SamPratt.com

Changing of the GOP guard?

Greg Fingar may vacate the Columbia County Republican chairman’s seat, and New Lebanon Supervisor Michael Benson may covet his seat cushion, according to three separate (and ideologically-distinct) sources. 

GOP chair Greg Fingar with election law attorney James Walsh (Source: CC Scoop)

Fingar remains in the position for the moment, according to a fourth source familiar with the situation. It is not clear whether Fingar would step down voluntarily, or is coming under pressure to do so.

In addition to serving as the New Leb Supervisor, Benson is president of BCI, one of the Capital Region’s largest and most influential construction firms. The company is known for its uncanny knack for winning bidding wars on public projects, and has done extensive work for government within the County. For example, BCI completed renovations for the Chatham Central School District, and also construction on the City of Hudson’s new wastewater treatment plant.

In addition, BCI built A. Colarusso & Sons’ corporate offices, suggesting that if elevated to Republican chair, Benson perhaps would be sympathetic to mining interests which have been the source of some local controversy in the past.

Benson’s profile picture at BCI’s website

Earlier this year, a small controversy erupted after nearly 30 underage students were arrested in relation to a drinking party at a New Lebanon home while the parents were traveling. Initial State Police reports didn’t disclose the party details. But it eventually leaked out that it took place at the Bensons’ home—becoming the subject of reports in the Times-Union and elsewhere—after the Town Justice had to recuse herself.

Benson contributed $250 to lobbyist, County powerbroker and former Assembly Minority Leader John Faso’s political action committee in 2001, and has donated similar amounts in the past two years to the Columbia County Republican Committee and Conservative Party. In November 2011, he donated $5,000 the State Republican Committee. All of these donations were made via BCI’s Loudonville Road address in Albany.

BCI Construction itself has donated a total of $17,890 to various political candidates over the past decade, according to New York State campaign finance records. Most of these donations were to Republicans, but a few were to Democrats in places such as Albany and New York City where the politics are heavily Democratic.

Though not necessarily over yet, Fingar’s tenure was colored early on by the intense controversy surrounding his party’s heavyhanded 2009 attempt to disenfrancise absentee voters in the hotly-contested Congressional race between Scott Murphy and Jim Tedisco. At the time, Fingar and Faso joined forces to sic lawyers John Ciampoli Jim Walsh (plus a gumshoe private detective) on second home owners who had legally cast absentee ballots. More recent primaries have brought to light various fissures among factions of the County GOP, which usually presents a monolithic front.

The ballot fracas, which was decided strongly in favor of the voters by fellow Republican judge John Nichols, focused heavily on the small Town of Taghkanic. Their challenges appeared to be backed in part by donations from racetrack developer Alan Wilzig—whose chef and manager Eric Tyree was on the ballot. Funds for the disenfranchisement effort came in part from the County Republican Housekeeping fund (to which Wilzig and a corporation he controlled had donated), a type of political action committee which is not supposed to be used for such purposes according to New York State election law.

At the time, numerous residents who were longtime customers of Fingar Insurance decamped to other insurers in protest, after noticing one of its key partners’ involvement. Ironically, the company’s Columbia County Chamber of Commerce blurb touted its work helping to insure second homes.

Facing facts, one week late

Assembly candidate Cheryl Roberts has finally conceded the 107th State Assembly race to Steve McLaughin, according to the Troy Record. Roberts’ grudging concession comes a week after McLaughlin declared victory on election night.

In the Record article, a McLaughlin campaign spokesman barely conceals his annoyance with Roberts’ lack of grace in defeat:

“It was very clear on election night that Assemblyman McLaughlin won re-election and was given the honor to serve another term in the state assembly... There was certainly no need to drag this out an additional six days when the obvious had already been stated when Steve had won by a margin far exceeding any need for a recount.”

Roberts had previously insisted that all absentee ballots be counted before she acknowledge the result, though numbers gathered from various Boards of Elections by this site a week ago made it obvious that the challenger had virtually no chance to catch up. The challenger would have had to garner almost 4 out of every 5 absentee ballot filed, even though 3 out of 4 of those ballots came from Rensselaer County, where McLaughlin won handily on the machine.

