Suicide by Status Quo

STRUGGLING TO SUPERVISE: Promising to fight the status quo, the newly elected heads of Orchard Park, Amherst, Hamburg and Sardinia storm town hall—and run into a wall.

As a local TV reporter, Mary Travers Murphy spent nearly two decades probing misdeeds on behalf of consumers, going after scofflaws, shysters and the otherwise ethically challenged.

But that was nothing compared with her new job as Orchard Park's town supervisor.

"I had no idea how hard this would be," Travers Murphy said, after a year of dealing with her four Republican rivals on the Town Board. "It's been a real eye-opener."

That would be an apt description for the three other political neophytes ushered into office in January 2006 as part of an anti-incumbent uprising in Erie County's suburbs.

All four are political outsiders who were sent into their town halls - Orchard Park, Amherst, Hamburg and Sardinia - to take on the status quo. And all four are finding out just how unwelcoming the status quo can be.

Rattled opponents call them inept and say their ideas, mostly about cutting taxes, are a danger to the community.