Interview: Mark Sacha, candidate for Erie County DA

In the first week of January, Frank A. Sedita III became a New York State Supreme Court Judge and his long-time deputy, Michael Flaherty, was named acting DA, pending an election next fall. Flaherty, a Democrat, began raising money to win the job outright last October; it was widely understood he would face a formidable challenge from Democrat Tim Franczyk, a Buffalo City Court judge with significant experience as a prosecutor and broad support in the legal community. 

Unexpectedly, Franczyk dropped out shortly after Flaherty was sworn in. (Rumor has it that operatives in Flaherty’s campaign wanted him to stand down or face a bruising campaign, and Franczyk chose to spare himself and his family.) Flaherty’s office began issuing nearly daily press releases touting new programs, indictments, convictions…his campaign was in full swing, and the Democratic field seemed to have been cleared.

Watching this from the sidelines was Mark Sacha, who served 22 years in the DA’s office before being fired by Sedita in 2009. Sacha publicly criticized Sedita and his predecessor, Frank Clark, for failing to pursue Sacha’s investigation into election law violations by Steve Pigeon, a political ally to both Sedita and Clark. That criticism got him demoted, then fired.

What Sacha saw in Flaherty was a political hack with little prosecutorial experience who would continue the practices he’d found abhorrent in Sedita’s administration. So he decided he’d run for the office himself. This week he stopped by The Public’s offices to tell us why.

Why are you running to be Erie County District Attorney?

Let me start with this: I had a 22-and-a-half-year career in the DA’s office, and for 21 and a half of those years I worked as hard as I could to be an excellent public servant and to do justice to all the citizens of Erie County in a just and equitable way. And I felt good about what I did. 

But in the last year I was there, something happened that made me aware that some people are allowed to be above the law, and that some of the  people I worked with did not have the integrity to be in the positions that they held. One of those people was Frank Sedita. 

I was assigned to handle an election law case. I had a number  of different targets, but at one point the evidence pointed toward Steve Pigeon. All I wanted was for Steve Pigeon to be treated like any other citizen, to be judged by his  actions or inactions, and on the law. I learned the hard way that neither Frank Clark, who was the DA at the start of my investigation, nor especially Frank Sedita were willing or intended to do their job appropriately because they owed political favors to Steve Pigeon, who helped both of them become DAs. 

It was a hard lesson but I stuck to my  guns; I wound up being retaliated against and then I was fired. After that point I worked as a criminal defense attorney, in the main part, and every chance I got, I’ve exposed the hypocrisy that saw in the Sedita—and quite frankly, the Flaherty—administration. Because Mike Flaherty, who is running for DA, ran Sedita’s campaign and is Sedita’s best friend. And he was first assistant, which is day-to-day the most important position in the DA’s office, or should be. Those two together set policy, and those policies were almost uniformly wrong.

It seems to me that eventually the political powers that be, the legal powers that be, the stakeholders in the legal system, all came to the same conclusion as I did—that they did not want Sedita as DA anymore. In effect, they found him a job in the judiciary and got him out of there. But now his right-hand man and the person that was there for all these wrong decisions is running for DA, and that’s an issue for me.

But you would have supported Tim Franczyk, if he had followed through with his candidacy for DA?

Tim Franczyk would have made an excellent DA: He’s a smart guy with great qualifications, great experience, a sitting judge, really  seemed to want the job. I was enthused that he had a chance to become the DA. Unfortunately, at the last second, Judge Franczyk dropped out. The things that I saw happening with Flaherty’s campaign, and the lack of experienced and appropriate candidates for the job, convinced me that I had a responsibility to run for DA.

It may sound corny, but it’s not about Sedita or Flaherty; it’s about providing the citizens of Erie County a DA’s office that they can have faith in, that they know is run with the utmost professionalism and integrity. That’s why I’m running.

And quite frankly, both in my experience and my integrity, I am by far the best qualified candidate to do the job, as it stands right now.

Let’s talk about practical politics. Flaherty has inherited from Sedita a political infrastructure…

A machine. And he’s using the DA’s office as political machine.

