"The Senator" by Thomas J. Prohaska
LOCKPORT
— In Niagara County politics, when someone refers to “the senator,”
there’s no need to identify whom they’re talking about
George D.
Maziarz, the North Tonawanda Republican who has represented most of the
county in the State Senate since 1995, has become the colossus of
Niagara County politics.
Maziarz
has been the boss of the county GOP since Floyd D. Snyder died in
December 1995, the same year Maziarz’s Senate predecessor, the late John
B. Daly of Lewiston, became state transportation commissioner and
yielded his direct role in day-to-day local politics.
Maziarz
is arguably the county’s most powerful politician, but you won’t get
much of an argument from anyone who has worked with him or competed
against him.
He is
the man at the top of the county Republican Party, which has implicit
control of county government He is a member of the majority in the State
Senate. His critics say he also is the man behind the curtain in both
the county Conservative and Independence parties, a charge he doesn’t
exactly deny. And, most notably, he has the ear of Gov. George E. Pataki
and was instrumental in bringing a casino to downtown Niagara Falls,
which, by the way, isn’t in his senate district.
Maziarz
“devotes more time and energy to politics than anyone else in Niagara
County,” said Lee Simonson, Lewiston’s 16-term Republican county
legislator. ‘When you give something 110 percent, you’re going to put
yourself in a position where you’re able to acquire quite a bit of
power.”
Too much power, say some of his foes.
“He
wants to run everything,” said Al C. Hollands, the former Conservative
Party chairman, who says Maziarz engineered his defeat by Dean Walker
last year.
“If he
can’t (control your office), he’s going to beat you half to death,” said
Wilson Supervisor Jerry L Dean, who survived a strong challenge last
year from a candidate he believed Maziarz helped fund.
‘There’s
no doubt that his political appetite’s insatiable,” said County
Democratic Chairman Frank A. Soda. “He’s set a new standard for
political competitiveness.”
‘That sounds like a compliment,” Maziarz said. “I think campaigns and elections are a competitive business.”
Father was in politics
If
George Maziarz had been anything other than a politician, it would have
been an upset His father, Edmund, served four years as a North Tonawanda
alderman in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and Maziarz attended
Council meetings by himself as a child.
“I
became a committeeman the day I turned 18 years old,” Maziarz said.
“When you turned 18 the first thing you did in my household was you
registered to vote and you joined the fire company. All my brothers were
volunteer firemen, and we lived right across the street from Live Hose,
so we used to jump the truck,” Maziarz remembered.
He remains at home in fire halls, Legion posts and similar spots. It’s the natural habitat of the political animal.
“George
has devoted his life to developing friendships, relationships, in every
sector of the community,” Simonson said. ‘There’s not a firemen’s
installation dinner that he misses. . . . This is his passion. That
power base is nothing more than average people he’s met along the way.”
Maziarz
said, “That was probably advice that I got from my father, having been
in this business and hearing people complain, Politicians, you only see
them at election time, you only hear them at election time.’”
Maziarz said he sometimes visits “three to four dinners on a Saturday night, stop by and say hello to people.”
In
1978, at age 25, Maziarz was chosen city clerk by the North Tonawanda
Common Council and elected chairman of the city Republican committee. He
remained city clerk until winning his first election, a 1989 bid for
county clerk
He
remained city GOP chairman until 1993, when he became entangled
peripherally in the FBI probe of Niagara County political corruption. He
was charged with falsifying a financial disclosure form, listing a
$3,733 contribution from a civil engineer as a loan to the committee
from himself.
Resigned after probe
District Attorney Matthew J. Murphy Ill and U.S. Attorney
Patrick NeMoyer brought charges against the Maziarz campaign committee,
not Maziarz personally. In exchange for a guilty plea to a misdemeanor,
which the prosecutors said was the heaviest charge they could muster,
Maziarz agreed to resign as city GOP chairman and county GOP vice
chairman. The incident didn’t stop Maziarz from being re-elected county clerk that year. Nothing has stopped him since.
“It
comes down to a lot of hard work I’m in sort of a unique situation in
that I’ve never been married, I don’t have any kids,” Maziarz said. “I
don’t have a lot of hobbies. I don’t travel, I don’t golf, go to the
movies, I don’t do a lot in the area of recreation. I really like to
work. I do it seven days a week I get more done here (in his Lockport
district office) on a Sunday morning between 7 and 10:30 than I do all
week”
However, come Nov. 20, that’s changing; Maziarz is engaged to be married to Beverly Denny of Newfane.
Credit: Buffalo News - May 16, 2004
"George Maziarz" by Glenn Gramigna
Edmund Maziarz, father of our New York State Senator George D. Maziarz, working in the boiler room at DeGraff Memorial Hospital. Photo: courtesy of DeGraff Memorial Hospital.
As a young man just out of college, George Maziarz almost
single-handedly rejuvenated the Republican Party in North Tonawanda. In
1978 he was appointed city clerk of his home city, a post used to bring
NTs affairs into the computerized world of the late 20th century.
Eleven years later, he was elected Niagara County Clerk, introducing not
only evening hours, but also a much more efficient administrative
regime to an office that previously was highly criticized.
"My father was very active in politics," Maziarz
recalls. "He used to take me to Republican events all the time when I
was just a little boy and later when I was a student at Bishop Gibbons
High School. So it was a natural thing for me to get involved in public
service."
Finally, in 1995 he defeated a highly contentious opponent in a
special state senate election, paving the way for a long and successful
Albany career as one of the most influential Polish-Americans in our
state capitol. It was a difficult fight, one in which a Republican
rival accused Maziarz of being too close to former Governor Mario
Cuomo. Needless to say, the charge didn't stop this son of a DeGraff
Hospital maintenance supervisor who majored in history and public
administration at Niagara U.
"As chairman of the State Senate Committee on
Aging for the past seven years, I am very proud of the work I've done to
help our senior citizens obtain affordable health care," says Senator
Maziarz. "I was working very hard on these issues during the time when
my own mother was very ill, so this subject is very personal to me."