Roberts was cited for circulating dishonest literature against McLaughlin by the League of Women voters’ non-partisan Fair Campaign Practices organization. She campaigned as an environmental champion, despite having advocated one-sidedly for the interests of Swiss industrial polluter Holcim and notorious Connecticut construction firm O&G Industries over thousands of citizen concerns about the future of Hudson’s South Bay.

Nevertheless, Columbia County Democratic officials cynically promoted Roberts’ green bona fides using the (now-disproven) rationale that “she can win”—the same reason given for the party’s switch of its allegiance from progressive Congressional candidate Joel Tyner to CIA lawyer Julian Schreibman. Roberts reportedly wasted more than $100,000 in campaign funding from the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee, while Schreibman ran through $1 million on his race, not counting expenditures by outside groups.

Absentee math strongly favors McLaughlin over Roberts

In the 107th Assembly District race, GOP incumbent Steve McLaughlin declared victory late Tuesday night, with results (as reported by three County Boards of Elections) showing him ahead by 2,282 votes.

However, challenger Cheryl Roberts refused to concede, based on some theoretical possibility that absentee ballots could alter the outcome. But could they, really? Basic math suggests a reversal in her favor is extremely unlikely.

Calls to area Boards of Elections indicate that the number of absentee ballots issued to voters for this race totals about 4,600. So far, approximately 3,900 of those have been returned. If postmarked by election day, some additional ballots may be received. Generously, maybe 4,150 will come back. Of those, a few ballots will be deemed invalid for some technical reason, while other voters will be found to have skipped over the 107th Assembly race—or have written someone else in. Reasonably and for argument’s sake, let’s estimate that there a total of 4,000 more votes will be counted toward this race.

So does Roberts have a shot? With McLaughlin already ahead by 2,282, the raw numbers suggest her remaining chances are a longshot at best.

Years ago while handling a similar dispute for a Hudson candidate, I devised the simple formula pictured above for quickly computing how many votes a candidate who is behind in an election needs to get from the remaining voters to come from behind to win.

By that basic math, Roberts would have to get 3,141 of those 4,000 absentee ballots just to tie McLaughlin—3,142 to win. McLaughlin would have to garner only 858 of the 4,000 absentees to lose.

In other words, 78%.5 of all the absentee ballots would have to break for Roberts, and only 21.5% to McLaughlin. By contrast, the machine votes broke 52%-48% for McLaughlin.

In other words, Roberts would have to increase her tally +30%  among absentee voters than among Election Day voters just to make this close. In my experience of contested absentee ballot races, the ballots generally follow the same pattern as the rest of voters, and even when they deviate, they rarely if ever deviate more than 5-10% from the “machine” votes.

Furthermore, the demographics of those absentee ballots also do not favor Roberts (whose chances were diminished during the campaign when she was cited for dishonest campaign literature by the non-partisan Fair Campaign Practices organization). 73% of the absentee ballots received so far come from Rensselaer County, which McLaughlin won easily by about 7.5%; whereas only 24% of the absentees come from Columbia, which Roberts won by a similar margin. Washington County was a dead heat, and only a handful of absentees will come from there in any case.

In other words, for Roberts to win she’d not only have to do significantly better than on Election Day, she’d have to do so in the less-friendly territory of Rensselaer County. While the general perception is that in Columbia County, absentees come more heavily from liberal weekenders than from longtime Republican residents, as one moves northward a higher percentage of the absentees emanate from nursing homes and more conservative retirees.

It thus would be remarkable, verging on highly improblable, for McLaughlin’s margin not to hold up. But that may not prevent Roberts’ more rabid partisans from mounting a long, exhausting and expensive ballot fight.

Election results as of midnight

The faces of the FOX News anchors were ashen around 11:15 pm as they dutifully announced the projection—already aired on MSNBC—that Barack Obama would be reëlected President for a second four-year term.

Meanwhile, several Republican nominees running in Columbia County were ahead of their Democratic opponents. According to published reports as of midnight:

• McLaughlin leads Roberts by about 3,000 votes for State Assembly;
• Marchione leads Andrews by about 11,000 votes for State Senate;
• Gibson leads Schreibman by about 14,000 votes for the U.S. House;

On the brighter side for Dems:

• Mott is far ahead for State Supreme Court Judge, with Schick holding an 8,000 vote lead over the closest Republican challenger;
• The Poughkeepsie Journal reports that Didi Barrett won comfortably in Dutchess County, while The Times-Union shows Barrett with a smaller lead in Columbia County, indicating an overall win.

