Niagara Falls City Council contest underway early this year

Niagara Falls at a Crossroads, City Council contest underway early this year

Seven months before the primary elections of September, candidates are announcing for Niagara Falls City Council.

Three seats are up for election on the five member council.

Incumbent Councilwoman Kristen Grandinetti (D), and Republican challengers Robert Pascoal and Sam Archie have declared their candidacies.

It is not known if incumbents Andrew Touma and Charles Walker, both Democrats, will seek re-election.

Four years ago, Touma led the field with 4,419 votes in the general election (Grandinetti and Walker rounded out the field, with 3,907 and 3,625 votes, respectively).

Walker has the most seniority on the council having been elected in 1997.

Among other candidates said to considering running are Jim Szwedo, who ran in the Republican primary for mayor and captured 28% of the vote.

Archie was Glenn Choolokian’s campaign manager in a bifurcated effort for mayor which during the primary nearly toppled Dyster in 2015, who won by a mere 60 votes, followed by a bizarre write in challenge which many saw as ensuring Dyster’s reelection as Choolokian got 1300 votes which was more than the difference separating Dyster from his Republican opponent John Accardo.

Archie and Pascoal, and Szwedo if he runs, represent a challenge to the failed policies of perennial Democratic Party rule here in the city of Niagara Falls.

During the 2013 elections, finishing dead last was Sam Fruscione, the man who opposed the Hamister Hotel project.

Here’s the checklist for the Hamister Hotel project, in case anyone has forgotten:

Highly questionable RFP selection process, check

Highly questionable bidding practices, check.

Scaled down from original plans, check.

Outright gift of city property to rich developer, check.

Maybe not so rich, given financing difficulties, check.

Years behind schedule, check.

Wildly inflated price, check.

Scaled down again, check.

Needing Goldman Sachs bail-out, check.

Fruscione paid a price for his skepticism. Vilified by Mayor Paul Dyster, he was called everything from an obstructionist to a malcontent, and in a possibly unprecedented move, Gov. Andrew Cuomo endorsed Fruscione’s opponents.

Councilwoman Grandinetti, there’s no denying it, is supportive of the mayor whose nine years in office have been nothing short of catastrophic for the city of Niagara Falls, which in 2015 had the highest rate of per capita violent crime in all of New York State. While she has announced her opposition to Cuomo’s Goat Island lodge, she’s never had too much to say about the state’s hegemony over the city’s tourism and hydropower assets.

Although he hasn’t officially announced, Johnny Destino is mulling running. An attorney and former Niagara Falls School Board member, Destino has insight into the workings of City Hall having been employed in the Dyster administration. After securing the minor party lines of Working Families and the Green Party for Dyster, which immensely aided his narrow win over Accardo, he was fired a day before he would have become permanent under civil service.

Robert Restaino, who was for a time, rumored to be considering running, sources tell us will not and bide his time when he is expected to run for mayor.

Niagara Falls Republican Committee Chairman Bill Carroll told the Reporter that he is seeking further candidates who may be interested in running for City Council.

We have received no similar request from his Democratic counterpart.