NORTH TONAWANDA — In stark contrast to last week’s slim Democratic turnout, Niagara County Republicans showed up in force at the Riviera Theatre Thursday.

Nearly 100 people — and a who’s who of local and county GOP leadership — teemed through the gilded lobby and aisles of the theater throughout the evening, beginning just before 8 p.m.

Unlike last week’s Democratic event, also held at the invitation of the theater’s Executive Director Frank Cannata, live TV coverage was broadcast by news channels 4 and 7.

Among the crowd — also featuring county legislators, half a dozen North Tonawanda city officials, Sen. George Maziarz, R-Newfane, county Legislature Chairman Bill Ross and many others — was an 18-year-old registered Republican ready to vote for the first time.

Aaron Sydor, a student at Lewiston-Porter High School, returned from Minneapolis, Minn., earlier this week. He had shadowed Niagara County Republican Committee Chairman Henry Wojtaszek and the New York delegation just prior to the convention and scrambled home in order to be eligible to play in an upcoming football game against Grand Island, one of his school’s major rivals. He did not attend the convention itself in St. Paul.

“(Wojtaszek) kind of helped me network myself with a lot of ranking Republican officials from the state. After the speech by Sarah Palin, I think she had a lot of great energy, but I think McCain has to get to some of the straight talk that he’s famous for,” Sydor said prior to the candidate’s speech.

“We owe it to people like Aaron to get out and vote,” Maziarz later said in a greeting to the crowd.

He then rhetorically asked those gathered if they would rather have a candidate like McCain, with “life experience” or Obama, who he termed a “community organizer.”

Without question, politics competes with football in North Tonawanda, and not just for Sydor.

Just over 20 people sat watching the NFL season opener between the New York Giants and the Washington Redskins next door to the theater at Dwyer’s Irish Pub on Webster Street. Perhaps serving as a litmus of local political affiliation, convention coverage ran alongside the game on the bar’s screens.

That was not the case last week, when about 25 supporters attended a similar event at the Riviera airing coverage of Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s acceptance speech.

Michael Gawel, 50, an accountant in Niagara Falls, said bringing soldiers home from Iraq as well as income and inheritance tax laws rank high on his reasons for supporting McCain.

“(The troops) should be able to come home to jobs and a good economy,” he said. “I think McCain has the experience to lead and I’m really concerned about Obama’s experience. He’s a charismatic speaker, though, and I think (Obama) will be a shining light for the Democratic Party years from now.”

On the subject of media bias, which surfaced in a speech by Palin yesterday, Gawel said it goes both ways.

“I think the media is extremely biased. I think they’re biased on both sides — it kind of balances out.”

There from the start were Wojtaszek’s parents, who were looking forward to hearing their son speak with politicians on the convention floor. Maziarz called the chairman in St. Paul, at around 9:15 p.m. to iron out the details of what was planned to be a “live audio feed,” but for one reason or another, the plan never materialized.

“We saw it in your paper,” Wojtaszek’s mother, Lillian, said of their attendance, adding that she is proud of her son.

Also in attendance were state Assembly candidate Paula Dahlke and Niagara County sheriff hopeful Ernest Palmer.

Contact reporter Neale Gulley at 693-1000, ext. 114.