There are absentee ballots and some precincts yet to report in all of these races, but they seem unlikely to change the outcome of these races.

South of us, Terry Gipson has declared victory over longtime incumbent Steve Saland for State Senate.

Tracking Columbia election results

The Albany Times-Union is posting election results for Columbia County at this link.

Currently (at 10 pm), the paper has Gibson beating Schreibman handily; Barrett slightly ahead of Byrne; Roberts and Andrews trailing their opponents, McLaughlin and Marchione, respectively; and Mott winning handily, with Schick locked in a very close race with Kavanaugh and Malone.

Hudson is getting younger

DJ event at Basilica Hudson

There’s still a lot of hand-wringing about the Hudson population dropping over the past decade, as if this were some sort of catastrophe for the life of the town. Official census figures show the number of residents dropping about 11% between 2000 and 2010, from 7,524 to 6,713—about a third of that drop attributable to changes in how prisoners in the Hudson Correctional Facility are counted.

Whether such figures actually speak to the health and fortunes of this “small city” is debatable at best, verging on dubious. Hudson’s population was never higher than in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s, when residence rose well over 12,000 people. Does anyone want to go back to the mid-1930s, just to be able to say that the population has risen again?

Still, ever since this writer moved here full-time in the dank February of 1998, it’s always been fashionable to predict imminent doom for Hudson. Yet things have kept steadily improving, despite the efforts of certain officials and entrenched interests to impede progress. Then-City Attorney Giff Whitbeck once was heard to declare that the merchants of Warren Street were shell businesses on the verge of collapse—mere façades. That was in the late 1990s. Today, there are probably five times as many occupied storefronts on Hudson’s main street.

Indeed, closer look at voter rolls maintained by the Columbia County Board of Elections tells a somewhat different story about what’s occurred in the past decade or so. Despite the Census showing nearly 800 fewer people in town over the past decade, the number of voters on record in 1999 in comparison with today has dropped by only 56 people.

The percentage of Hudsonians registered to vote thus has actually increased, from 49% to 54%. As a basic measure of civic engagement, one could argue from these numbers that while there are fewer people in Hudson now, there are more interested in its future. To some extent, this reflects the number of concerted voter registration pushes in the years of 2000-2005, when there was a series of hotly-contested City races in the individual five wards as well as Citywide. 

Now, turnout in the 2011 Hudson election was notably dismal, possibly because of the lack of contested alderman and supervisor races in the City; the upcoming Presidential, Senatorial, Congressional, Assembly and Legislature contests may be a better test of how engaged these voters really are.

More telling is the average age of registered voters, which has dropped from 54 years old to just 50 over that same period (1999-2012). In other words, the Hudson electorate is getting younger—an improvement, many would say, as a frequent concern in the 1990s was that Hudson’s population was not merely dropping, but also aging. That measurable shift demonstrates with hard figures the anecdotal sense that Hudson is indeed getting younger.

One sees the benefits of this shift economically when venues like Basilica Hudson can routinely bring out 600-800 young people on random weekday nights for bands like Grimes and Godspeed You Black Emperor. (Obviously, many of those attendees were young people from around the region, from Bard to RPI to SUNY to as far away as the Five College area of Northhampton, Mass. But the attendance was also boosted by local residents.

The answers as to why Hudson might be getting younger are not hard to imagine. There is a growing music scene, with multiple venues on both a grand and small scale, from Basilica to Spotty Dog—few of which existed until the last five years or so, let alone in the late ’90s. There are far more options of places to hang out in both day and nighttime, and more places for young people to work. Countless businesses which many newere residents take for granted (from retail and restaurants on Warren Street, to service and manufacturing off it) just weren’t here a decade ago, such as Etsy and Digifab. There’s just a lot more to do now.

Thus when it comes to population, it may many less how many people live in a place, than who. Better to have three people who pay attention to what’s going on, work in town, spend their income locally, support local civic institutions, and get involved with their community, than four who are apathetic and disengaged. Hudson still has a long way to go, but the increased youth of those who have stayed or moved here is a hopeful sign.

Hudson Alderman buys Taghkanic house

Over at The Gossips of Rivertown, Carole Osterink reported a widespread rumor that “Carmine Pierro, longtime aide to Rick Scalera in and out of the mayor's office and now an alderman from the Fifth Ward” may move out of Hudson, having recently purchased a house in Taghkanic.

