SamPratt.com

On Saturday, The New York Times featured a lavish write-up of Café Le Perche in the 200 block of Warren Street. As it happened, I had a prior lunch meeting scheduled there for noon.. Fortunately I arrived early and snagged a table, or there would have been no hope of getting a seat. People were steadily coming in and all seats were full, including the barstools.

This ought to provide a nice November boost for business in Hudson overall, as the Times’ reach remains enormous among those most likely to travel here—especially for foot traffic below 3rd Street in general.

Reportedly, legal battles erupted almost immediately after the closing of polls last night—and are continuing to rage today in court today—over how and where to keep the absentee ballots for the hotly-contested Hudson mayoral contest.

Greg Fingar and the County GOP apparently wanted the ballots impounded by the Columbia County Sheriffs, but local Democrats countered that since the Sheriff is a known backer of Hallenbeck, this would be inappropriate.

For the moment, ballots are said to be under double lock and key (one key for the Republicans, one for the Democrats, requiring both of their participation) at the Board of Elections. This standoff means, among other things, that members of the media and candidates looking to inspect ballots in anticipation of potential challenges cannot get access to inspect envelopes, review names, and so forth.

Republican Bill Hallenbeck is said to be leading Democrat Nick Haddad by somewhere between 2 and 27 votes. (This site leans toward the latter, higher number.) Information from the Board of Elections indicates that 179 absentee ballots have been returned, excluding those from a few people who ended up voting on the machine, leaving 69 ballots yet to be returned.

Ballots will be accepted for 10 days after Election Day, but have to be postmarked as of Monday. Given the efficiency of the U.S. mails, one might expect only 10-20 more to come in at most. Military and other overseas ballots tend to trickle in toward the end of these long waits.

Above is a formula which helps compute how many votes a candidate trailing by a certain number of votes (m) needs to win depending on the number of absentee ballots (a) there are to be counted. For example, if Hallenbeck is ahead by 27 votes, and there are 190 ballots to count, Haddad would need 109 votes [((190 + 27)/2) rounded up], or about 57% of the outstanding ballots, to gain 28 on his opponent, and thus surmount Hallenbeck’s 27-vote lead by one.

Folks, there is no new “free taxi” service in Hudson. That was just a one-day election ploy by the GOP and Linda Mussmann, who was circulating the above sample ballot yesterday. (Evidently she got over her theatrical, pre-primary revulsion of Republicans.) If you believe this, try one commenter’s suggestion today of calling the “taxi” number—which happens to be the same as above, Linda’s cell—some rainy night at 11:30 pm, and see how far you get.

Recent elections in Taghkanic have followed a familiar pattern: The Republicans win "on the machine" on Election Day, but Democrats pick up one or more seats once the large number of absentee ballots are counted (often after extensive wrangling). In this cycle, initial results suggest that only one of the two Republican candidates is likely to survive the absentee count, which would mean that the Democrats would achieve a 3-2 majority on the Board. Again, stay tuned.

More Hudson election results: In Hudson’s 1st Ward, both members of a former political power couple, John Musall and Geeta Cheddie, lost their respective races (for Alderman and Supervisor) by margins of roughly 3-to-1.

Musall and Cheddie have been cheerleaders for the City’s deeply flawed LWRP, and both quit the Democratic Party in very public fits of disgust after losing handily in this September primaries. Both are now out of Hudson electoral politics, though no doubt hope if Hallenbeck prevails as Mayor, they may get some sort of appointments to a GOP administration.

In the 3rd Ward, Ellen Thurston (one of the only Aldermen to vote against the LWRP recently) also won handily, moving on up to the County Board of Supervisors by a nearly 2-to-1 margin (190-105).

The Albany Times-Union has results for Columbia countywide races for 52 out of 52 precincts, with the following results:

* Koweek over Cozzolino for Judge
* Czajka over Keeler for D.A.
* Bertram over Davis for Coroner
* Keeler over Stoll for Treasurer

Each of the results above shows a largish margin for the top candidate, so it is reasonable to assume these results will hold. 

LINK:

http://web.timesunion.com/election/results/race_columbia.asp

* Google Docs spreadsheets via the Columbia County Democrats (said to be updating starting around 9:15 pm)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0AneRK7PfGoRSdG1TZnZRcnRjUVI4Q0dTNXgwOXZGNmc

* Columbia County Board of Elections (said to get posted sometime after 10-10:30 pm)

http://www.columbiacountyny.com/depts/elections/results.html

* I’ll be summarizing whatever comes in later on tonight.