ball said the effort was vigorous, and it eventually started to build on its own momentum. She said the campaign asked supporters to make lists of their friends and family and commit to canvassing them for Brown. On election night, Brown defeated Walton by around 20 percentage points.
“I think that's getting back to the roots of what we need to do more broadly as a Democratic Party,” Ball said, pointing to traditional local party structures with precinct captains. “It seems very daunting when you think about how to do that in a city like Buffalo versus a city like New York City.”
McCarthy said Mamdani is in a stronger position because he faces multiple opponents.
“It's a different dynamic [in New York City] because you've got people on the ballot, on independent lines, and, and the anti-Mamdani vote is going to be split,” McCarthy said. It’s not clear whether Cuomo and Adams will be able to consolidate that block, he said.
Both men are competing for the same voters and have urged each other to drop out of the race.
Lesson 5: Buffalo ain’t New York
The state’s largest and second-largest urban centers are very different places. New York is an international destination and a major center for financial services and media. Buffalo’s economy relied more heavily on manufacturing, and it hasn’t recovered nearly as well from the broader effects of deindustrialization.
“We're always going to be a Democratic city. That hasn't changed in 60 years,” McCarthy said of Buffalo. “This is a conservative, Democratic city that can be pretty progressive in its politics — but not that progressive.”
Indeed, some of Walton’s key supporters were DSA members from New York City who had already been elected to office. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez headlined a rally for Walton. She received support from figures like Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Mamdani, who as a freshman Assembly member came north to help campaign.
“We knocked doors, and afterward we had a volunteer appreciation party,” Walton recalled. “I brought Zohran eggplant wings … and he loved them.”
