There's some feudin' and fussin' going on out in the rural environs of Sanborn, a godforsaken place where political leaders on both sides of the aisle seem to enjoy squandering much of the county's wealth.
And fortunately for those of us in the titillation business, the knock-down-drag-out involves two of Niagara County's most talked about power couples: Jerry and Joan Wolfgang, and Mickey Sloma and his longtime paramour Bonnie Gifford.
Last week, the Niagara County Legislature voted to replace Joan Wolfgang with Gifford as chair of the Niagara County Community College Board of Directors.
NCCC, as it is known, is an institution erected at great expense in a cow pasture next to the Tuscarora Reservation back in the '70s, and has since served largely as a jobs program for various friends and family members of the region's political elite, who send their kids to college someplace else. The institution's grotesque Stalinist architecture is a perfect reflection of the minds of those responsible for it.
Joan Wolfgang served on the board of directors out there for a quarter of a century, which is hardly a recommendation. For much of that time, the insurance agency she works for has had the contract with the college to provide liability coverage. She and her husband, Jerry, raise lots of money for various political candidates. They've been leaning toward the Democrats ever since Wolfgang was pushed out of his powerful position as chairman of the Republican County Committee a few years back.
There would have been no controversy if someone had just said, "Well, she's been on the board for so long, and there's this apparent conflict of interest, why don't we just get someone with less baggage to run this thing?"
But they didn't. What they did say was, "Why don't we just put Mickey Sloma's girlfriend Bonnie in there?"
The romantic relationship between Gifford and the divorced Sloma is one of the worst-kept secrets in Niagara County, a place famous for the sheer number of poorly kept secrets it contains. People have been talking about it for years. I've been urged to write about it on numerous occasions, but haven't, mostly because he never tried to get her appointed as head of a college before.
Mickey Sloma is to the Republicans now what Jerry Wolfgang used to be back when he served as chairman of that august organization. Sloma raises a ton of money for them, and consequently holds positions on the Industrial Development Agency and the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, which allows him to go around believing himself to be a very important person. I almost bought a Jaguar coupe he'd once owned from a third party last fall. The thing looked good, but it didn't run.
Sloma described Bonnie Gifford last week as his "business partner," prompting all manner of mirth in coffee shops and taverns from Lockport to Niagara Falls.
"Did he mean monkey business?" people laughed.
That was totally unfair, since Gifford is actually his business partner for real, serving as vice president of a health care company he owns.
Which doesn't mean, of course, that she's not his girlfriend.
When a reporter from the Buffalo News asked about it last week, Sloma got very indignant.
"It's nobody's business," he snapped. "What the hell does that have to do with her appointment?"
I'm with Mickey on this. I appointed my galpal, the lovely Redhead, to a top editorial post here at the Reporter some years back. See, the thing was, I really liked her. And I even ended up marrying her, so shut the hell up, OK?
As Woody Allen once said, "The heart wants what the heart wants."
But Sloma clings to the quaint notion that a fellow can set himself up in the Big Shot business -- he even had his own public access cable show, just to let us all know what he thinks! -- and not have his own life be everyone's business. His particular case is exacerbated by the fact that, unlike me, say, much of what he does is on the taxpayers' dime.
"Henry Sloma's girlfriend," said Legislature Minority Leader Dennis F. Virtuoso, D-Niagara Falls. "Just the idea that it's Mickey Sloma again is amazing."
Dennis has a point there, too. It is amazing. Becoming a political hack in Niagara County confers on one the power of a big wad of bubblegum dropped thoughtlessly by someone on the sidewalk and now stuck to the bottom of your shoe. You can't get rid of it! No matter how much you scrape or scrub with a wire brush, it remains tacky and bothersome for so very long that you end up wishing you'd stepped in horse manure instead.
Current Republican Chairman Henry Wojtaszek took the comedy cake, however, after he was asked whether Sloma was lobbying for his girlfriend's appointment to Wolfgang's position.
"I would say no," he responded. He said this with a completely straight face, and maybe you had to be there, but it just cracked me up.
The entire brouhaha reminds me of all the reasons I love it here: nepotism, patronage, lust, power, avarice and revenge.
When you live here, you don't even have to watch "Desperate Housewives."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | June 24 2008 |