Insiders Corner
Brown, Roberto And Paladino On Insider's Mind
By The Insider
May 5, 2009, 10:39

Mickey Kearns plans on announcing his run for Byron Brown’s seat on Thursday and Byron makes his announcement on Saturday in what should be a very lopsided race. Kearns run for the office of Mayor is ill advised, but word is he wants the experience so he can use it in the future for a higher office.

Byron Brown is invincible right now and unless some unforeseen scandal rocks City Hall, the job is his for as long as he wants it. It has been written here before that Byron ultimately has his eye on Louis Slaughter’s Congressional seat, but that will not happen for at least two years.

Turning the page; Len Roberto's ridiculous idea to abolish New York State's government received some media coverage yesterday which tells you something about the level of local reporting. Roberto, in a quest to over shadow fellow local “concerned citizen advocates” Jim Ostrowski and Russ Thompson has come up with an idea so preposterous that it is laughable on any level.

There is no doubt that the jocking for position among the three local political advocates has resulted in Roberto’s recent grand standing. Thompson and Ostrowski have recently made hay from the tee party stunt and Roberto needed a new idea to remain relevant.

Each individual started out as legitimately concerned citizens, with good reason to object to the issues they raised. Now, they have become addicted to seeing their names in print or on the local tube and it has become a feeding frenzy.

Even Tom Bauerle, the patron saint of grass root activists, suggested to Roberto this morning that the infighting between the three has become obvious. Roberto would claim he had no problems with either Ostrowski or Thompson, but sometimes their individual ideas created conflict. So now it will be interesting to see how either Ostrowski or Thompson can trump Roberto’s idea to abolish government.

The tragic death of Carl Paladino’s son is the reason why we have not seen Carl all over today’s Buffalo School Board election. Paladino has been the number one critic of Buffalo School Superintendent James Williams and the Board.

Paladino has been noticeably silent on today’s race and it is understandable considering the loss he and his family have just suffered. We spoke to someone very close to Carl over the weekend and we were told that originally Carl had big plans for this particular race, but they had all been dropped after the loss of his son.

We do not always agree with Paladino’s politics, but his voice is an important one in this community and he has the resources to back it up. Hopefully he will return to the fray when the time is right and once again become an advocate for positive change.

Finally, we knew former Congressman Jack Kemp well and mourn his passing. Kemp’s beliefs were a unique mixture of traditional Democrat with a Reagan Republican twist. Kemp used his status as a former football star and good looks to climb the national political ladder and carried far more clout than any local federal leader in the past thirty years. We lost a great one in Jack Kemp.


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