In 2017, Brian Nowak won a town council seat in Cheektowaga, a ninety-thousand-person suburb of Buffalo, the second-largest city in New York State. Though predominantly Democratic by registration, Cheektowaga is a conservative town with a sizable Donald Trump fan base, and Nowak is a former Bernie Sanders delegate.

This year, Nowak, thirty-six, was elected Cheektowaga’s town supervisor, the suburb’s top office — making him the youngest town supervisor in Erie County. His margin of victory was slender enough to trigger an automatic recount under state election law. He ultimately won by fifty-three votes — 9,045 people voted for Nowak, and 8,992 voted for his opponent, Republican Michael Jasinski — proving that an avowed democratic socialist can win executive office in a conservative suburb of Buffalo, even after democratic socialist India Walton’s high-profile defeat in the 2021 Buffalo mayor’s race.

Nowak tried to stay above the fray on big national debates, instead focusing on hyperlocal issues and pitching himself as a family man and volunteer firefighter who wants to improve town services. He managed to prevail even after New York City mayor Eric Adams bused hundreds of asylum seekers to Cheektowaga, at a time when the situation was dominating local news coverage. In the months leading up to the election, two of his fellow town council members accused him of offering a bribe; the alleged bribery scandal also dominated headlines in the local press, despite the fact that the Erie County District Attorney’s office found no evidence of criminal conduct on Nowak’s part.