What’s next? Maziarz comes (officially) to Niagara Falls

State Senator George Maziarz withstood two fairly vicious campaigns this election season, yet kept his campaign mainly positive and won a landslide victory. His district has changed. He will represent all of Niagara County, including, for the first time, the City of Niagara Falls.

After stomping challenger Johnny Destino into the ground during September’s Democratic primary and eviscerating Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster’s handpicked candidate, Amy Hope Witryol, in last week’s general election, nine-term state Senator George Maziarz took time out to talk to the press. He's looking forward to finally being able to represent the city in Albany, he said.

“I never really stop campaigning,” he told an energetic young reporter over the weekend, on his way to speak before a crowd in Lewiston. “After this I’m going back to the Falls for an event at the Baptist church.”

Maziarz crushed Witryol, a political newcomer and out-of-towner who has only lived in Niagara County for fourteen years, three fewer than Maziarz has spent occupying his Senate seat. A former banker, Witryol comically took a full day to formally concede defeat, by email, despite the fact that she lost by a whopping 62-37 percent.

Perhaps she took solace in the fact that her loss wasn’t as bad as the drubbing Maziarz handed her two years ago, when she lost by a 2-1 margin.

Witryol’s campaign manager, fumbling former state assemblywoman Francine DelMonte, is no stranger to humiliating defeat: In 2010 DelMonte lost the seat she’d held for a decade in the primary. She is apparently no better at managing other people's campaigns than she was her own.

"I certainly wish my opponent well in anything that she might do," Maziarz diplomatically told the press, following his overwhelming victory.

Privately, he didn’t argue with the suggestion that Witryol running against him again and again, for the rest of eternity, might constitute a kind of political heaven that he wouldn't necessarily oppose.

He was somewhat less sanguine when the talk turned to the prospect of trying to work with Dyster, Witryol’s strident supporter.

In the redistricting that followed the 2010 census, Maziarz picked up the Democratic stronghold of Niagara Falls and lost a lot of the Republican strength he once enjoyed in rural Orleans County.

His longtime love affair with the city has led many here to believe that he represented it when he actually didn’t. Workers in Maziarz’ office are used to receiving calls for assistance that would be more properly directed to Mark Grisanti, Antoine Thompson, Al Coppola, Byron Brown or whichever other Buffalonian happened to be representing the Falls at the time.

“Niagara Falls has problems and all of them are made worse by the fact Dyster’s the mayor,” Maziarz said. “The good news is that, in just two-and-a-half years, it will be time to begin another mayoral campaign.”

One of the biggest problems is Dyster's apparent lack of the basic human decency that leads one to return telephone calls and answer letters. Two months ago, Maziarz said, he wrote Dyster with an offer to broker a meeting with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on possible resolutions to the Seneca casino cash impasse.

The Senecas currently owe the city around $60 million under the terms of the tribe’s compact with the state, a debt Dyster used recently to justify his demand for an unprecedented 8 percent increase in city property taxes. In the mayor's own words, the impasse is the biggest crisis facing municipal government here.

“The mayor apparently couldn’t be bothered with responding to the offer one way or the other,” Maziarz said. "I never heard back from him at all."

Another sore point for Maziarz is Dyster’s treatment of Nik Wallenda, the daredevil whose high wire walk above the mighty Cataracts between the U.S. and Canada earlier this year garnered the city publicity worldwide.

Instead of congratulations on his death-defying feat, Dyster sent Wallenda a bill for city services he claimed were the result of the spectacular event. And every attempt by the Wallenda camp to help the city capitalize on the positive image portrayed in the aftermath of the event has been snubbed by City Hall.

“It is absolutely baffling,” Maziarz said of Dyster’s bizarre attitude. What I can tell you is that, every time there’s a newspaper story about how the mayor is treating him, Nik gets a call from Mayor Jim Diodati over in Niagara Falls, Ontario, asking how he can be of help.”

In June, Wallenda is set to walk across the Grand Canyon in Arizona, a tightrope spectacular already scheduled for viewing on a major television network. The event will be billed as “Wallenda: Beyond Niagara,” and will provide yet another wave of positive publicity for the beleaguered city.

But while Diodati has been actively participating in pre-production aspects of the extravaganza, Dyster has been busy not answering mail and failing to return phone calls.

“It’s simple economics,” said Maziarz. “The mayor’s idea of economic development is to spend forty million tax dollars on a new railroad station to serve the dozen or so people a day who arrive in Niagara Falls by rail, while squandering millions of dollars in free tourism publicity and shunning those who brought it to the city.”

Dyster has showered the billionaire Seminole Nation of Indians, owners of the Hard Rock Café, with $657,000 to host a series of rock concerts headlined by bands that have failed to draw flies, and spent another half million to host a “Holiday Market” last year that few attended and fewer still enjoyed.

His lack of sophistication in matters of entertainment, tourism and marketing have made the city a joke, and an easy mark for shiftless promoters who find themselves stuck with acts and attractions they couldn’t possibly sell anywhere else.

But the prospect of dealing with our bumpkin mayor and his yokel worldview might be just the tip of the iceberg for Maziarz as he heads into his new term. The state Senate has likely shifted to Democratic rule from a Republican majority, and some say that the powerful party leader may have trouble pushing through any agenda in the new climate.

Maziarz, who has gained a reputation for his ability to work with colleagues across the aisle, isn’t worried.

“We’re looking at a very narrow margin, and there are four or five disillusioned Democrats who have already made overtures about working with the minority,” he said.

Maziarz pointed out that the last time Democrats took control – in 2009 – he was permitted to retain his chairmanship of the powerful Energy Committee, despite the change.

“I try and get along with everybody,” he said. “The only thing I’m interested in is what is best for my district.”

Perhaps now with Maziarz representing Niagara Falls, there may be finally someone fighting for the city, to help prevent the perpetual raiding and looting of the assets of Niagara Falls by the looters in Albany..