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Kirsten vs. The Internet

The Albany Times-Union reports that appointed Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (formerly of Greenport) is siding with Hollywood and music industry lobby groups over, well, pretty much everyone else when it comes to internet censorship. The PIPA and SOPA bills in Congress have inspired numerous sites (from Wikipedia to Boing Boing to Reddit) to go "dark" for the day. More than a passive supporter, Gillibrand actually co-sponsored PIPA in the Senate.

As if to illustrate what such censorship might be like, a reader reports that comments about these bills were being erased from Gillibrand's Facebook page, though now it appears they are coming too fast and furious for monitors to keep up with.

Public outcry has already caused some initial supporters, such as hosting provider Go Daddy, to withdraw support from these measures (which would help rich entertainment businesses eke out a modest improvement in profit, at the expense of free speech). A former attorney for Big Tobacco, Gillibrand has a history of changing her noxious positions if there is enough pressure: she formerly opposed gay marriage, and held anti-immigrant positions such as making English the "official" U.S. language.

But such pressure has rarely come from Hudson Valley Democrats, who have tended to value their personal access to a "local" politician over their own political principles. Will Columbia County Dems hold Kirsten's feet to the fire on this huge issue?

At this link Google has an action page for speaking out to Congress.

Weekend roundup: Gossips, Lawyers, Food

• Carole Osterink is back on the scent of Hudson news at The Gossips of Rivertown after a month-long medical hiatus.


• Will Pflaum has published a potentially explosive report at Sunshine on the Hudson, in which he alleges fraudulent billing by a County and municipal attorney, as well as a pattern of sketchy billing by a host of other County legal advisors... (For more on the role of small-town attorneys in local politics, see my piece from last summer on Legislation By Lawyer.)


• Following on last year’s opening of Grazin’ in Hudson, another farm-to-table restaurant is set to open in Columbia County in 2012—the Crossroads Food Shop in Hillsdale. (Check out this 1998 New York Times review of what chef David Wurth managed with the lowly pumpkin at Savoy, a 1990s Soho favorite.) You can sign up to get an announcement of the top-secret opening date here.

Hudson election post-mortem (Part I)

 

With Sherlock Holmes back in movie theaters and 2011 winding down, it seems appropriate to apply some ratiocination (as opposed to rationalization) to the November election results in Hudson. What really happened?

 In the wake of any election, people naturally will float theories to answer the questions: Why did Candidate Dick win? Why did Candidate Jane lose? And, what “message” were the voters sending? But it’s rare for such theories to get tethered to any verifiable facts. Instead, these tend only to reflect the victors’ desire to project a mastery of politics (that everything happened according to their master plan) and the losers’ need to deflect blame.

This two-part article will aim to avoid both of those predictable postures by first reviewing the limited—but telling—data available, discussing a few of the theories which have been floated, and then drawing only those conclusions which can be reasonably derived from the facts.

First, then, below are 10 key data points worth pondering:

1. Less than half of those eligible—46.8%, to be precise—cast votes for Mayor. 1,700 did show up and assert their preference. But nearly 2,000 others did not.


2. As the chart above shows, that turnout was unusually, even historically, low. I cannot find evidence of a lighter turnout for any contested Mayoral race in Hudson any time in the past generation, and certainly not in the past decade.


3. This turnout crash can’t be attributed to a loss in registered voters, as the number eligible to vote has remained pretty constant during the period considered. (For example, the number registered to vote in Hudson in 2002 was 3,697; today it’s 3,687.)


4. 50 people showed up at the polls, yet did not vote for either Mayoral candidate. 


5. Hallenbeck’s margin of victory was 50 votes.


6. Turnout was especially low in the 2nd Ward, dropping from a high of 483 in 2007 to just 290 in 2011. That’s almost 200 “missing” voters, four times the margin of victory.


7. Turnout hovered around 50% in most of the City, except for the 2nd and 4th Wards, which were way down at 39% and 42%, respectively. (And without the high level of participation via absentee ballots by residents of the Firemen’s home, the 4th Ward’s showing might have been even worse.)


8. There was only a small percentage difference (52% vs. 49.5%) in turnout among Republicans vs. Democrats. But since there are over three times as many Dems as GOP members in Hudson, that small percentage difference got magnified in terms of actual votes cast, with the former in effect losing 50 more potential supporters.


