Buffalo’s India Walton-Byron Brown race for mayor heats up with less than a month to election day

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — With the November elections a little more than three weeks away, the race for mayor in Buffalo revved up into high gear, Saturday.

The national leader for the Working Families Party told Walton’s supporters, as they gathered at Martin Luther King Park, the mayor’s race in Buffalo has nationwide implications.

“And I am not exaggerating when I say that the eyes of the nation would be on Buffalo,” Maurice Mitchell, Working Families Party said.

The national interest was drawn by the upset of an incumbent four-term mayor in June by a candidate identifying herself as a Democratic Socialist and is drawing other Democratic Socialists and progressives into the fray.

“You have no option, this is the obvious choice to elect people who have lived in the struggle, survived in the struggle, and will fight for people who are still in the struggle,” New York State Senator Jabari Brisport added.

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On another side of town, Mayor Brown got together with the United Auto Workers union to promote his write-in campaign, educating voters on the nuances of writing in Byron Brown on the ballot, or using a stamp and filling in the circle.

“Certainly gives us great hope for a resounding victory November 2, when people come to the polls and write down Byron Brown,” said Mayor Brown.

The United Auto Workers union represents thousands of workers at the Ford and General Motors plants in Western New York. They say they have a long history of working with Mayor Brown going back to more than 20 years when he was on the Common Council.

“He has always supported not only buying American-made fleet vehicles for the City of Buffalo but UAW-made vehicles for the City of Buffalo,” said James Lakeman, United Auto Workers.

Walton seems confident she will pull off the upset on November 2, those t-shirts proclaim her to be Buffalo’s sixty-third mayor.

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“We are not going to win by a very small margin. This is going to be a convincing, a no-questions-asked, a nail-in-the-coffin type of thing,” Walton said.

But the auto workers say not so fast. They have experience in Detroit, on their home turf of pulling off a write-in campaign for mayor.

The present mayor of Motown made history winning as a write-in candidate, back in 2013.