McMurray: From the Erie Canal to Seoul, and Now to Albany

His father hung drywall. His mother raised seven children in poverty after he died. The boy from North Tonawanda worked his way to Seoul, Beijing, and Samsung's legal department. Then he came home.

Next Tuesday, voters in the 145th Assembly District will choose between Nate McMurray and Becky Wydysh.

Wydysh is a Republican. She has served about 10 years in the Niagara County Legislature, six as chair.

McMurray is a Democrat and a lawyer. He was Grand Island town supervisor and ran for Congress three times.

Wydysh has a record in county government for voters to examine. McMurray has a longer journey to explain. How does a boy from a house on the canal end up studying and working in Seoul and Beijing, then at Samsung, and then come home?

The 145th Assembly District runs from North Tonawanda and Grand Island, along the Niagara River through Niagara Falls and Lewiston, to Youngstown on Lake Ontario. The Erie Canal marks its southern edge.

A HOUSE ON THE ERIE CANAL

There was a little house beside the Erie Canal in North Tonawanda, and in that house grew up a boy named Nate McMurray.

The canal helped build Western New York. It carried the things people made here out into the world, and it brought back money, opportunity, and strangers who became neighbors.

McMurray's life followed the same course. He went out into the world, to Seoul, Beijing, and Samsung. And after all those miles, he came home.

His father ran a drywall business and sold snowmobiles on the side. He worked with his hands and belonged for a time to the painters' union. He had once been a gifted athlete, a prospect for Major League Baseball. He died of cancer at 39. Nate was 4.

There were seven children in the family, and now there was only their mother to raise them.

"We experienced poverty and the problems that come with it in Western New York," McMurray said.

His mother had faith in God and faith in education. She expected her children to learn, and she pushed them to do it. Two of McMurray's brothers went on to high-level careers in law and international business. Others became small business owners and professors or went into medicine.

"My mother pushed education hard," he said, "and it opened doors for us."

A MISSION TO KOREA

The family belonged to the Mormon church, where education was something to be taken seriously. As a young man, McMurray went to South Korea on a church mission. He learned Korean.

He came home and kept studying. He graduated magna cum laude from the University at Buffalo. Then came law school, a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Korea, and a full scholarship to Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of China's leading universities.

"I was just a kid from North Tonawanda," he said. "I had a way with languages, and I worked hard. I learned Korean, taught myself Mandarin, and somehow found myself sitting in rooms with people from some of the biggest companies in the world."

FROM NORTH TONAWANDA TO SAMSUNG

People left Western New York when they had the chance. Many never came back.

He worked for Allen & Overy, a major British law firm. A Korean firm recruited him. He advised Samsung. Samsung later hired him as senior legal counsel.

He says he was the only non-Korean in that position.

"I've worked with every major tech company," he said.

His career had taken him to the great cities of Asia, and other cities might have beckoned: New York, London, the business centers of California. But he came home.

He joined Delaware North in Buffalo, one of the region's biggest companies.

Delaware North operates food service, concessions, and other hospitality businesses at airports, stadiums, casinos, and national and state parks across the country. It employs tens of thousands of workers and remains privately held by the Jacobs family of Buffalo. Jeremy Jacobs, the company's chairman, also owns the Boston Bruins.

McMurray had another senior corporate job, this time in Western New York.

He helped expand Delaware North's airport business. He says he won contracts across the country. He did not run the company's state park operations.

A HOME ON GRAND ISLAND

He settled on Grand Island with his wife, a few miles downriver from the house beside the canal. They raised two sons. He was elected town supervisor, a Democrat in a mostly Republican town.

Grand Island lies in the broad Niagara River between Buffalo and Niagara Falls and is home to about 21,500 people. Beaver Island and Buckhorn Island State Parks occupy parts of the island, while miles of shoreline, woods and wetlands give the island much of its character.

For decades, the bridges connecting Grand Island to the mainland charged tolls, even to people who lived on the island. McMurray opposed the toll barriers and pushed for their removal.

As supervisor, he also helped bring the state's Western New York Welcome Center to the island and supported a waterfront hike-and-bike trail. He says thousands of acres of open space were preserved during his administration.

"Grand Island is a gem in the heart of the Niagara River," he wrote this fall. "Protect it for the families who live here and everyone across Western New York who loves it."

THE RACE THAT ALMOST WAS

McMurray wanted to represent Western New York in Congress. In 2018, he ran.

He was a town supervisor with no national name recognition and no large political organization of his own.

He challenged Republican incumbent Chris Collins in New York's 27th Congressional District. The district had a strong Republican voting history. In 2016, Donald Trump won nearly 60 percent of its presidential vote, while Collins won his congressional race by roughly 35 percentage points.

