Mayor Irene Elia shot herself in the foot again last week, failing to show up for a scheduled appearance on Tom Christy's live call-in TV show, despite the fact that she was the one who demanded the airtime in the first place.
When Christy went on the air at 7 p.m. last Thursday, he explained that the mayor had been delayed and would be there in a few minutes. In the meantime, he would talk to City Administrator Al Joseph and Corporation Counsel Ron Anton, he said.
"Mayor Elia's going to be with us tonight," Christy told the viewers. "She's running five or 10 minutes late, but she's going to be here, right?"
Anton and Joseph nodded their heads. It is uncertain whether they knew she had no intention whatsoever of appearing. If so, they didn't say. Each mouthed excuses about the mayor's busy schedule, and no one called in to ask why they -- two of the highest-paid officials in the city -- had so much free time on their hands.
For the next hour, the two elderly bureaucrats fielded about a dozen openly hostile calls from listeners. Looking like a couple of reluctant pallbearers who know they might be the next to go, they spoke in somnambulant monotones that seemed designed to send much of the Niagara Falls audience to bed early. Not a single caller expressed any support for the embattled mayor.
The first caller, Rick from Wilson, set the tone for what was to come.
"I was hoping to talk to the mayor, but obviously she's not on," he said. "Did she get stuck behind a school bus or something?"
Christy appeared confused. He's not from Niagara Falls and is apparently unaware of the mayor's often comical driving mishaps. Anton jumped in to field the question.
"There is a weekly newspaper that has a crusade geared against the mayor," he said.
The attacks against the media were to continue.
On issues as diverse as labor relations, the parking ramps, the Splash Park litigation and the creation of a water and sewer authority here, Joseph and Anton dissembled, at various times blaming both this newspaper and the Buffalo News for spreading inaccurate or false information about the Elia administration.
In one pointed exchange concerning the city's botched negotiations with the Senecas for use of the municipal parking ramps, Anton told John from Lockport that the administration had done everything in its power to close the deal.
"Were the stories in the Reporter and the Buffalo News inaccurate then?" John asked.
Anton chose to ignore part of the question.
"The Reporter never checked with us and I'm sure they never checked with the Senecas," he replied.
John refused to be put off.
"There was a similar story in the Buffalo News. Are their sources inaccurate as well?" he asked.
Diplomatically, Christy moved on to the next question. By this time, a half-hour into the program, he had stopped saying that he expected Elia to show up at any minute. As the Niagara Street oddsmakers had predicted, the mayor took the easy way out.
While most callers referred to articles they'd read in the Reporter or the News, not one brought up anything they'd read in the Niagara Gazette. Perhaps -- had the show's topic been obituaries -- the Gazette would have fared better.
The story behind the mayor's non-appearance goes back several weeks. Christy, who usually devotes his show to the county Legislature and our representatives in Albany, threw his phone lines open when Assemblywoman Francine DelMonte canceled her scheduled appearance on the show.
A number of people called to criticize Elia, who went ballistic. Saying she'd been set up, she demanded equal time on the program to "set the record straight." Christy obliged, scheduling her on Thursday's show.
Her failure to appear incited the wrath of several callers, including Tom from Niagara Falls.
"It's not surprising the mayor didn't have the courage to show up tonight. The less she's seen or heard the better," he said.
Since her election in 1999, Elia has carefully chosen where and when she will be seen and heard. Publishing as many as four op-ed pieces a month in the daily newspapers, she is known for freezing out journalists she considers unfriendly. The mayor also has her own cable program in which she fields softball questions from Fire Chief William Correa, who is dependent on her for his job.
For years, the strategy seemed to be paying off, allowing Elia to present her often distorted view of events without the hassle of irritating questions sometimes posed by professional journalists.
But all that has changed in the past few months, as former advisors, supporters and members of the media seem now to be pushing each other out of the way to jump Elia's ship.
"Stick a fork in her," said one veteran Niagara Falls newsman. "She's done."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 1 2003 |