9. Turnout likewise wasunusually light among members of the Bangaladeshi community. Historically, these recently-minted registrants have participated at impressive rates well over 90%, enjoying their newfound citizenship. But this time around, their turnout was more like 50%. 


10. Hallenbeck won a single suburban district—5-2, which is the northernmost part of town, nestled among the “boulevards” of Greenport—by 112 votes, more than double his margin of victory. In other words, the result would have been reversed if not for that district, which in recent years has felt increasingly alienated and distant from Hudson’s downtown.

In Part II tomorrow, I’ll move from these hard data to a few ratiocinated conclusions.

Crime family

This may look like a group photo of extras from the set of The Untouchables. But it’s actually the Columbia County Board of Supervisors, 1926-1927.

Update on absentees

According to data obtained via Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request from the Columbia County Board of Elections, as of Thursday afternoon:

• 183 voters had returned absentee ballots;
• 65 others had not (yet) returned their ballots;
• 1 voter cast an “affidavit” ballot on Election Day.

None of these have been opened yet. Of those voters who have returned their absentee ballot:

• 102 are Democrats;
• 32 are Republicans;
• 32 are “independents” not affiliated with any party.
• 12 are Independence Party members;
• 3 are Conservatives;
• 1 is a Working Families Party member; and
• 1 is a Green.

That said, party affiliation sometimes isn’t a very reliable predictor of how voters may lean in local elections. In addition:

• 20 of these ballots were picked up and delivered to voters by Linda Mussmann, who was circulating a sample ballot for Hallenbeck on Election Day; and
• 4 ballots were “carried” by former Democratic alderman Lyle Shook, also believed to be a Hallenbeck supporter.

Considering that ballots had to be postmarked by Monday, and the U.S. mails generally arrive within 1-3 days even across the continental U.S., it doesn’t seem likely that very many more (if any) ballots will be received. The BOE does, however, have to wait 10 days, especially to allow any overseas military ballots to come in.

Since the Board was closed today for Veterans Day, no Friday update was available. This site has also been unable (due to a fight instigated by Republicans over where to store the ballots) to verify the Board’s hand-written machine tallies which indicate a slim 27-vote lead for Bill Hallenbeck over Nick Haddad for Mayor. Presumably on Monday, the actual printouts from the electronic vote scanners will be available for inspection. And the Columbia County Board, mainly thanks to Virginia Martin, has a practice of also hand-counting all machine-counted votes, a laborious process but one essential to protecting the integrity of all of our votes.

The Board is expected to begin processing absentee ballots on Friday the 18th, but it is not certain whether they’ll handle towns alphabetically, or do the non-controversial ones first, or address the candidates who are still in suspense first (as in Hudson and Taghkanic). If they don’t get to those towns on the 18th, the wait could extend into the following week.

Plus there is a potential for court challenges, conceivably meaning that some places might not know the identity of their new Mayor or Town Board members until WinterWalk, or later.

’Tis the season...

... for really trashy letters to the editor. (Just four more days to Election Day, then the signs and the posturing can die down.) For a more thoughtful take than anything you’ll find in the papers, try attorney David Seth Michaels’ non-partisan explanation of what’s at stake in Countywide races.

Box 343

The Gossips of Rivertown has posted absentee ballot tallies for the contentious Hudson mayoral primary. As expected, these did not change the lopsided primary day outcome, since Nick Haddad prevailed among the absentee voters, adding to his already statistically-insurmountable lead. But there’s another story buried underneath the raw numbers of the absentee ballot count.

Public documents (see this PDF obtained via a Freedom of Information Law request to the Columbia County Board of Elections) show that Haddad’s primary opponent, Time & Space Limited co-director Linda Mussmann, arranged to have several other people’s ballots mailed to her via a Hudson post office box: P.O. Box 343.

That’s where it gets interesting, because P.O. Box 343 is also an address used by Time & Space. TSL is a non-profit organization—tax exempt because it seeks to advance the arts and culture, along with other educational purposes.

These and other readily-available public records indicate that voters’ absentee ballots, TSL contributions, nonprofit IRS filings, as well as political donations all lead back to the same metal box at the Hudson Post Office.

