September 2, 2019
Contact: Information@markpoloncarz.com
“I am proud of my record of responsible, ethical leadership in government and politics. If we find out our campaign has received a donation from an individual or firm with ties to criminal or unethical activity we return it, or give an equal amount to a worthwhile organization.
As was noted in the September 3 edition of The Buffalo News regarding certain donations given by Joseph Heleniak in 2011 through 2015 to my campaign, all contributions he made to my campaign were donated to the Child Advocacy Center of Buffalo, an organization dedicated to protecting children from child abuse, immediately upon our learning of his criminal behavior. My campaign makes a point of doing the right thing and this instance provided an opportunity to assist a good cause while doing so. Any criminality or association with criminals should be a red flag for any campaign. This individual is not associated with me or my campaign in any way and never has been, but my opponent’s continued mischaracterization of this issue demonstrates the ease with which she casually disregards the truth in order to promote political lies.
By contrast, my opponent continues to employ as her campaign chief an individual who’s house was raided as part of an investigation that led to the conviction of a judge for bribery and Steve Pigeon and who is part of the sordid Chris Collins’ insider trading scandal, and she is refusing to return donations to her campaign from those who would pollute our communities. We have been running an ethical campaign based on a forward looking vision for our community’s future. We hope our opponent will stop the negative, baseless attacks and join us in running an ethical campaign as well.”