Eddie Egriu – the founder of PUSH USA – announced his candidacy for Congress on March 10th in the Western New York congressional district where he has lived since 1983. In the four weeks that followed, Egriu has been quickly earning the support of the district’s diverse constituencies. He now looks poised to unseat a longtime career politician who was first elected to public office in 1988, and has served in the Congress for the past decade.
This is how he did it.
A strong base of support
Egriu is well known in Buffalo’s activist communities, a city hit hard by industrial restructuring, free trade, and the collapse of American manufacturing. Buffalo is still reeling from a 53 year decline that has continued, despite the political rhetoric of so many of the rust belt region’s career politicians. What’s worse, the region has long suffered from a nasty political culture where brutal party factions have unyieldingly battled for the patronage, contracts, and grant money that can be bestowed (or steered) with the insider influence that comes with elected office.
Egriu, a businessman and entrepreneur, has developed nearly a dozen properties along Jefferson Avenue. He’s helped spawn local businesses – from a gasoline station to restaurants – that continue to benefit underserved communities. He helped get a non-profit housing group, People United for Sustainable Housing, off the ground and served as its project director – rehabbing dozens of abandoned homes on the city’s West Side that were intended for demolition, while training young people in construction trades. So when it came time for petitioning to get on the ballot, Egriu had the robust support of the “forgotten” neighborhoods where he continues to invest, with dozens of supporters going door to door collecting his nominating petitions.
The announcement
Egriu’s announcement set the thematic tone of his campaign. He held the announcement on a neighborhood block that included 7 abandoned houses and 7 vacant lots, offering the scene as evidence of the incumbent’s lie, and the crux of his rationale for reelection: that “Buffalo is Booming.”
“The view must look different from the cigar room of the Buffalo Club,” Egriu said. “Brian Higgins is owned by Banksters, defense contractors, and destructive energy interests. I’ve had enough of the Mitt Romney wing of the Democratic Party.”
In all of his prepared speeches, and even in off-the-cuff remarks, Egriu makes it clear that he is fighting for “the other Buffalo, the Buffalo that no one talks about.” He is fighting for the poor, the underprivileged, and the marginalized. In every event that he attends across the city, he promises change – pledging to be a congressman whose door is open to everyone, calling himself “the Peoples’ candidate.”
Bold moves early
Egriu has not shied from controversy. In fact, he has embraced it. Early in the campaign – only a week after his announcement – he called for the federal legalization of hemp for industrial use and for use by adults. He also wants to expunge all non-violent marijuana convictions.
The hemp plant can be used for a wide variety of industrial uses, like biodegradable plastics, durable textiles, reinforced concrete, and biofuel. Egriu envisions entire industries – that we can’t even imagine yet – emerging from less government restrictions. That would create jobs and new economic opportunities. That style of outside-the-box thinking has earned him the support of young people and unlikely voters – two groups that are key constituencies to unseating an old machine-style politician like Brian Higgins.
Standing up for sick people
The West Side of Buffalo suffers from epidemic rates of asthma, and shockingly elevated rates of cancer, stroke, and neurological disorders, which have been linked to cancerous diesel particulates that emanate from the Peace Bridge, America’s second busiest border crossing with Canada. Each day, between 3,000 and 4,500 cargo trucks cross the bridge, which is located at the eastern shore of Lake Erie. Steady lake effect winds push the exhaust particulates deep into the city, causing horrible public health consequences.
For nearly the last decade, Higgins has relentlessly pushed for a massive expansion of the bridge, its customs plaza, and its truck processing capacity. He has called for more trucks crossing at the bridge, while down playing health concerns for residents across broad swaths of the city. Higgins’ cold and callous behavior towards these sick residents has angered many.
Egriu has stood by these residents, calling on the Obama Administration to investigate a federal interagency review that had been assembled to investigate the city’s environmental justice issue, but it was abruptly disbanded, seemly for political motivations.
“If they don’t stop this plan, we’re going to get some people together and make some noise – and we’re going to force them to stop it,” Egriu said.