Below is a detail of records obtained from the Board of Elections, which shows one of at least three voters whose absentee ballots were mailed c/o Linda Mussmann at P.O. Box 343:

Again, that request was for someone else’s ballot, not her own... Next up is a page from the TSL website, instructing donors to mail checks to P.O. Box 343:

NOTE: The street address listed above on TSL’s own website is actually incorrect; the correct street number is 434. Meanwhile, P.O. Box 343 appears on other pages at the TSL site as well.

Similarly, here is TSL’s 2008 filing with the I.R.S., again showing P.O. Box 343 as the organization’s mailing address:

Lastly, here is a recent political contribution made to a Republican candidate for the State Supreme Court by Mussmann’s spouse and TSL co-director, Claudia Bruce, on August 19th of this year, again citing the same P.O. Box:

(That last one is especially ironic, considering that Mussmann had been posturing as the only true Democrat in the race—even as her partner was donating to a GOP judicial candidate. Personally, I happen to like and respect that particular judge; and unlike so-called “yellow dog” Democrats, I don’t expect people to be party-line donors. But Mussmann can’t insist that others bake ideologically-pure cakes if she’s going to eat them, too.)

Nonprofits are supposed to be very careful about keeping this stuff separate, and are required to limit and report any possible lobbying or other political activity. Free speech allows a nonprofit to show a movie with a political viewpoint. Likewise in his or her separate private life, the director of a nonprofit is free to be as political as s/he likes. It’s the mingling direct politicking for one’s own candidacy with nonprofit resources that likely would be raise eyebrows at of the I.R.S.

Mussmann and/or Bruce could in theory pay for that Post Office box out of their own funds, rather than charitable contributions, and declare its use a donation to TSL. Even so, such overlapping use won’t pass most people’s smell test. It’s needlessly sloppy, when the problem could be cured easily and afforably by just opening a separate box for political stuff.

In the past, TSL’s co-directors were somewhat more careful to at least avoid the impression of overlapping political and charitable activity, even if it was going on behind the scenes. For example, a $300 contribution Mussmann made in 2009 to her own Bottom Line Party was properly attributed to her home address on State Street, not P.O. Box 343.

In any case, Mussmann made a major strategic miscalculation in her fourth quixotic mayoral run with her intense focus on absentees. The results suggest that far too much campaign time was devoted to an effort which only delivered at best a 20-vote bump up. Visiting voters at home, talking them into having her “carry” their ballot, picking it up at the BOE, taking it back to the voter, standing around waiting for them to fill it out, and then delivering it back to the Board is an arduous means of winning votes if you have limited time and space to work in. (In a number of instances, Mussmann even went to voters who had already designated someone to carry their ballot and actually been issued one, and got them to sign a second request for a second ballot. This tactic’s main effect was to anger those whose ballots she had “scooped” to work against her, a net loss to her final tally.) In a close election, it might have looked like a clever, if Macchiavellian, move. As it turned out, the effort just caused her to neglect more wholesale forms of campaigning.

The election law certainly allows voters to designate someone to “carry” someone else’s ballot, with permission. Normally the practice is benign: for example, an elderly voter in an assisted living facility might want her nephew to pick up and bring the ballot to her. But historically in places like Hudson, a handful of political operatives (most notably here, 5th Ward Alderman Bob “Doc” Donahue) have had long lists of non-relatives for whom they carried ballots.

In past election cycles, Linda Mussmann protested this practice as a shady and even potentially corrupt one, as it can place undue pressure on the voter to fill out their ballot a certain way. The person “helpfully” delivering the ballot can gain an advantage by delivering endorsements along with the ballot, and potentially intimidate the voter as they fill it out. Yet there Mussmann was, straining to turn a tactic once used against her to her own advantage.

Mussmann probably lost as many votes as she gained in that process—while Haddad was busy successfully wooing over 350 Democrats with calls, mailers, TV ads, events, appearances, and face-to-face talks. With hope this fourth failed mayoral run (and sixth electoral bust) will mean the end of Mussmann’s by-now futile campaigns... or at least cause her to be more careful about which addresses she uses on official forms.

Signifying nothing

’Tis the season when the leaves float down, and the campaign signs sprout up. It’s also the season when the partisans of various political candidates agonize waaaay too much over who has more lawn signs. In fact some campaigns think of little else but their signs—at the expense of the actual work of winning over voters.

The annual sign routine is predictable:

• Candidate Joe gets his signs up first, causing the supporters of Candidate Jane to freak out.


