From the Newsroom: How Fracking Saved the Buffalo Bills

In the year of our Lord 2014, there were intense behind-the-scenes schemes, manipulations, and shenanigans to determine who would purchase the Buffalo Bills. Long-time owner Ralph Wilson died on March 25 of that year.

I’m a die-hard member of #BillsMafia and there was a serious threat to moving the team out of New York State, and even worse, to Toronto.

Musician Jon Bon Jovi denies it, but popular sentiment at the time was that he was part of an ownership bid to take the team to our neighbors to the north.

Ironically, there was an American billionaire who was also interested in purchasing the Buffalo Bills at the time. This business owner solicited one of my closest family friends, Michael Caputo, to begin an “under the radar” public relations campaign to put an end to Bon Jovi’s bid. I'm damn proud to have joined in that effort with him.

Caputo turned "Livin' on a Prayer" into a formal marketing plan for stopping Bon Jovi from buying the Bills. Bars banned playing any Bon Jovi. Media coverage ensued. Bad blood boiled. Bills fans were riled up. The plan was working.

Then public relations manna rained down from heaven.

An “organic fan group” was created to stir up public sentiment against selling to the rocker. Originally called “12th Man Thunder,” the fan group was sued for copyright infringement. The leader of this ragtag group, Chucky Sonntag, a cancer survivor and double amputee, is the poster child of who not to bully and sue. In my role as Erie County Comptroller at the time, I pounced, firing off letters deep in the heart of Texas, which garnered national media attention. I called then-Texas A&M University President Mark Hussey “ridiculous and classless.”

This drew even more attention to our behind-the-scenes battle to block Bon Jovi from buying our beloved Buffalo Bills.

The plan worked perfectly. Until it didn’t.

Yes, Jon Bon Jovi’s bid to buy the Buffalo Bills failed.

But so did that billionaire business owner who wanted to buy the team as well.

His name is Donald J. Trump, now Commander in Chief of the United States of America.

Who had big enough bucks to outbid Donald Trump to buy a professional sports franchise? Who has that kind of scratch to do that?

On October 8, in the year of our Lord 2014, business owner Terrence M. Pegula bought my beloved Buffalo Bills for approximately $1.4 billion.

We rejoiced and breathed a sigh of relief. “Terry” was from Buffalo, bought the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres three years prior in February of 2011, and was keeping the team in Western New York.

It was an all-cash deal, mind you. At the time it was the highest price tag ever for an NFL team.

You might be wondering, how did a guy make that kind of money to outbid DONALD TRUMP to buy a pro football team?

Fracking.

That’s right. Terry Pegula made billions of dollars in an industry that Albany Democrats banned in New York State: fracking.

In 1983, Pegula formed fracking company East Resources and pounded away at the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, not in New York, and sold his highly profitable company in 2010 for $4.7 billion.

That is the only example I could find where a positive economic outcome in New York State occurred because of fracking. Pegula made billions of dollars in Pennsylvania and used the money to buy two sports franchises, which do reap economic benefits to the state.

So the very same fracking despised by Democrats who refuse to allow it here in New York is the industry that kept both the Buffalo Bills and Sabres in the Empire State.

The irony is even thicker when you consider Democrat New York State Governor Kathy Hochul gave Republican Pegula $850 million in taxpayer dollars to build the new Highmark Stadium, set to open this year as the new home of the Buffalo Bills.

Other than this one example, Pennsylvania thrives, while New York State remains broke as a joke and missing the boat on billions upon billions of dollars if they allowed fracking on our side of the border. New York is losing out on hundreds of millions of dollars every year on corporate and income tax revenue alone, let alone the massive amount of money spent by employees all over the state.

It’s one of the reasons why we sent Senior Reporter Robert Chartuk to the Southern Tier to show you how New York suffers while Pennsylvania thrives. One state banned fracking, one state embraced it.

Keep in mind, the radical left in New York waged war on all things “natural gas” in our state, whether it’s ways to extract it like fracking or even using it in your home. With very few exceptions, New York is banning gas hookups for new builds across the state. New buildings will have to be all electric.

The All-Electric Buildings Act bans gas hookups, essentially gas stoves, in any new home here, and in new builds that are seven stories or less. Gas hookups will be banned in any new building in NYS taller than seven stories beginning January 1, 2029.

Even more ironic than Terry Pegula making billions of dollars in an industry New York banned is the energy method used to heat the grass at the new Buffalo Bills stadium New York State is funding to build.

A heat source is needed to keep the natural grass at 60 degrees and to stop snow and ice buildup.

You eventually won’t be able to have it in your home here, but guess what heating source was chosen?

You guessed it: natural gas.

That, my friends, is the story of New York’s failed and hypocritical energy policy in one snapshot.

Progressive Democrats outlaw the industry that creates billions in wealth, celebrate the billionaire it produced across the border, subsidize his stadium with taxpayer dollars, then use natural gas to heat the field while telling New Yorkers they shouldn't use it in their own new homes.

Rules for thee, but not for me.