Sure, he’s issuing a press releases every day, and fundraising from his staff, too. Meanwhile, who constitutes your political support? How will you run a campaign? How will you raise money? And can you hope for help from the establishment of the Democratic Party when you very publicly called out an elected Democratic official? That must make people…

Uncomfortable? Sure.

Those are a lot of questions. The first answer is, I am a loyal person; I’m loyal to the State of New York, and I’m loyal to any person of authority that is working within the law and doing what they are supposed to do. However, when they’re breaking the  law, I think it’s my responsibility to speak out. If that makes people uncomfortable, well then maybe the DA’s job is to make people  uncomfortable—and aware that no one is above the law. I don’t apologize one bit for the actions I took. The DA represents the people, not the politicians. 

Does it make  it more difficult for me to try to work my way through political process? I think yes. But there are some smart people there, and I think that they have to have respect for the potential that I could win this election—and win a primary with or without them. That is something I intend to do.

The other question you had in there is how are you going to do this. First of all, it’s not a Supreme Court race; it’s a race for just Erie County. So there’s not the eight counties, there’s one county. Second thing is I think quite frankly I’m probably financially better off than the other two candidates. An example would be Mr. Flaherty’s war chest, which consists of $168,000 in loans. I could loan my campaign $168,000 tomorrow—not that I’m rich, but I could do it. Can I raise the money needed to run campaign for DA? Absolutely. I am in the midst of approaching people right now and I am very enthused by the reaction that I’m getting. And a lot of them are people who are outside the main group that normally gives.

That’s the easy thing. The question is will the voters vote  for the same old thing in a year when all these issues have been raised about integrity, or are they going to vote for someone who doesn’t just talk the talk but walks the walk—and, most importantly, has by far the best qualifications for the job. 

I went to the DA’s office  in 1987; I knew  nobody. I’ve survived without political godfathers for 30 years. But I worked my way up. Kevin Dillon gave me my first promotion, to be Buffalo City Court bureau chief. He then promoted my to be the narcotics bureau chief. Then I was promoted to be the grand jury bureau chief, following Dennis Vacco, the Attorney General, and Sheila DiTullio, now sitting county court judge. Then I was promoted to be chief of special investigations, then I was promoted to be deputy  DA, third in command, with signing authority over the DA’s office. I did that off my work. Not off of political connections, not off some godfather who owed me something or I owed him something.

I feel like I’m bragging, but I feel like I’ve outperformed these people every step. I guess the long and short of it is that I feel like I have an obligation to carry this through, I intend to carry it through, and I intend to win.

Since taking over as acting DA, Flaherty has promised  a series of new initiatives. Some of them, like his promise to pursue public corruption and election law cases, are in direct contradiction of his predecessor’s prerogatives and policies.  Do you have a program to pitch?

I have a file of different issues that I’m working on. I think there are two different questions here. First of all, I’d laugh about what Flaherty is doing, but it’s not funny. He’s been there for seven years. Either he was  just a yes-man who allowed wrong things to happen, or he’s lying today. It has to be one or the other, because he ran that office when Frank Sedita wasn’t there. And he’s Frank Sedita’s best friend.  You can’t say that everything was wrong and you’re going to change everything—now, when you’re running for office—and claim somehow that it was your best friend’s fault, when you were in a position of power.

I stood up for what the right thing was. Apparently he doesn’t stand up for the right thing. Or he’s not sincere about what he’s doing now and it’s all politics. Can’t be both.

As for me changing things, let me say this: The job I want is DA. The problem with  these people is they really didn’t want this job. For them, this job was just a way to create a political machine that would allow them to become judges. Cynical.

And they’re doing this on government time. The person who’s doing it, Amy Hughes [Sedita’s in-house communication director], is paid $122,000 a year—more than the county executive, more than the sheriff. She’s not a lawyer. She’s just a full-time campaign operator, being paid of out of the DA’s office. 

That’s wrong, and that’s going to change day one. I’m 58 years old; I have no kids who are lawyers, and I have no interest in running a political machine out of 25 Delaware.

I’m running. I’ve met with the Democratic Party chairman. I’m a lifetime Democrat and I’m pursuing the Democratic Party endorsement. But people should be aware that if I don’t get the endorsement, I’m going to continue to pursue the office in any appropriate fashion, because I really believe that something needs to be done.