• Jane overcompensates by trying to put up twice as many signs as Joe, escalating the sign wars.


• Now it’s Joe’s supporters’ turn to freak out, so Joe orders another 100 signs to catch up, making Joe and Jane roughly even.


• Both teams suddenly realize that if they put TWO signs on each property, it looks like they have double the support! Then they realize that three is better than two. And four is better than three. (Five, however, makes the property owner look crazy.)


• Jane’s cousin gets caught with a trunkload of stolen Joe signs, creating a bunch of bad publicity for Jane.


• Meanwhile, the local zoning enforcement officer (a member of Jane’s campaign committee) decides to enforce a little-known local law, requiring Joe to take down his signs because they are 3.25 inches too tall.


• The ACLU steps in, with a letter (correctly) denouncing the local sign ordinance as un-Constitutional; the ZEO backs off; Joe gets most of his signs back up.


• After the first week of this annual ritual, voters stop even seeing the signs, as they become just another feature of the roadscape.


• All of this distracts from the mechanics of wooing voters, turning them out to the polls, and getting elected.

Finally, after months of sign wars, your local election occurs. The votes are tallied. Turns out that having more signs had nothing to do with who actually won. The outcome could be predicted as reliably with a coin flip. Because no one—well, almost no one—decides which candidate to support because of a sign.

People understandably love to count election signs, since they’re often the only visible portion of a local campaign. (Debates, if any, are usually poorly-attended, with mainly the inner circles of each candidate attending.)

But signs tell you virtually nothing about a campaign, except maybe which side assigned a more obsessive-compulsive operative to putting wax-coated cardboard placards all over town. I’ve seen plenty of elections around here—for example, in Claverack, Hudson and Taghkanic—where the candidate with more signs lost, sometimes by a lot.

A few people put up signs because they actually feel strongly about a candidate. But rarely does more than a tiny sliver of the voting public actually display signs for either side. Some are apathetic. A few don’t want to have an argument with their neighbor. Others simply want their allegiances to remain a private matter, especially in the event that the other team wins, and appoints a new tax assessor.

Still it is almost impossible for a candidate’s friends and core supporters to turn off the sign hysteria. In the minds eye, if you see three signs for Joe in a given neighborhood, it is natural to conclude that “everyone” in that neighborhood supports Joe, though only 3 out of 30 houses are sporting his colors. 

Signs also go up for a host of reasons that have little to do with popularity. They go up first on the lawns or houses of relatives of candidates, and their allied commiteemen. Then they go up because someone didn’t want to say “no” to an operative with a supervisory role over that person’s job. They go up on certain attorneys’ and insurance agents’ houses who depend on municipal or County work, even if they plan to vote for the other side. And so on.

So long as both sides have a reasonable presence on the street, the exact tally of who’s ahead in the Sign Wars tells you nothing. The only time to freak out about signs is if the only sign up for your candidate is on his own house. Then you might worry, as that absence probably reflects a much larger problem of organization that goes far beyond getting signs printed and distributed. On the other hand, your candidate may be lullling the other side into complacency, as s/he diligently and quietly knocks on the door of every single local household, building a giant electoral advantage which only becomes visible on Election Day.

Sure, once in a while someone comes up with a truly clever or winning sign design which truly captures voters’ imaginations and gives them some slight advantage. That happens maybe once in a lifetime, and usually is a symptom of the candidate’s prowess, not its cause. As one consultant put it:

Lawn signs are another case where more is less as candidates try to outdo each other to see who can plaster a neighborhood with the most signs. It’s a stalemate of mutually assured destruction: Competing campaigns drain their budgets as they litter the landscape with a blurry sea of colorful cardboard largely ignored by commuters and other passersby.  

And what about our neighbors who actually choose to post political lawn signs in their front yard?  I say this: Free speech is awesome, but we already know who you vote for, and you’re not changing anyone’s mind.  Let it go.

So wherever you may live, please don’t get too worked up about who appears to have more signs. If you care about a candidate, badgering them about the other guy’s signs does not help. Instead, organize an event at your home, or make calls on their behalf to voters, or write a personal letter to your five best friends, urging them to join you in voting for your candidate.

In a local election, the only reliable sign that your team may win is that John or Jane isn’t investing too much of their limited money, time and thoughts on campaign signs.

