Socialist Walton on track to be Buffalo’s 1st woman mayor

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — India Walton, a socialist community activist, has defeated the four-term mayor of Buffalo in a Democratic primary, putting her on track to become the first woman to lead New York's second-largest city.

The 38-year-old nurse and union leader captured a major political prize for the party's left wing with her victory over Mayor Byron Brown.

The Associated Press called the race Wednesday after it became clear there weren’t enough absentee ballots for Brown to overcome Walton’s lead. She had declared victory Tuesday night.

As her apparent upset win sunk in, Walton paced on a darkened Buffalo street, putting her hand to her forehead and bowing in disbelief in a moment captured on camera.

“Mommy!” the 38-year-old nurse and union representative shouted into her phone. “I won! I’m the mayor of Buffalo!”

Walton is all but assured to win the general election in November. There is no Republican candidate in the race.

Walton was born in Buffalo’s economically depressed east side and became a working mother at 14. After earning her GED while pregnant, she went on to become a nurse in the same hospital where her twins were born.

On the campaign trail, she said Buffalo’s much-talked-about renaissance of recent years, marked by the transformation of the city’s waterfront and medical campus, has passed too many residents by.

“All that we are doing in this moment is claiming what is rightfully ours,” Walton told cheering supporters inside a city nightclub. “We are the workers. We do the work. And we deserve a government that works with and for us.”

The victory in her first run for office came with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America, the Working Families Party and the progressive People's Action in a campaign focused on affordable housing, health...