The district stretched beyond Buffalo's suburbs into the agricultural country of Genesee, Orleans and Wyoming counties. McMurray campaigned across all of it.

Federal prosecutors charged Collins with insider trading in August 2018. He was a director and major shareholder of an Australian drug company. At a White House picnic in June 2017, he learned that its drug had failed a trial. He called his son. His son sold shares before the news became public and avoided about $570,000 in losses.

Collins won. McMurray lost by 1,087 votes out of 285,178 cast. The margin was less than half a percentage point. Two years earlier, Collins had won the district by about 35 points.

Collins resigned in September 2019. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and lying to the FBI. He was sentenced to 26 months in prison. Trump pardoned him in December 2020.

McMurray challenged Republican Chris Jacobs twice in 2020 for Collins's former congressional seat. Jacobs won the June special election by about five percentage points. In the November general election, held alongside the presidential race, Jacobs defeated McMurray again.

He ran for Congress three times. He lost three times. Now he is running for the Assembly, closer to home.

HIS BUSINESSES AT THE FALLS

Since then, he has built retail and tour businesses in Niagara Falls, where travelers from around the world come to see the sights: the Cave of the Winds, the rushing rapids, the deep gorge carved through ancient rock, and the great Whirlpool. They visit Niagara Falls State Park, the oldest state park in America, whose landscape Frederick Law Olmsted helped preserve and shape for generations yet unborn.

And the Maid of the Mist, carrying people out onto the river beneath the falling water. These are places McMurray grew up knowing. To someone seeing them for the first time, they are wonders. To him, they are part of home.

The tourists come with cameras and money. The hotels fill. The boats run. The cash registers ring.

McMurray says Albany takes too much of Niagara's tourism revenue. He wants more of it to stay in Niagara Falls.

Beyond the falls are streets where people live all year. Winter streets. Summer streets. Streets with homes and families. McMurray says too little of the tourist money gets that far.

New York State operates Niagara Falls State Park and receives concession revenue. Under the longstanding Seneca gaming agreement, the state receives a share of slot machine proceeds, some of which goes to host communities. The New York Power Authority operates the Niagara Power Project. McMurray says the city should receive more of the economic benefits.

McMurray also consults on energy and infrastructure projects in Texas and elsewhere. Developers and investors hire him to help plan, get approval for, and build projects such as power plants, transmission lines, and public works.

Texas is developing more new clean power capacity than any other state. McMurray is paid to advise on energy projects there.

The Niagara Power Project is New York's largest electricity-generating plant. The river runs. The turbines turn. The electricity goes out across the state. McMurray argues that the surrounding region receives too little of its economic benefit. His consulting work elsewhere involves the kinds of projects he proposes for Niagara.

THE LAWYER AND THE UNDERDOG

McMurray is still a lawyer. He took on civil rights cases. People came to him believing they had been treated unfairly by someone with more power than they had. They didn't always have much else on their side, but they had the right to bring their case. They needed a lawyer, and he represented them.

Now McMurray wants to go to Albany. That's where the decisions about Niagara Falls get made.

Albany decides how the state park is run and who gets its concessions. It decides what happens to the power from the Niagara Power Project and who gets it cheap. It negotiates how the casino money is split with the Seneca Nation and decides how much of it comes back to the city.

McMurray wants more of that money to come home. To get it, he has to go where it's decided.

He has represented people up against someone with more power. Now he wants to represent Niagara.

WHY NIAGARA

He went halfway around the world, learned other languages, and made a life in faraway cities. Yet the place he keeps coming back to is Niagara Falls.

"I really believe in Niagara Falls and its destiny," he said. "Its history, its connection to Tesla, electricity, and innovation. This place helped change the world. I don't believe its possibilities are exhausted."

In Asia, McMurray encountered a Japanese reverence for waterfalls as places where different worlds touch. The idea gave him another way of looking at the falls he had known since childhood.

"Forgive me for getting metaphysical, but I feel something like that about Niagara Falls," he said. "There's an extraordinary positive force here. Sometimes I wonder whether part of our trouble is that we've neglected it, exploited it, and failed to honor what this place actually is."

"I've seen the world, and I still believe this place has an extraordinary future," he said. "I want to help it realize that."

The canal outside his boyhood home runs all the way to Albany. On Tuesday, voters can send him down it.

Disclosure: Nate McMurray's campaign has paid me for advertising in the Niagara Falls Reporter and consulting, which has been fully disclosed in his campaign filings. People who oppose him have bought more advertising.