Haddad by a mile

Nick Haddad breezed past Linda Mussmann in Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary in Hudson. Each of his running mates, including David Marston, Sarah Sterling, Ellen Thurston, Larissa Thomas, were likewise nominated by very large margins. Below is a table of preliminary results reported ward-by-ward by observers at the Board of Election’s initial count: 

* Small numbers of votes for Bill Hallenbeck and other write-ins cast in several wards were not immediately available.

Haddad overcame an unfortunate petitioning SNAFU which had forced the unusual primary, requiring Democratic voters to write-in the name of a candidate for Mayor despite a party nominee having been designated by the Hudson City Democratic Committee.

Candidate Mussmann, who had imagined she might take advantage of the so-called “opportunity to ballot,” reportedly left the count before it concluded, as it became clear that her margin of defeat was too lopsided to be overcome with outstanding ballots, including absentees. This marks Mussmann’s sixth losing campaign, including three previous Mayoral runs, and one run each for School Board and Alderman.

Politics as Theater (Take 4)

At The Gossips of Rivertown, Carole Osterink has broken the widespread Hudson rumor that Linda Mussmann of Time & Space Limited plans to stage (pun intended) a write-in primary vote among Democrats against Nick Haddad.*

Osterink speculates that Mussmann might also run on a third-party line, though the website for her moribund Bottom Line Party seems to have disappeared. According to the State Board of Elections, as of July the BLP had a balance of $136.94 in its account, and no donors at all in 2010-2011. (Out of the grand total of four donors in 2009, the only Hudson resident contributing to the Bottom Line was Mussmann herself; in 2008 there were a whopping three donors, the only Hudson contributor being Paula Forman.)

Mussmann has run three times previously for Mayor, each of those runs unsuccessful, and also lost a single bid for the School Board. Above is a graph of the votes that Mussmann has garnered Citywide in her previous mayoral runs in the general election. Only members of the Democratic Party can vote in the primary, meaning the tallies on September 13th likely will be considerably smaller.

In a blog interview in January of this year, Mussmann said (either coyly or disingenuously, depending on your take) that:

Running for Mayor is not something I am thinking about now but is always an option that is open to me.

In a separate interview two years ago, her partner Claudia Bruce (who serves as the Treasurer of the BLP) said of their political work:

Linda has run for mayor three times. We say the whole thing, is all theater. It is all theater. ... So many of the things that we’re doing in the community are a part of our theater experience.

And indeed, it is difficult to view this fourth quixotic attempt—if indeed the rumor is true—as much besides a theatrical show, one which accomplishes little except to keep TSL’s co-director in the spotlight. (And maybe the other co-director will get a chance to revive some songs from the 2001 campaign.)

Mussman’s third run not only was her worst showing. It also cost Mussmann a great deal of personal support, and moved a large portion of her board to quit en masse after she broke a promise to them not to continue her campaign after she lost the Democratic primary. In another interview, Mussmann admitted that third run was not easy, indulging in a certain sense of victimhood for her own decision:

My last campaign as mayor was highly controversial, because people felt I should not have run. I was the third party spoiler. And people directed a lot of hostility toward TSL because of me personally. Which is a hard thing to put up with. Or to withstand. And, financially and emotionally, is very hurtful.

While there are approximately 1,850 registered Dems in Hudson, past primaries have drawn only a small fraction of those registrants—with turnouts ranging from 250 to 750 voters—meaning that someone could win the top line of the ballot with just 130 or so votes. This being a write-in primary, which requires voters to spend more time and volunteer the name of a candidate, the actual valid votes cast could be quite small.

Forms for registering to vote, absentee ballots, military ballots, et al. can be downloaded via the Columbia County Board of Elections website.

Clearly, there's a time and place for politics in theater. (The play Danton’s Death about French revolutionaries is so beloved by Mussmann, she had her own chapbook version printed up.) Based on the Mussmann track record in prior elections, at least, it's less clear that there is much place for theater—or at least performance art—in Hudson politics. If it’s just a bit of avant garde the-a-ter that Mussmann is craving, the mere feint of a vanity campaign ought to be enough to satisfy that need for drama. Hudson is a real place, inhabited by real people, with real problems and potential. The residents of this small city deserve better than to be treated as props in someone else's play.

 

---

* Haddad was endorsed by the party but was forced into a write-in option after his signed acceptance form was not included with the rest of the Hudson Democrats’ voluminous petition paperwork; HCDC chair Victor Mendolia has stated that he “took full responsibility for the error.”