Public records in the Columbia County Real Property Department office demonstrate the truth of at least the second half of that rumor.

As previously discussed here, the County keeps public files of RP-5217 forms, which are one-page documents filed whenever a piece of property changes hands. Such documents record basic info on real estate transactions including the buyer, seller, the prices paid, the attorney of record, and the like—and are available to anyone to inspect.

And sure enough, an RP-5217 turned up in the file which shows that Cappy Pierro and his wife purchased a house in Taghkanic on the 6th of July for $450,000. Pierro’s attorney for the sale was Jack Connor, who also is one of the City of Hudson’s lawyers. 

For now, the couple appears to still own two houses in Hudson’s 5th Ward—one in their own names which is assessed at 1/3 that price ($151,000), the other via a charitable trust in their names ($167,000). Both properties had their assessments reduced slightly in 2012 (by $2,000 and $6,000, respectively). 

Pierro continues to serve as a Hudson Alderman, chairing a Common Council meeting this week in Don Moore’s absence. Other sources claim that the couple is in the process of selling their Parkwood properties, and may have already found buyers for both... However, the County’s records show no sales having closed yet on either, and neither appears in the Columbia County MLS listings. (Note: There are a few realtors in the County who don’t belong to the MLS.)

Or maybe the Pierros just want to scent some country air—though at more than twice the price of both of their existing houses combined, that’d be some pricey air.

Pierro could in theory continue to represent the 5th Ward even if he did not have his primary residence there—he has several relatives in the Ward, who presumably might agree to maintain a room for him, even if he sold his local properties. In the past, various Aldermen, such as former 4th Ward Council member Alan Keith, managed to retain their position well after moving out of town; and there have been periodic claims that current 4th Ward Supervisor Bill Hughes does not bunk down in Hudson all that often.

Any flagrant falsification of residence might in theory result in legal action, or even invalidation of votes taken by the Council if an Alderman’s weighted vote was improperly cast. But ultimately such matters are usually taken care of by voters, who tend to want their representatives to be bona fide residents.

Two primaries in the 107th AD

As expected, more than one Democratic candidate has filed petitions to compete in a primary for the new 107th Assembly seat, The new district covers all of Rensselaer, plus a handful of towns in Columbia and Washington.

The Register-Star only mentioned one of the candidates. The paper also missed a separate primary on the Working Families line.

Rensselaer County’s Keith Hammond and Columbia County’s Cheryl Roberts both submitted signatures to secure the Democratic line. 76% of the Democrats in the newly-mapped district live in Rensselaer County.

In addition, Roberts faces a challenge for the Working Families line from Brenda Mahar. Again, the vast majority of Working Families voters in the new 107th live in Rensselaer—90% of them.

Meanwhile quasi-incumbent Steve McLaughlin (of the former 108th) is unchallenged on the Republican, Conservative and Independence line. Republicans, Conservatives and Independence Party voters outnumber Democrats in the 107th by a 3-2 ratio.

The State Board has deemed all of these petitions valid on their face, meaning that they appear to contain more than the minimum necessary signatures to get on the ballot for the primary (where there’s more than one candidate) or the general (if the line is uncontested). Election boards in New York do not question the validity of signatures unless a citizen files a challenge to them.

Some Dems struggling to get on ballot

Some Columbia County Democratic Committee nominees are reportedly struggling to get their names on the ballot for November. Party officials put out a distress call this week, desperately re-nagging committee members to get signatures on designating petitions which are due July 12th. The petitioning process began on June 5th.

According to several inside sources, candidates such as State Assembly wannabe Cheryl Roberts, who faces a likely primary against Rensselaer County Democrat Keith Hammond, were lacking as many as 300 signatures needed to reach their goal at the beginning of the week.

Presumably the Committee will eke these signatures out. But any candidate who comes too close to the minimum number required exposes themselves to potential challenges, as often petition-gatherers and signers make mistakes (e.g. with illegible or ineligible names).

Primary turnout in Columbia County

As first reported here, voter turnout for Tuesday’s Democratic Congressional primary contest between Julian Schreibman and Joel Tyner was dismal. Fewer than 1 in 10 registered Democrats bothered to participate in the new 11-county 19th District.

