Jeremy Zellner was re-elected easily as Democratic chair last weekend. But a last-minute procedural change left supporters of Brian Nowak for party treasurer bothered by tactics used by those opposed to his candidacy for treasurer.
News and analysis by Geoff Kelly, Investigative Post’s political reporter
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The main event at Saturday’s meeting of the Erie County Democratic Committee was the election of Jeremy Zellner to an eighth term as party chair. Zellner, facing two challengers, won that contest with more than 85 percent of the weighted vote.
It took hours to to collect and tally the votes, however.
Well over half the party’s 1,000-plus committee members showed up at Classics V in Amherst for the meeting, according to several accounts of the proceedings. Doors opened at 8:30 a.m. and the meeting began an hour later. The results of the vote for chair, which was conducted by secret ballot, were not announced until around 12:45 p.m.
By then, committee members were filtering out of the hall, even though there was one more election on the agenda: Cheektowaga Supervisor Brian Nowak’s long-shot bid for treasurer against incumbent Olivia Owens, who was the only candidate on Zellner’s slate of party officers who faced an opponent.
There was some talk in the room that the dwindling number of committee members in the room improved Nowak’s odds of pulling an upset, one attendee told me. On top of that, another said, the party had only rented the room until 2 p.m., leaving little time to conduct another secret ballot.
Chuck Eaton — former chair of the Amherst Democrats, previously chief of staff to former Congressman Brian Higgins, currently chief operating officer of the Erie County Water Authority, an agency rich in patronage jobs — moved to suspend party rules in order to forgo a vote by secret ballot and proceed by voice vote instead.
That would mean those who supported Nowak over the newly reelected chair’s pick for treasurer would have to make their apostasy public.
Jennifer Hibit, the party secretary who also works for the water authority, called a voice vote on Eaton’s motion to suspend the rules. Several people present told me the voice vote seemed sufficient to carry the motion, but Hibit also asked for a show of hands — and took pictures with her phone of who voted for and against.
She then called for a voice vote for treasurer, followed by another show of hands. One person who attended told me a quarter of the room raised their hands for Nowak; another person told me it was closer to a third. Both believed Nowak would have received more votes by secret ballot.
Nowak’s supporters again had their pictures taken, which didn’t sit well with the democratic socialist from Cheektowaga, who feared retribution against those who’d voted for him.
“I want to apologize to all those that may be punished for raising their hands in support of me today,” he posted on Facebook after the meeting.
“No one will be punished. That’s not what our side does,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, a Zellner ally, posted in reply.
“[T]hey took pictures of us,” Nowak replied. “It was wildly inappropriate. The Water Authority decided the treasurers’ election.”
Most of the commenters on Nowak’s post seemed to think retribution was a real possibility. Among these was former Brant town chair Debra Ritz, who Zellner successfully targeted for defeat in a committee race two years ago. Another was former Erie County Legislator Betty Jean Grant, who said the “Democrat machine pushed the hell out of me.”
One person in attendance noted that if Steve Pigeon, the party chair from a quarter century ago, had pulled a similar stunt at a reorganization meeting, “those same folks who did this today [would be] screaming to the heavens.”
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Nowak told me earlier in the month that he’d always expected to lose. On Tuesday he said he supported the party’s leadership and was happy with the outcome — but not with the process.
He allowed that a voice vote could have been a time-saving move, and the picture-taking could have been a way of documenting the vote. But the maneuvers also comport with the party’s reputation for being “a closed club that only serves some people.”
“I don’t believe that’s what the Erie County Democratic Committee is,” Nowak said. “But things like this make it harder for me to argue with people that believe that.”
posted 7 hours ago – October 1, 2026