A call for more funding
Perhaps Egriu’s most stinging criticism of Higgins is related to the New York Power Authority (NYPA), a state owned utility that derives a vast majority of its power from the Niagara Falls Power Project, one of the world’s largest hydroelectric generating plants. The utility enjoys an operating profit upwards of $300 million annually, the result of excessive energy prices across Upstate New York that are, in fact, the highest in the nation.
In 2007, when the utility’s federal license to operate the plant expired, Higgins did nothing to seek more resources for the Western New York communities that have elected him. Western New York got the short end of that political stick, and receives only $1 million a year from the power project for 50 years, a mere fraction of the value that is being systematically “stolen” from the region.
Egriu called on NYPA to share in the range of $5 billion over 50 years, or $100 million annually (about 33% of the state owned utility’s operating profit). If they refuse, Egriu will seek to have the federal operating license rescinded.
Standing up on visionary issues
Most congressional candidates take a more traditional approach to getting elected. They are tepid, unsure of their positions, and worry greatly not to offend the easily offended. Egriu decided early on in his campaign to take a different tact. He is a fierce campaigner and knows what he thinks on the issues. He’s not the kind of politician who obfuscates or attempts to avoid hard issues. He confronts them, head on.
There has been a growing new urbanism movement in Western New York. Urban planners and city activists have been demanding higher quality urban design, better public spaces, investments in parks, mass transit expansion, improved waterfront access, and the removal of massive expressways that have destroyed once proud neighborhoods, flagship parks, and a breathtaking waterfront.
While other elected officials ignore these pleas and contort themselves to avoid the issues, Egriu has been aggressively articulating the community’s vision for itself. He wants the Scajaquada Expressway, which cuts through the city’s most iconic public park, removed entirely. He wants the Kensington Expressway, which destroyed a 200 foot wide parkway designed by the famed Fredrick Law Olmsted. Egriu has already called for a restoration of the parkway.
Indeed, highway removal may become a central issue in the campaign since Egriu’s opponent, Brian Higgins, fought hard to reconstruct an elevated highway on Buffalo’s outer harbor, which has been almost universally acknowledged as a colossal mistake that wasted $50 million in public money and decades worth of waterfront development opportunities. The highway further severs the city from its waterfront, inhibits development opportunities, and suppresses property tax values.
Eddie has momentum, but will he have money?
If current trends continue until primary day on June 23rd, it looks like Egriu will win the Democratic Party’s nomination. Polling data indicates that Eddie’s name recognition is becoming pervasive across the congressional district, and he is quickly closing the gap with Higgins. Egriu’s favorability numbers are way up. Both Egriu and Higgins are neck-and-neck when it comes to likely voters, but Egriu is way ahead when it comes to voters who don’t usually vote. Will he be able to get those new voters to come out to vote on primary day?
At this point, the only advantage that the incumbent still holds over Egriu is money and slightly higher name recognition. Higgins has over $550,000 on hand, while Egriu is planning on raising between $150,000 and $200,000 for the primary portion of his campaign. If Egriu proves himself capable of raising more than that, he would quickly become every betting man’s pick to win.
Will the Albanian Community step up?
Egriu is reaching out to his Albanian community nationally, for whom he has often stood up to support. He is planning on traveling around the nation to organize his people so that they too have a seat in American government and access to federal political power. He will be traveling to New Jersey, Connecticut, Chicago, and Washington this month. Next month, he will be traveling even more.
Egriu thinks that a congressional seat will give the Albanian community influence and power that it has never before had. Egriu would like to see refugee relocation services improved, the establishment of federal housing programs in Albanian neighborhoods, and Albanians included in a fair share of federal contracting.
“Joe DioGaurdi was elected for only 1 term in the 1980s, but still garnered enough federal influence to take down Milosivic in the 1990s. The Albanian community realizes how important federal influence is for our community. We don’t have a single elected official in the Congress right now, which needs to change,” Egriu argues. “I have always been there for my community, and I trust that they will be standing here with me.”
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