BREAKING: Haddad team prevails

Photo: Joseph A on Flickr

Observers keeping a watch on the Columbia County Courthouse report that the Republican effort to prevent a Democratic primary—in which it is expected that Nicholas C. Haddad will be written in as the party’s choice of nominee for Mayor—has failed in court.

According to sources, Judge Hummel agreed with attorneys Ken Dow, Ed Reisner and John Friedman that the GOP failed to serve notice on the affected parties in a timely manner, missing a key election law deadline which was inviolate. The merits of the petitions themselves could not be questioned, because the Republicans did not follow the correct process.

So ironically, the GOP attempt to trip up the Democrats with technicalities itself failed on a technicality. (One wonders whether the Hudson and County Republicans will be demanding a refund from their lawyers, including Bill Better, and process servers.)

This means that there will indeed be an open write-in primary among Democrats on September 13th, in which any name can be written in.

Bad service

 

Legally, “service” of papers typically means to deliver notice to people that they are being sued and/or must appear in court.

The two photos above represent what the Hudson Republicans and the Hallenbeck campaign consider service. These depict two belated attempts around mid-day today to alert two Hudson residents that just a few hours later, the GOP would be in court trying to prevent the Democrats from having a Mayoral choice.

Kinderhook Attorney Bill Better was spotted tramping around Hudson with sheafs of paper in his arms, attempting to track his quarry—evidently with little success and even less care. (Note: The above method of service is known to lawyers as “nail-and-mail,” though it appears in this case in person delivery is required by New York State election law... and here might be, um, better described as “tape-and-escape.”)

The GOP ought to have served them notice well beforehand, but had neglected to do so. The Republican side somehow “forgot” to name the three Dems responsible for the contested petitions in their lawsuit filed earlier in the week, only specifying Board of Elections commissioners Virginia Martin and Jason Nastke... But one of them apparently rolled out of bed this morning, realized their blunder, and had to hustle over the Courthouse for leave to correct it. (In fact, the first version of their Board of Elections complaint wasn’t even signed, and also had to be re-submitted.)

Better evidently was acting out instructions from GOP chair George DeJesus and candidate Bill Hallenbeck, who reneged on DeJesus’s publicly-stated words published just last week in The Register-Star:

“I feel for Mr. Haddad. It was a mistake,” DeJesus said. “During petition time you have so much going on. I can understand the mistake.”

DeJesus said the situation will make it much harder for the Democrats, as they have now opened the door for anyone to be a write-in candidate for the endorsement. The Republican added that he will not campaign to get people to write in his mayoral candidate William Hallenbeck’s name on the Democratic primary ballot because residents deserve a choice between two strong candidates.

“I just hope, for the sake of the city, that they have a choice and an opportunity to pick a mayor they believe will do the best job,” DeJesus said.

But now, instead of keeping DeJesus’s word and honoring the above sentiments, the GOP filed suit on Monday to block Democrats who might want to write in a candidate for Mayor. But in challenging the Democrats on a narrow technicality, they themselves stumbled all over basic legal requirements in bringing their suit.

Which brings us to this afternoon in the Columbia County Courthouse, where DeJesus and Hallenbeck huddled with Linda Mussmann and Tony Kellar, while lawyers for both sides duked it out before Judge Hummel of Rensselaer County.

By 4 o’clock, Hummel had delivered a setback to Better & Co: The Republican legal eagles had screwed up the wording of their complaint. This caused Hummel to find that their complaint had already been satisfied once the County Board ruled today that the Democratic petitions were valid—and thus could not be pursued as currently constructed.

As a result of Hummel's decision, the threesome of Better, Hallenbeck and DeJesus indicated they'd scurry off to re-file their case by 5 pm in hopes of getting a second bite at the apple, including a second chance to try to “serve” the affected parties... which is doubly ironic, since they don't want any Democrats who made technical mistakes to get any second chances. Apparently, the Hudson Republicans think that only their tribe deserves a do-over, while Democrats had better dot every i and cross every t.

Assuming Hallenbeck’s crew get their paperwork in order this time, Hummel will reconvene the parties at 9 am on Monday. Meanwhile, Hudson Dems remain in suspense about whether they’ll get the chance to have a nominee.