That sub-10% figure also applied to Democrats here in Columbia County. Below is a town-by-town chart of how each municipality in the County did, turnout-wise, correlating  Board of Elections tallies and voter registration data obtained last March:

Remarkably, County Democratic Chair Cyndy Hall characterized these numbers as a “tremendous victory” for her party committee... If 9 out of 10 voters staying home is a tremendous victory, one wonders what a tremendous failure would look like.

UPDATE: Primaries 0f course tend to attract fewer voters than general elections. However, as a point of reference showing how poor Tuesday’s turnout was: More than 550 Democrats voted in the 2011 primary between Nick Haddad and Linda Mussmann; but this week, fewer than 150 voters cast ballots in Hudson.

Politics make lame bedfellows

A few political tidbits from around the area:

• A persistent whisper has been circulating in Hudson that a Democratic Alderman with a large weighted vote on the Common Council may be moving to Greenport, and if so would have to relinquish his seat. Given the current composition of the Council, however, it seems unlikely that a more truly democratically-minded replacement would be chosen to fill out the remainder of that term.

• City Attorney Cheryl Roberts circulated an email last week to County Democrats indicating her interest in running for State Assembly in the reconfigured 107th District, and claiming backing by the Columbia County Democratic Committee’s two top officials. Roberts is known locally for her instrumental role in making sure mining and trucking remained dominant at the Hudson Waterfront, and thwarting calls for a more progressive outcome.

To “accomplish” this, Roberts needed to find ways to ignore literally thousands of public comments calling for a more forward-looking plan. She also refused to turn over public documents sought via Freedom of Information Law requests, on privacy grounds that were proved spurious when New York State furnished the same documents without hesitation.

(Assisting with Roberts’ nearly six-year campaign of shunning the public and erasing contrary information was Council President Don Moore, a political ally of Columbia County Democratic Committee 1st vice chair Victor Mendolia. Moore would not allow any comments from a standing-room-only crowd at the culminating vote that pushed the Roberts plan ahead, and at one point even tried to prevent the public from seeing the draft plan at all.)

Roberts’s email not only claims to have secured a large number of pledges (how many of them are from partners in the Republican-dominated lawfirm she joined in the past year, Rapport Meyers?), but also implies backing fom CCDC chair Cyndy Hall and Mendolia. Roberts gushes that “Cyndy, Victor and I met with the state Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee yesterday and they were very impressed” with her fundraising prowess.

An email to Cyndy Hall on Friday inquiring about her position on the matter has not been returned at this time. On Sunday, Victor Mendolia waved sheepishly to me on the street; but when asked forthrightly to explain why he would support Cheryl Roberts for Assembly, Mendolia abruptly turned tail without answering, and hurried off to have lunch with 4th Ward Supervisor Bill Hughes, Jr.

• On the 20th Congressional front, the CCDC has also recently passed over long-serving Dutchess County Legislator Joel Tyner in favor of an attorney whose resumé includes a stint at the Central Intelligence Agency and prosecuting drug traffickers, Julian Schreibman.

Schreibman apparently was a couple of years behind me at Yale, so I ought to be predisposed to his candidacy... But Tyner has earned his stripes as a truly progressive Democrat of genuine integrity. In doing so, he apparently has earned the enmity of the region’s Democratic establishment, who seem to resent Tyner’s ability to get elected and re-elected in his district—despite party committeemen constantly saying he’s unelectable.

He’s done that by relentlessly pushing liberal issues, in spite of overcautious establishment warnings to “go slow,” “save your powder,” “don’t appear too radical,” etc. Tyner also communicates constantly with his constituents, and has worn out his own shoe leather attending meetings and going door to door. He deserves better than the “he can’t win” derision of party officials with much weaker electoral track records than Joel Tyner.

Election over

Bill Hallenbeck (who, I learned tonight, is a big fan of Elvis Costello) won the absentee and affidavit ballots in District 5-1 by a 20-to-5 margin, pushing his lead to roughly 35, meaning the Hudson election is effectively over, with only 29 ballots left to count in 5-2. ... Congratulations to Hudson’s new Mayor.

UPDATE: The 5-2 count was 11 Haddad, 15 Hallenbeck. After the Haddad campaign released its challenges to some 20 ballots, the final margin of victory was 50.