BUFFALO, N.Y. — The countdown to election night is underway, and a number of local seats are up for grabs, especially in the Buffalo Common Council.
One of the council’s key races on the ballot comes with even bigger shoes to fill, as Leah Halton-Pope and Michael Chapman square off to replace current council president Darius Pridgen, who announced he would not be seeking re-election.
2 On Your Side sat down with both Halton-Pope and Chapman Thursday to hear more about their campaigns.
Halton-Pope enters the election with 25 years of government experience and spent the last 10 with State Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes as a senior adviser, helping write legislation.
After winning the Democratic primary back in June, she says she’s focused her campaign on fixing basic infrastructure and small businesses, but that her biggest focus is on housing.
“There has to be a way that we rebuild these communities,” she said. “Some streets in this district have maybe two houses on the whole street. Imagine being able to build houses and create a neighborhood that's affordable. They're not too high for people to live in. And there's some equity built in, and we start creating generational wealth by that.”
Now Halton-Pope’s opponent bears more similarity to the seat’s previous occupant. Reverend Michael Chapman is a pastor at St. John Baptist Church on Goodell. He submitted independent nominating petitions to run in next week’s general election on an independent party line.
Under Pridgen, the district was previously represented by another pastor of a prominent majority Black church in the city.
He says that even though he doesn’t have any government experience, the community asked him to run to fill what he calls a “lack of representation” on the council. He isn’t concerned about his lack of experience holding office.
“I'm not part of that system,” Chapman said. “They know I'm not part of that system. I started at the beginning with all of them, the mayor and everything. When the mayor got here, I've been here already 20 years working in the community. They chose to go this way. I went this way.”
On Friday, the city will have an opportunity to hear more from Chapman as well as other candidates running on the East Side in a community forum from 4-6 p.m. in the Eva Doyle Auditorium inside the Frank Merriweather Jr. Library, 1324 Jefferson Avenue.
Halton-Pope, however, said she will not be in attendance.